Elegy

(2023)

HD video projection with stereo audio, 11:48

In ‘Elegy’ a wayward narrator recounts several short scenes between a series of character duos whose subtle but consequential gestures reek of soured love. A man with wet eyeballs acts for the wrong reasons, “the other woman” poses with a “naturally styled demeanour”, and a woman’s taunting remarks backfire on her. The narrator’s evasive descriptions fail to provide a full picture.

As the storyteller indulgently rearticulates individual words, their sincerity becomes uncertain. The apathetic, impassioned, lewd and mocking registers of the voice sit against piecemeal improvised piano and the slow movement of the visual track; a hypnotic woodland dreamscape, where details of trees, grass and rocks pass through a thin plane of focus. Time is compressed in this mournful idyll, where seasons collapse under a summer snowfall.

As the narration reaches an elegiac peak, the image apparatus is sensuously broken apart and revealed in the cold reality of the photographic studio, sat on an illusionist’s tablecloth.

Drawing on research into early projection techniques, the tactile imagery in ‘Elegy’ is created with a handmade miniature set and a hand built episcopic projector. Episcopes, popular in the late 19th century for entertainment and as educational devices, produce images by reflecting light off opaque objects, as opposed to passing light through a transparency, such as celluloid film.

Production supported by VACMA, installed in “LOVE STORIES”, a duo exhibition with Edward Gwyn Jones at Glasgow Project Room, January 2024.

watch →

Installation

Watch