Spinning is a video installation that investigates human relationships through 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 video artists David Hodge and Hi-Jin Hodge who asked the dancers to convey a series of interpersonal exchanges. For example, one of the dancers conveys love; while the object of that love dances to express that the relationship is platonic. The dancers act out anger, pleasure, indifference, or a simple request, like asking a favor. The emotions that are expressed are both profound and trivial, and the dancers are free to interpret these requests with their bodies as they wish. Together, the dancers create a complex mosaic of human interaction, covering much of the underlying emotion of human experience.

(10 channel, 8:22min)

>17 May- 3 June 2012 at Fotografiska

On January 11th 2002, an attractive, happily married woman named Dianne Derby was diagnosed with lung cancer. For the next three years, video artists David Hodge and Hi-jin Hodge spent dozens of hours with her, filming everything from her initial, positive attempts to deal with her illness to more realistic assessments as time went on.

“Why not me?” is a video installation that explores the essence of Dianne’s struggle and outlines the strategies that enabled her and others to deal with the disease. On several LED screens and a wall-sized projection—all separated by delicate, translucent curtains—viewers are able to experience the last three years of Dianne’s life. Each screen shows a series of short videos filmed at different stages of her disease. On the large projection, her friends and family talk about her and their interactions with her during her disease. Through the installation, visitors are able to experience the full scope of Dianne’s experience in a short time frame.
(1-4channel, 12:57 min)

>See online exhibition

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.
(12 channel, 106:00 min)

>See online exhibition

What do we know about our next-door neighbors? For most people the answer is: almost nothing. With this realization in hand, video artist David Hodge picked up his camera set out to learn something about the man who lived next door. Every day for a week, he spent a half hour with his neighbor Clifford, who agreed to reveal many intimate details about his life. The result is an intriguing video installation. The seven days are shown on seven portrait-sized screens arranged in a room much like a photography exhibition. The dialogue between the asker—David—and the subject Clifford is an exercise in discovery. Each day, Clifford chooses to reveal something new about himself, including a recent suicide of a friend, his childhood in Lebanon, and why he writes poetry. Ultimately, the installation explores how unknown the familiar is. We often see people we meet on the way to the mailbox or the store as almost non-people, reliable for a quick conversation and little else. “Seven Days with Clifford” peels the cover off the neighborly façade, and show that those we think we know often have lives far more complex and interesting than we ever imagined.
(1 channel, 27:00 min)

>See online exhibition

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.

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.