5/4
A few months back, we shot another video of Serena’s. I carry a baby and walk down some stairs.
From her website:
“5/4†uses an infinitely rising staircase to demarcate and map a physical continuum. rom a visual stance, each flight of stairs is as nondescript as the next. During the six-minute loop, the central character continuously walks upstairs to imply that the path is infinite. While her uninterrupted motion cuts through this spiraling physical construct, actions around her take place in loops with varying lengths. For example, a man waits next to his fiancée’s door every four flights of stairs on loop. Another woman taking her dog for a walk descends in a five-flight loop, thus intersecting with the man at different points of her descent during each loop. Each character occupies separate temporal continuums like different durations of melodic ostinatos in a musical composition. Their spatial occupation, in turn, become individualized and isolated, despite the sharing of the stairwell. This work visualizes the multi-layered quality of time as defined by actions in space using film and architecture as means of organization into a logical narrative.
We exist in separate layers of reality, prescribed by our own sense of space, time, and thus actions. Resonating the writing of Henri Lefevbre, to say that we perceive our coexistence because we occupy the same physical space is negligent of the social interactions that signify the intersection of our actions. The changing manners of interactions between the protagonist and the surrounding characters most demonstrate the multilayered quality of time and space theoretically discussed above. On a surface level, the loop structure form permutations of intersecting actions. Taking advantage of the spectator’s familiarity of film narrative tropes, these intersections generate escalating expectations, investment in characters, and build an ascending story arc that takes after traditional cinema. From a metaphysical angle, “5/4†questions the social nature of our lifestyles as dictated by routines – a built-in, programmed personal sense of time – our unique metronomes.
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