Water as Danger
PHIL HASTINGS
Steadfast, 2009
Water continues as a theme in the 7-minute film Steadfast, where U.S.
artist Phil Hastings uses the interaction of man and water to comment on the
human condition – which like the ocean is ever changing.
This darkly atmospheric film uses a clever juxtaposition of three layers
of image to viscerally evokes both the danger and vicissitudes of the ocean. At
the front, a boiling sea builds to thunderous waves that break right over us
from our crabs - eye view amongst the spume on the shore. At the same time just
behind, another scene slowly appears through the cold grey mists – a cold
shoreline, leafless trees, a house offering the possibility of safety, as high
above seagulls float in and out apparently oblivious to what’s happening below.
Using very slow -motion
imagery with a sound track of electronic buzzes and crescendos, our emotions
are clearly manipulated by the story created on screen with its references to
horror and lost-at-sea adventure movies. According to the artist it is “a
30-second clip stretched into seven agonizing minutes that tear at the mind.”
As we wonder if even the house that offers possible safety will survive the
onslaught.
Guido van der Werve
Everything is going to be alright, 2007
Danger and the sea are dealt with no less viscerally, but with much more
mirth by Netherlands artist Guido van der Werve, in his tongue-in-cheek titled
film.
Again using the juxtaposition of two images to invoke an emotional
response,
the artists back ground as a performer is also obvious.
Set against the cold blue expanse
of a frozen sea, a giant ice-breaking liner lumbers slowly towards us on a
giant screen. Visually, it is a great black industrial slash against the still
ness and beauty of the frozen blue landscape, but it is also an immense and
powerful beast cracking effortlessly though the ice sheets.
But just in front, a man is
walking - a tiny strolling silhouette against the giant lumbering ship,
seemingly unaware of the incipient danger. His gait is playful like a small boy
leading his giant pet forward, but at the same time he is the prey of this
great Attenborough - ike a mechanical killer-whale that seems to be edging ever
closer.
Guido van der Werve has now
make more than 10 films of his work – working with long shots and
juxtapositions to create emotive atmospheres.
Here
he succeeds in creating not only a stunningly evocative visual landscape, but a
riveting contradiction of emotional responses – the danger and beauty of the environment,
the anthropomorphic threat of the unstoppable machine breaking through nature,
set against the casual unencumbered strolling of the man.
