The 16mm film shows a man as he practices diving skills on an outdoor trampoline. Just up and down – repetitive facts. With a glass lens I focus the sun onto the figure within each frame of film and burn it out. A molten hole pulses in the midst of a forest, a river and a rectangular trampoline on the sand. To concentrate an event into a single image, and to hold this fragment still, makes it volatile, like a frame of celluloid caught in the projection gate. The mind also resists being held and runs to follow rhythmic links and chains of association. In the final moments of Coppola’s film ‘The Conversation’ (1974), the main character holds in his hand a statue of the Virgin, uncertain if it conceals a listening device. He hesitates, sweating, but then it and the room, with its fixtures and walls, its floor and ceiling are torn apart. He finds nothing and nothing remains intact except his sax.
After a run of 7 years 55 is calling it a day. An afterimage will remain, fixed – unexploded and dangerous.
Nick Strike
Foot Picture: The End of the Reel
13-29/4/18
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
