From as far as hope
To continue my play between the still and moving image, I sought a subject that would remain “still” even though the camera was highly mobile. I settled on the vanishing point.
And in the interest of keeping time and duration paramount, I employed, once again, the stare, a most elemental camera gesture. From as far away as hope was inspired by a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 film The Passenger. In that scene the camera answers the passenger’s query of the driver, “What are you running away from?” by sweeping round over the rear of the convertible to reveal an empty highway, arrow-straight to the horizon. My script is largely cribbed from the film, yet rearranged.
The work involves two projections on opposing, proximate walls. It begins, on one wall, rushing down a dead-straight, deserted, Nevada highway toward the vanishing point. A brief dialogue introduces the opposing projection: a reverse shot of the same stretch of highway, rushing away from the vanishing point. A second dialogue transpires before a truck approaches, driving out of the front projection and onto the rear, demonstrating that both projections are the same moment in two directions. A third brief dialogue closes the back projection, quickly followed by the front.
For viewers, located between the two projections, the space itself seems to move, yet they’re caught somewhere between becoming and having been.
from as far away as hope, 2003, still and installation view from a colour video.
© Stan Denniston
This text is reproduced with the author's permission. © Stan Denniston
Stan Denniston has exhibited extensively in Canada and Europe. He began his NOMo video project in 1997, inspired and mentored by Montreal artist Jacques Perron. In 2003–2004, he worked as cinematographer on Peter Lynch’s feature documentary A Whale of a Tale. Denniston is represented by Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto, and by Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris and Brussels.
Stan Denniston · CV67 · Wednesday, 01 June 2005 00:00
http://cielvariablearchives.org/en/articles-and-portfolios-cv67/from-as-far-as-hope.html
