| My work lives between the media of installation art, video installation, photography, and new media, depending on the nature of each project. In earlier artworks, I used contemporary media to reanimate sites with images of their own lost histories. More recently, in the past few years I have worked primarily with the moving image. I create multiple-channel, immersive video installations for museum and gallery viewing. I will be exhibiting my most recently completed piece, Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack at Jack Shainman Gallery this September. The artwork is a 3-channel high definition video installation, 18 minutes in length, with surround sound. | 
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Shimon Attie is a photographer currently based in New York City.
Shimon Attie, Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack. Video still, 3-channel high definition video installation with surround sound. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.My work lives between the media of installation art, video installation, photography, and new media, depending on the nature of each project. In earlier artworks, I used contemporary media to reanimate sites with images of their own lost histories.
More recently, in the past few years I have worked primarily with the moving image. I create multiple-channel, immersive video installations for museum and gallery viewing.
I will be exhibiting my most recently completed piece, Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack at Jack Shainman Gallery this September. The artwork is a 3-channel high definition video installation, 18 minutes in length, with surround sound. The piece was inspired by the former Bridgehampton Auto Racetrack in Bridgehampton, Long Island, which was closed in 1994. I filmed approximately 70 individuals whose lives intersected at the former track—racecar drivers, spectators, flaggers, pit crew, paparazzi, racing officials, etc.—and created a kind of de-contextualized ballet loosely based on the law of physics which proposes that time slows down for very fast moving objects.
There are no digital effects or actors employed in the making of the artwork. All of the individuals filmed “perform” being themselves and their former roles at the racetrack. Each person is asked to hold a static, sometimes “statuary” pose on an unseen, moving stage. We use a very complex lighting setup with a look and feel that is reminiscent of old master painting lighting. As the stage moves in a variety of considered directions, each individual thus transits and transitions through areas of rich light and shadow.
The “props” used in the artwork are actually found, sometimes unearthed, objects from the former racetrack and the individuals’ various racing possessions.
Finally, I worked closely together with Brooks Williams and Beo Morales of Harmonic Ranch to develop an evocative and dramatic sound score, based in part on original audio recordings made at the Bridgehampton Track some 30 years ago.
Akin to my other video installations, Racing Clocks Run Slow lies at the intersection between the static and moving image. I use the form of dynamic, moving “tableaux vivants” as a way to distill how human memory inflects notions of speed and velocity.
