Durational video work — Zoom series

Return I is part of the Zooms video series, a set of durational works exploring how context forms, dissolves, and reorganizes through movement, repetition, and time.

The work presents three vertical video frames simultaneously. The first records the artist’s arrival at LaGuardia Airport on 03/02/26 — his first return to New York City after relocating to The Rigley Field. The second and third were recorded one week later, on 03/09/26, while leaving New York and returning to The Rigley Field.

This narrative structure is introduced in the opening frame and remains embedded in the sequence.

Across each frame, the camera slowly zooms inward toward its subject. Once the zoom reaches its closest point, the movement reverses, returning the image to its original wide view. Each frame continues looping through this cycle of approach and return for the full nine-minute duration.

Because the loops operate at slightly different lengths, the synchrony established at the outset gradually breaks apart. The three moments drift out of phase, recombine, and separate again over time.

Arrival and departure no longer hold as fixed positions.

Return becomes cyclical rather than linear.

For the first time within the Zooms series, the work also incorporates a musical soundtrack. The opening frame subtly invites the viewer to loop “7-29-04 The Day Of” by David Holmes (from Ocean’s Twelve) while watching the sequence. The track functions as more than accompaniment: its title operates like a cultural timestamp. In the film, the song marks the day of the heist; in the context of the work, it behaves like a temporal marker — a date embedded in sound. Released in 2004, the year referenced in its title, the track permanently anchors itself to that moment in time, mirroring the way the Ezra system preserves context through temporal metadata.

Image and sound gradually fall in and out of alignment as the loops drift.

Within the broader Zooms series, Return I introduces the logic of recurrence: context is not simply revealed or withdrawn, but repeatedly revisited. The work holds New York and The Rigley Field within the same durational field, allowing movement between them to continue long after the original journey has ended.

Meaning does not settle in one place.

It returns.

Credits

Recorded by Seth Dager

Edited by Seth Dager