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Limbo
Land --- Plan for a Spell
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'Plan
for a Spell' DVD, single screen projection and 5.1 surround sound Duration: infinite Commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella “Plan for a Spell” 2001 shows a series social spaces (some are real, some are possibilities) from the contemporary British landscape that in a certain configuration create the formula for a spell. The spell is to experience clarity. Many of these ingredients are folk events; (eg: Uppies and Downies, and Ottery St Mary Tar Barreling ) where communities assemble to create play within chaos. Other constituents of “Plan for a Spell” show other forms of engagsement: coincidences, movements (of a weaver’s hands, and the blades of wind turbines), foot and mouth pyres, journeys from within a computer game, and a demolition derby… All these spaces vacillate between disorder and order. Together, if played out in the right sequence they will configure the spell. The DVD is encoded to randomly assemble the sound, vision and subtitles, so every time it is played it will play differently, incessantly evolving the narrative. If left on infinitely it may never play all the possible configurations and may never trigger the spell…or it may release it in the first few minutes. It is random; It is impossible to predict what it will play next. A voice-over via subtitles witnesses the configurations unfolding,…sometimes apparently within the work itself. At others, apparently watching it, with the viewer .‘Plan for a Spell ‘ continues artist, Adam Chodzko’s fascination with how our imagination and beliefs operate socially. Using a DVD encoded to randomly sort through an index of contemporary 'folk' sites (some of them existing folk events, some of them proposals of sites for future folk events), image, sound and text combine in a multitude of permutations, searching for the right combination of sequences that will catalyse the release of a spell. The viewer may chance upon this spell immediately or it may be infinitely deferred. As the DVD unfolds, sequences of crowds at a fire festival might run into scenes of foot-and-mouth pyres, followed by a images of a weaving set to the sub-sonic sounds of wind turbines…or it might not. The power of the contemporary British landscape and the play of its communities is up for question here. Plan for a Spell is a proposal for a social space set in the immediate future that literally makes itself as you watch it. “It’s tempting to see Plan for a Spell as a kind of requiem for an unmediated culture, for experiences that haven’t been defined to death by their own representation.” Will Bradley “From the collisions of cars in the demolition derby footage, or the surging and scattering movements of the scrumming bodies it becomes clear that, as well as being documents, these images are also declarations of the work’s process. ……. they are the image and its analysis at the same time.” Chris Darke |
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