PARALLEL TRACKS (Video, running time 1min 24 secs) NOVEMBER 2014

 

"the repressed stillness on which cinema's illsuion of movement depends" (Mulvey, L. Death 24x A Second). 

 

The film is a progression from the  process used in LOW FOCUS and my attempt to extrapolate on the movement of the still image. I attempt to remove the guise of cinema and bring the residual stillness to the surface. The work is an edited telecine of a durational slide projection piece (projected at 140x100cm) in which I set up a carousel slide projector, HD recorder, desk and 52 slides. I started filming and projecting (using a dissolve unit) at the same time and began to paint a caustic soda solution onto each of the 52 slides before adding each one to the moving carousel as I went. Eventually the slides were added one by one culminating in a projection lasting for two hours. The slides used in the piece were a sequence of rural landscapes and monuments from an unknown photographer and time. I chose to use another person's photographs rather than my own with the intention of highlighting the physical interjection I was making in the piece alongside an attempt to construct a new image /experience through degradation of the previous. The sound is taken from an amalgamation of  vinyl recording of locomotives, which is a reference (along with the title of the piece) to the paradox of film and Lynne Kirby's Parallel tracks: The railroad and silent cinema.