Tiny moments found within these movies
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 9:23 am
Kelberman’s practice is one of obsessive collection and organization converted by a perfectionism that provokes interminable repetitions. Though her images are often sourced from the Internet, the artist doesn’t work within the random and fragmented semiotics of that medium. Instead, with a character of care and resourcefulness, she leans into that which is expressed through multiplicity or reiteration: “My work is about how everyone and everything is special, and so while specialness is not special, it is still pretty much the most exciting thing going.”
Dina Kelberman’s project Nervous will feature a series of video loops that compare and combine compulsive habits, recursively exploring the areas where comfort and anxiety are simultaneous. In the midst of , these restless gestures for coping, once experienced privately by a minority, might suddenly become familiar to a vast majority who attempt to take europe cell phone number list cautionary measures. Instagram in this context and as a platform for the work, also speaks to a feeling both of necessity and of insatiability, while inducing the user/viewer in the repetitive, almost irrepressible gestures of tapping and scrolling.
Nervous (10/60), 2020
The original footage used for Nervous comes from viewing hundreds of commercials and educational films spanning the 50’s to 90’s sourced from the Internet Archive’s extensive collections. are edited into endless loops of small behaviors. The original innocuous context of these moments, intended to be level-headed and soothing, instead becomes nerve-wracking. Commercials for tough-acting cleaners and convenient appliances are now compulsive preoccupations. Educational films depicting the right way to do something, the solutions to problems, now are problems themselves. The means to improve your life have failed past the realm of diminishing returns into flat-out harm.
Dina Kelberman’s project Nervous will feature a series of video loops that compare and combine compulsive habits, recursively exploring the areas where comfort and anxiety are simultaneous. In the midst of , these restless gestures for coping, once experienced privately by a minority, might suddenly become familiar to a vast majority who attempt to take europe cell phone number list cautionary measures. Instagram in this context and as a platform for the work, also speaks to a feeling both of necessity and of insatiability, while inducing the user/viewer in the repetitive, almost irrepressible gestures of tapping and scrolling.
Nervous (10/60), 2020
The original footage used for Nervous comes from viewing hundreds of commercials and educational films spanning the 50’s to 90’s sourced from the Internet Archive’s extensive collections. are edited into endless loops of small behaviors. The original innocuous context of these moments, intended to be level-headed and soothing, instead becomes nerve-wracking. Commercials for tough-acting cleaners and convenient appliances are now compulsive preoccupations. Educational films depicting the right way to do something, the solutions to problems, now are problems themselves. The means to improve your life have failed past the realm of diminishing returns into flat-out harm.