Online exhibition by Loyola University Museum of Art featuring nine video artwork by  DAVID HODGE & HI-JIN HODGE.

The observation of time is a key discipline for a videographer. David and Hi-Jin have long been aware that every minute of a film can draw viewers to a closer, deeper understanding of a topic. Presented through the eyes of a sensitive artist, these minutes can also take on a more significant meaning: they can draw us nearer to our selves. They can teach us to examine our lives minute by minute, studying and fully experiencing every action we take and reaction we have.

In Closer by the minute the Hodges use digital technology to show the depth and power of exploring a subject in a careful, methodical way. The works in this collection address issues of interpersonal, metaphysical, and societal interest. Specific themes include impermanence in human life and affairs, a meditative study of the ocean, and an exploration of what people leave behind when life ends.

Typically, the Hodges’ video-based work brings many perspectives together to tell a compelling story about life and change. The artists reveal their subjects in surprising ways, building reactions that increase in intensity and meaning the longer a viewer experiences them.

> Online exhibition “Closer by the minute”

How We Met explores the different ways couples meet, fall in love, and live their lives together. Dozens of couples in various stages of their relationships offer their insight and thoughts, giving snapshots of relationships in progress, from beginning, to marriage, and beyond.

> See online exhibition

The book is an attempt to bring the project to a larger audience. Its sources include photographs from the Hodges’ 2008 visit, where they were given broad access—including a helicopter overflight—to the surrounding area. It also features images of Love Canal that David shot in the late 1970s and archival images from the New York Power Authority, taken in the late 1950s during the construction of the largest hydroelectric facility the world had seen at that time.

To stand at the very edge of Niagara Falls is to feel the water’s primal pull. There, where the roaring river drops away at your feet, you can partake in an ageless miracle. Yet the nearby city of Niagara Falls has seen one of the most remarkable declines of any urban center. Where some see total collapse in less than a lifetime, others see a hometown with strong roots and culture. Still others see a landscape worshiped for its divinity over several millennia.

We see this short trailer as a beginning for a visioning project and a documentary film about what’s possible. Our aim is to build a powerful case for a concerted effort in which local business, regional interests, and national priorities participate in the Niagara Falls of the future.

This is work in progress.

How do families change as death approaches? Hodge Arts recently developed a preliminary pilot for a dramatic series entitled “Dead End.” Our purpose is to peal away the veneer of a family as they attempt to cope with the impending loss of a parent. While each character has a private agenda, they struggle with conflicting emotions around trust, personal beliefs, duty, righteousness and all the complexities that the dying leave in their wake.

Spinning looks at human relationships through the medium of human movement. Four dancers are filmed on rotating platforms, acting out a spontaneous emotional play. The camera captures their movements as they approach one another and recede, spinning through a series of changing interrelationships, much like humans do in everyday life.

The piece is structured, by the artists, who ask the dancers to convey a series of interpersonal exchanges. One might be in love; while the object of that love considers their friendship platonic. There may be anger, pleasure, indifference, or something more basic, like asking a favor. These relationships are both profound and trivial, and the dancers are left free to interpret them with their bodies as they wish. Taken together, they create a complex mosaic of human interaction, covering much of the underlying emotion of human experience.

For more than a year, David and Hi-jin invited every person who visited their home to sit for a silent, fifteen second video portrait.  Few were confident from the start. Many began uncomfortably, but grew into the role. Almost all showed “transitional states” during which they relaxed or displayed unique signs of how they were feeling. The 10-screen installation would likely show short intervals taken from these portraits at critical or transitional moments.
This is a work in progress.

The car. So familiar, so entwined in American life that it’s not merely an indispensable tool but an inextricable feature of our cultural history. To explore its impact on our world, David and Hi-Jin created “Life on Wheels.”

Upon entering this room-sized installation, the user is confronted by a square pool of motor oil, whose smell fills the air. The pool also serves as a screen for a projection of a small flame burning above in the center of the room. Meanwhile, four video walls shows short vignettes of people interacting with cars.

The exhibit, with its dramatic imagery and arresting sensory experience, is intended to produce contemplation more than action. The hope is that visitors will leave with a heightened consciousness not only of the role their cars play in their lives, but also what their use of them ultimately means in the most basic terms.

What abides? Legacy explores this universal question. Employing new cinematic portraiture techniques, it draws the viewer deep into questions of life, lifestyle, and one’s contribution to the future. By focusing on individual examples and stories, Legacy leads viewers through captivating examples, while allowing room for independent interpretation. As viewers walk from one screen to another, they will also travel through the landscape of selected lives, dreams, actions, regrets, and passions. Legacy leaves its audience with a heightened awareness of how the future affects and informs the present, as the human heart seeks guidance from imperfect foresight.

What is prayer?

Prayer occupies a unique place among all human activity: almost universal, yet it is at the same time one of the most intensely personal of all human actions. This film explores both the outer manifestations of prayer—the postures, tone, language, messages, and attitudes of a prayer—and the inner state of the person praying. People appearing in God Is Where You Are pray as a regular part of daily life. They agreed to pray as they normally do within their religious tradition, and then to describe what personal meaning the prayer has for them. The result provides a powerful and unusual range of sights, sounds and stories that illuminate the practice of prayer, while leaving its essential mystery untouched.