Two-channel video installation
Rear projection acrylic screen, 20cm cathode-ray production monitor, data projector and 2.1 channel sound system
Duration: 3:49 (video-loop)
Dimensions variable
2014
It’s About Knowing When to Leave is a two-channel video installation composed of looping found footage from classic Western films. On one side, a slowed-down close-up of Alan Ladd in Shane (1953) is looped on a small CRT production monitor; opposite is rear-projected purpose-built screen showing a silhouetted figure of Billy the Kid on horseback from Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973).
Together, these paired sequences form a melancholy portrait of the Western hero, caught in repetition, endlessly redeployed, and trapped in a narrative purgatory. The juxtaposition of Shane’s arrival, embodying hope and belonging, with Billy’s fading silhouette, dissolving into the landscape, creates a fractured image of the cowboy’s psyche. He is a figure compelled toward community yet doomed to depart, bound to the nomadic cycle of return and withdrawal.
By spanning twenty years of Western cinema and merging them into a continuous loop, the installation reveals the archetype’s inner contradictions and inevitable exile: the very moment of arrival already signals the certainty of departure.