Phantom Avantgarde

2010

b/w 16mm film transferred to digital video : 8min 20sec

display case : acrylic mirror, rear projection screen, various materials

closed (for storage): 2.9m x 1.79m x 40cm

open: 2.9m x 1.79m x 2.5m

Phantom Avantgarde is a film housed within its own display case. A full-length mirror within the case reflects the projected video onto the case's rear-projection screen. The image can be viewed both from both sides of the screen, and on the mirror opposite, allowing for three separate perspectives on the work. The film itself is made up of collage elements, photocopied and enlarged to life-sized scale from a selection of key films of the cinema of existentialism, as well as images of Parisian intellectuals of the mid 1960's.

Once removed from their historical cultural reference, Waller reconfigures the cut out figures as a parade of mummified bodies, narrated through subtitled text from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novel, Journey to the End of the Night. Phantom Avantgarde is a development of Mark Aerial Waller's ongoing interest in the historical positioning of culture; that mythologised archival data can coexist between the reconfigured present and its original home. The figures on parade are not purely reference points to their origins of creation, but become charged receptacles of culture, living again in a parallel situation, curated and directed in a new constellation. By bringing the figures back into a three dimensional, material studio, the artist gives the frozen frames a second chance of performance. Using handheld camera movements to navigate their environment and the exact film stock of the original movies (Eastman 7222), Waller re-potentialises the characters, who seem somewhat curious of each other in their new awakening.

Le Jour se Lève (The Day Awakes, 1939) became an important influence on the thinking behind my recent video/sculptural piece Phantom Avantgarde (2010). There is an incredible scene in Le Jour se Lève where the protagonist sits in his L-shaped bedsit, under siege, watching bullets whistle past his ears. There is a window at the top of the L-shape and he is sitting at the base, on the right hand tip of the L, protected by the architecture, placidly smoking a cigarette. The film activates this architecture of deprivation to become a spot of resistance from some kind of unnecessary assault. The bullets become viewing trajectories; the space appears defined by them while the peace of the smoking protagonist creates something akin to the perception of physical space. It’s as if you can feel the room and what it has to offer.

The mirror and projection screen of the display case, and the distance between them echo the film's architecture.

The film and its method of display have been conceived together, acting as both functional and symbolic counterparts of the whole piece.