A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight is a project drawing on a number of sources, from modernist literature to mainstream cinema. It employs different media ranging from computer animation to script and performance, and explores contemporary forms of visual and narrative architectures related to mass media. The title quotes a poem by James Joyce, which refers to the cinematographic apparatus as a fantasmatic projection screen for modernist fantasies. Here, cinema is represented as a system of mirrors reflecting each other, where the film character appears just as ?remainder?. The poem tells of characters and images which have long since become figures and signs in collective subconsciousness: ?screen memories,? leading towards Freud?s concept of ?Deckerinnerung? (?screen memory?). A screen memory is understood to be a fiction produced by the unconscious in order to cover up real memories of traumatic origin. Freud mentions the concept of ?screen memory? for the first time in an analysis of an own dream. His description emphasizes the fact that the relevant scene always appeared to him in ?glaring Technicolor.?

Situated at the center of the work is the 1978 film Eyes of Laura Mars (Irving Kershner, USA 1978). Faye Dunaway is Laura Mars, a fashion photographer known for her violently explicit, sexually charged photographs. She becomes haunted with visions of murders she witnesses from the eyes of a mysterious killer. Her subjective perspective is identical with the murderer?s view on the actual crime site, thus her gaze is replaced with the gaze of a stranger.

By making use of architectural rendering software, spatial sequences of this 1970s thriller have been recreated. Through a process of spatial ?editing,? these are arranged into a new architectural sequence, a ?spatial narrative? accompanied by a female voice-over. This invisible female narrator is made up of a set of ?screen memories? of a number of female movie characters: although it is always Laura who speaks, some memories belong to Rachael from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, USA 1982), some texts to Nana from Vivre sa vie(Jean-Luc Godard, F 1962), some perceptions to Giuliana from Il Deserto Rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni, I 1964), or to Alma from Persona (Ingmar Bergman, S 1966). These characters, scripted by their authors / directors as ?women as symptoms?, are released from the original script in order to begin narrating a different story through their own voices.

Cinema here is understood as a system consisting of distinct languages ? script, architecture, performance, sound etc ? rather than as projection apparatus for a larger-than-life-nostalgia for films. Located outside of cinema as modernist paradigm, but still inside of cinematographic discourses, ?A Memory?? suggests a continuing narrative of fictitious as well as actual spaces. The work focuses on the transformation of ?gaze? through different media formats in relation to the spectator and the seemingly ?objective? perspective of the camera. The story?s development is shifted to architectural sequences. Architecture and narrative become stage sets for the unfolding of that which cannot be told.

Exhibitions

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight, 2001

Kerstin Engholm Galerie, Wien, Austria

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight, 2001

Entwistle Gallery, London, Great Britain

Limits of Perception, 2002

Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain

Specifications

24min stereo color PAL

Produced together with

Voice: Melinda May; Camera: Peter Gstach ( Zone Vienna ); Editing: Marc Thoma; Sound Recording: Dietmar Schipek; Sound Editing: Otto Kränzler; 3-D Data Modeling and Animation: Constanze Ruhm; Data Handling Rendering: Kay Fricke, Christine Zartmann (ZKM, Karlsruhe ); Data Transfer: Creativ Video Vienna; Postproduction Facilities: haus O., Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; Title Quote: James Joyce.

Production

Constanze Ruhm

Sponsorship

Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; Entwistle Gallery, London; Kunstförderung des Bundes, Österreich

Edition

Sammlung des Niederösterreichischen Landesmuseums St. Pölten, Austria

Copyright

Constanze Ruhm

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