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C102
review
Dublin:
Darklight Film Festival
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Darklight Film
Festival, interior views; photo Paul O'Connor;
courtesy the Digital Hub
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The defining aspect of this year's
Darklight Film Festival was the space itself. A
disused warehouse on Thomas Street in Dublin 8 housed
all the elements of the two-day festival - cinema, exhibition,
interactive cinema, and café. For many it signalled the
first signs of life in the Liberties/Coombe urban-regeneration
project 'The Digital Hub'.
Mark Cullen of Pallas Studios
has been curating the exhibition component of the festival,
Straylight, for years now. This year his challenge
was to fill the expanse of space allocated to him. Apart
from the use of one mammoth video projection, Eamon O'Kane's
HOG (Hungry Obnoxious Guy), Cullen drew the audience
into and around the essentially black and silent space
through his employment of TV monitors placed at ground
level. Particularly effective were the two triptychs by
Ben Pruskin, each using three TV monitors. The central
monitor displayed single words flashing up, in black type
on a white background, sandwiched between monitors flashing
full screens of bold solid colour. The disjointed text
was altering at an even pace, which allowed the audience
to read it and attempt to anticipate the next word, thereby
engaging in a search for narrative or logic.
The considered use of monochrome
sketch-like animation in Eline McGeorge's three works
about tattoos talked about life drawing, drawing of and
on the body. These works were presented on three separate
monitors, allowing the viewer to move from one to the
other. In the far corner of the space, Yvonne McGuinness'
Untitled video piece acted like a window, bringing
the natural world into the space with a single, seemingly
unedited camera shot of sky through grass, as if the camera
had been discarded on the ground. The placement of the
monitor mimicked the location of the camera.
As if walking through a darkened
space lit only by televisions wasn't disconcerting in
itself, Niamh McCann's Dialogue shot at members
of the audience. A sensor-based sound installation, Dialogue
was triggered by people passing through the space, resulting
in dual response. Firstly you heard the sound of the cocking
of a gun and then a single resounding gunshot. The speakers
were spread through the exhibition space and the sensors
adapted and altered their emissions in response to the
audience numbers and movement. Apart from this intrusion
the exhibition area was in silence, bar an undercurrent
of noise coming from the various interactive films, and
so Dialogue demonstrated the obscure acoustics
of the shop-floor area.
Possibly for this reason Sarah
Carne's video piece High Noon was screened in the
cinema. A reworking of the 1952 Western of the same name,
the film initially strikes you as a vox pop with random
members of the public responding to unheard questions
from an off-camera interviewer. That is until the narrative
develops and you begin to identify the disparate individuals
as characters within the plot.
Although this amazing warehouse
space is due for demolition and redevelopment, the Digital
Hub shortly opens its new project offices on Thomas Street;
this will house an exhibition space curated by Darklight
Director Nicky Gogan. For further details keep an eye
on thedigitalhub.com.
Leah Hilliard is Co-ordinator
of the MA in Virtual Realities, National College of Art
and Design, Dublin.
Darklight 4 Digital Film Festival,
Dublin, 20 - 22 September, 2002
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