Video 4.30min September 2001
REFLECTIONS OF THE FLOATING WORLD, Japan 2001
Manchester, Darlington and Edinburgh
The title Vieil Aller Vieux Arręts is the beginning of a poem by Beckett,
which could be translated as ancient goings/ ancient rests. The video
consists of a cyclical and continuous moving on and towards, allowing
for moments of respite but never giving a sense of arrival.
Shot during a Suzuki training session, an intense physical Japanese training
method for actors, the video is composed of a succession of close-ups
of the faces of the actors.
The faces are isolated from a context through a tight framing and the
image is manipulated technically to reduce detail and definition in order
to shift the reading of the faces from a recognition of personalities
or characters towards an more undefined and floating state of being.
