Square depression is a project, which was originaly designed in 1977, when Burce Nauman was invited among nine other artists by Kaspar König to do a sculpture for an open space. It was built 30 years later in the campus of the university’s department of natural sciences Munster. Square depression is an inverted pyramid, ‘walk in’ sculpture made of white concrete. The aim was to create a space, where one could experience a feeling of being isolated, helpless and alone.
In the closed-circuit installation «Live/Taped Video Corridor», a study from the Performance Corridor work group, Nauman set two monitors above one another at the end of a corridor almost ten meters long and only 50 cm wide. The lower monitor features a videotape of the corridor. The uppermost monitor shows a closed-circuit tape recording of a camera at the entrance to the corridor, positioned at a height of about three meters. On entering the corridor and approaching the monitors, you quickly come under the area surveyed by the camera. But the closer you get to the monitor, the further you are from the camera, with the result that your image on the monitor becomes increasingly smaller. Another cause of irritation: you see yourself from behind. Moreover, the feeling of alienation induced by walking away from yourself is heightened by your being enclosed in a narrow corridor. Here, rational orientation and emotional insecurity clash with each other. A person thus monitored suddenly slips into the role of someone monitoring their own activities.
(source: Dörte Zbikowski, in: Thomas Y. Levin (ed.), CTRL[SPACE]. rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to big brother, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe 2001)
via Media Art Net | Nauman, Bruce: Live-Taped Video Corridor.