( four frames in sequence from “The Hurt Locker” )
“oh KB you’re so…”
The image of the exploding bomb man.
A forbidden telesma for the beginning of the 21st Century. The action is described over and over in the news. Almost all suicide bombers make the news. Yet we almost never see them. On occasion an unexploded vest is found strapped to some sad dolt or occasionally the media filters don’t work and there is a glimpse of final carnage and gore; the before and the after. But Kathryn Bigelow brings us the image of the moment. Four frames of the unwatchable–the unseen. That which film was made for.
In doing it she acts out the truth of the act of filmmaking; the desire to see into the darkness of the human animal and to visualize the experience of death.
Here she (our hero, KB) reaches into our darkness with a 200 frame per second video camera in the glare of High Noon. Giving us only three frames of the obliteration of the body of a man chained to a bomb before it is over taken with the replacement footage of the explosion. 0.09 of a second stretched out into 0.125 of a second: a precise smearing of time of a very unseeable event. The precision is important, the replication of the moment of violence has cost thousands of dollars, days of work of many people. The human eye and brain can not see something that fast, we can only see the before and the after, but our brain smears reality and tells us we saw the cause and the moment. We didn’t, we couldn’t; the film or better yet the act of making film brings forth the image of the perceived and grants some false memory of the invisible.
In this story a man who against his will has become a man strapped to a bomb, KB has made him a sympathetic character, his explosion is not filled with hate or the willful desire to kill and destroy that comes with the average representation of the “Anonymous Suicide Bomber”. No, we are told in a panicked enumerated countdown, the clock tics, he is a “family man”, tock, a dupe, tic, an innocent. The explosion only kills the hapless man. Causing the main protagonist to experience a hackneyed visual epiphany of a kite floating in the sky. It is a trite message. There is no understanding of where the bomb came from, it is a bomb with out backstory. But the better story is the bomb. It is the story of success, the mix of chemical and electronic and the hard work of creation and planning. KB only gives us the motive of the chemical reaction, not the men who made it.
She is reminding us to glory in the power of the bomb.
The power of the reactionary explosive moment.
In a broader context Kubrick is unclear–”…or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. It seems it is his statement or his own assessment of the film-watching public. More likely it is the filmmakers’ bloodlust he is speaking of, agreeing with Bruce Conner. KB has learned well; Kubrick was wry in his assessment, Walter Hill would be proud, and Joel Silver would have asked for more architectural glass to shatter from the blast. We do love the bomb.
It is the moment of death that becomes the hero. The bomb: the motivating character and the expanding flower of shrapnel and dust the epiphanic conclusion.
The slowly arching movie returns and re-envelopes this tiny four frame film. We are told, in the context of the narrative, this moment is a failure. But our adrenaline craving bodies tell us something else. We have seen a perfect movie, everything we need; we will wait for the next one.
KB you really are so…
11:26 PM | projects | 0 Comments
automobilux
http://automobilux.laboratories.com/
From Battery Park City Broadsheet:
3LD MAP Exhibition: The
Perpetual Tourist
A meditation on memory and travel with pre- mier screening of “Automobilux” by Garret Lin. Automobilux is a long form film loop, pre- sented as a large single screen, allowing the viewer to freely come and go, thus building a unique narrative for each viewer. Music by Bowery Electric provides a lush pathway through the memories and waking dreams of a traveler. Also, a screening of “24Hour Chinatown,” an interactive video piece pre- senting a walk around a single block in New York’s Chinatown. The viewer is invited to con- trol the time of day of the walk. Thus one walks though both space and time, and is asked to consider the ideas of routine, home and locality. October 24, 25, 30, 31 and November 1. 3 Legged Dog, 80 Greenwich St. 212-352-3101. www.3leggeddog.org
automobilux
a feature length film
See http://automobilux.laboratories.com for more information
11:55 PM | projects | 0 Comments | Tags: feature, cinematographer, video installation, video editing
24hourchinatown.
24 walks around my block in a 24 hour period
see more at
24hourchinatown.laboratories.com
window installation photograph
from the Air De Paris’s RANDOM GALLERY
24hourchinatown.
24 walks around my block in a 24 hour period
see more at
24hourchinatown.labortories.com
From “Je Veux”
Published by one star press, Paris