Introduction
'Absolute time', related
with the third subject of Reconstruction of Story, has nothing to do
with the concept of absolute time in classical physics introduced by Issac
Newton. Rather, this concept is similar with a pure duration grasped only
through intuition, a theory Henri Bergson proposed through his debates with
Albert Einstein. The illusion of movement made by the continuity of divided
spaces gave birth to cinema, but the mobility of an image is related with the
frame of the human body, the subject who grasps an object as the wholeness of
an image. In terms of Bergson, it may be that an image reacting to the frame of
affection inherent in the human body is reality and history.
Roland Barthes mentioned
the gap between existence and an image, saying 'I feel myself observed by the
lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of posing.'1)
Through this gap, the physical time of a film consequently moves to a
metaphysical area where we can induce a variety of analyses.
Reconstruction of Story
3: Absolute Time or Materialization of Cinematic Body, introduces three artists who have
penetrated into such a gap between existence and an image, and who pose questions
on the aspect of being that is surfaced through the camera and our
consciousness that perceives it. The program also holds master classes on the
three filmmakers: Péter Forgács (the great Hungarian independent filmmaker who
creates a delicate poetic reproduction of film footage), David Gatten (an
American experimental film maker who explores the relationship between an image
incarnated with text and language), and Kevin Jerome Everson (an American
artist who observes the time and space of the workplace and the behavioral
patterns of laborers from an African-American viewpoint). Their major films are
being screened in two sections.
The first section of Reconstruction
of Story 3 screens eight representative works of Péter Forgács, who touches
on the representation of memory and images through recomposed home-movie
footage. Of the films he has made by infusing a vitality into private
home-movie footage shot by amateurs from 1929 to 1969, this program introduces
six films, including The Danube Exodus, and The Maelstrom - A Family
Chronicle, and two other films, including Own Death, a film based on
one of the Hungarian novelist Péter Nádas' short stories. His films do not
convey a message by artificially connecting the moment of a recorded past with
official history. Merely, he creates dreamlike moments when the flow of time
ceases, while everyday scenes of the petit bourgeois before and after the
Second World War in home-movies are placed together with minimal music by Tibor
Szemzo.2) The images that move in slow-motion and are sometimes
repeated in his films show us that the past does not die but is made present
forever. Through his films, let's take the time to analogize the flow of
history in the small things of our daily lives.
1) Roland Barthes. Camera
Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London Vintage, 1993
2) Péter Forgács acted as a member of the contemporary music ensemble Group 180 which one of his friends Tibor Szemső launched in 1978. Later, Tibor composed the soundtracks for many of Péter’s films and installations.
※ It is important to
note that the following Saturday screenings may be cancelled, depending on the situational
influences around the MMCA areas: 2016, December 10, 17, 24, 31.
Please refer to
the additional screenings that the relevant titles will be scheduled to the same
day 3pm instead.
※ Reconstruction of Story 3 Screening Schedule
※ Reconstruction of Story 3 Brochure
