Artist: Seth / Ezra Dager
Year: 2019–2026
Medium: Five-channel digital video installation
Status: Complete
Archive Context: The Field Archive

Overview

Ambient II is a five-channel video work preserving environmental moments recorded during an architectural river tour through Chicago in August 2019. Captured from the moving boat, each recording holds a different view of the city as bridges, buildings, water, and sky gradually shift through the frame.

The camera remains still.

The city moves.

The five recordings are arranged in the recurring exclamation-point structure found throughout the Ezra corpus. Four videos establish the vertical assertion while a fifth completes the punctuation.

The structure does not emphasize the architecture.

It emphasizes attention.

All five recordings were made during the same afternoon while traveling through Chicago with the artist’s mother. It would be the last trip they shared before her passing in January 2020.

The accompanying Data Frame identifies the work’s sonic field through “Sister Owls” by Monster Rally, a song the artist and his mother listened to throughout the trip. Viewers are invited to recreate those durational conditions by looping the track while watching.

The music does not accompany the memory.

It belongs to it.

Position

Ambient II demonstrates that places often preserve the people with whom they were experienced.

The river continues.

The city remains.

The moment returns.