We were taken into the ICA cinema auditorium in groups of three. It is small cinema space, maybe seating about 150. There is another group of three already in the auditorium. The rest of the seats are empty. On the screen are a series of stills. There is no extraneous information explaining what we are looking, at. Nadine - who is German, recognised the streets of Berlin. More specifically there were shots of the performers from Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire. The shots were black and white, there was no obvious narrative or clear guide as to what connected the images. After a while, the group of three already in the space when we entered, were led out by another doorway different from the one we entered. The film continued. Eventually another group of three came into the space and we were led to the same exit as the previous group of three. This exit turned out to be an entrance. We were now in the cinema’s projection room. Perched on a stool, next to the projector sat Tris Vonna-Michell. The three of us stood opposite. A rapid-gunfire patter began, too fast to comprehend in its entirety; it was peppered with negotiation about how long the encounter itself should last, two, three minutes, three and a half? He brandished an egg timer. His speech was intense and compact, his verbal dexterity became spectacle - a style of delivery often wrestling with the facts. But what are the facts? This is what seemed to elude Vonna-Michell's troubled motor-mouth persona. What was communicated to me was the overwhelming anxiety of not being able to communicate. Within this scenario a projectionist delivering an apologia for the cryptic nature of the film he is projecting, using words to bridge gaps of comprehension, but aware of not fulfilling this aim. It was a powerful effect to draw us from the endpoint of a system, the projected image on a screen in the dark… to its source, the machine and man operating it. In doing so rich connections are made between what we perceive and the origins of those perceptions. The spiel served to prevent a reflective distanced relationship to the experience, which was only allowed in hindsight, having left the space, when we were no longer in an intimate spatial relationship to the artist. There is something quietly terrifying about the notion of a ranting projectionist, trapped in a booth, forever trying to explain something inexplicable, failing and trying again.
(Photograph of Nadine and ML by Benedict Johnson)
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