I needed to be able to make a loop of film so that it would play continuously. I had bought a couple of splicers from the internet so I started to splice one of the found footage films into a loop. Unfortunately the cement did not react and bond the film together so I used some glue which seemed to work fine.
When I ran the film through my Prinz projector it worked fine but this was quite a short loop. The test will be when I put together a longer loop.
I wanted to use my Prinz projector to project the Super 8mm film but to do this I would need to put the film on a loop.
In an exhibition by Sandra Gibson and Louis Recoder they had looped the film through a series of spools and in another work they had let the film just spool onto the floor.
I liked the idea of the film going through a series of spools which could reflect the fragility of memory and how they are recalled back to a part of our brain where we can relive them. This made me think about where our memories go to when we are not remembering?
The first film I had used in the Chinon Cine camera was not going to be easy to get developed and would need a further process to enable me to run it on the projector. As I did not have any particularly interesting footage on there anyway as I was just trying to get used to the camera, I decided to concentrate on the Tri-X Reversal Black and White film.
I had a very clear memory of attending my Uncle’s funeral when I was about 12 and standing in the churchyard facing the church looking at his grave. I did not know where the church was and remembered nothing else about the service or anything after it.
I found out the name of the church where he was buried and drove there to see if I could find his grave and if it was where I had remembered it. I took my cine camera as I wanted to film it to try to recreate that memory.
Signs of a Struggle (2002) by Clare Strand was a work made in response to the phenomena of the New Town and Garden City movement. These were supposed to be developments that offered an ideal way of living but they ended up being a haven for drugs and violent crime.
Strand’s work was inspired by Eugene Lonesco’s absurdist play Les Tiers San Gages, where a man discovers a city of light but is then devastated to find that a killer resides there. This made me reflect more on this sense that things are not as they seem and how light can sometimes cover the darkness.
The stills of the crime scenes are eerie in their portrayal of what has supposedly taken place. The question is, can photography make real that which we cannot perceive as tangible? Pictures are taken of crimes after they have happened, to show how things were found. Does this reflect how memories of traumatic experiences are stored? Markers are left in the aftermath which have to be pieced together to create the fragments of what took place.
David Claerbout’s projection Shadow Play (2005) showed the doors of a large corporate building. Periodically people would come up and try the doors but they were locked so no one ever managed to gain access to the building.
The artist used the building as a representation of a modern, brightly lit future but this diminished as people were unable to access it.
The impossibility of being able to access the building was a metaphor for video and photography which acts as a time machine which transports us back to a particular time but ultimately we are unable to access.
It made me think about memories or fragments of memories which are like photographs stills. We can see and feel them but we cannot go back to that time, as we were then, we can only relive them or remember them in this time as we are now?
