Abstract

During a showing of the video Some Everybodies, which observes tourist behaviour at a non-tourist site in Bath, the work will be discussed as evolving through non-dualist processes of film-making (enabled through new technology), whilst also attempting to create a non-dualist filmic experience for the spectator. Shot with a fixed-frame camera at a corner scene (which is the site of a minor accident), the film does not possess a traditional narrative structure or design, and has been described as a moving painting. There is no central character (people are viewed more as moving bodies), and the momentum (rather than linear progression of scenes) has been made entirely in the editing suite, rather than on-site through a directorial eye. Dialogue from the site has been included as a multivalent communal poem that scrolls as subtitles beneath the images. Here the traditional understanding of subtitles is, once again, questioned, and they no longer exist as semiotic colonizers of othered national experiences, but evolve as asides from the passers-by themselves. Time-as-intervention will be discussed through the bleached colouration of the pictorial image, reminiscent of old postcards. This visual sense of well-worn familiarity is juxtaposed against a soundtrack that has been slowed down, creating primal groans and utterances. The significance of still-images within film-making will be explored, as the narrative freezes whilst the tourists themselves freeze, or snap, their own narratives. These mementos are also included on postcards and posters as part of a larger installation. The walk-through, yet high-walled cross design of the installation creates corners (said to be the places where people meet), and optimal viewing points a tourist leit-motif. The site is designed to illustrate the dislocation of time and place, where images of the video site (as posters and postcards) are seen before the video itself. Reference will be made to film-maker Joseph Robakowski, artist Barbara Kruger, the scientist Dirk Helbing (with particular reference to dynamical flow and pilgrim crowd behaviour at Mecca) and film theorist and film-maker Professor Laura Mulvey.