 Serif. Single-channel video, color and b/w, sound, 13 min. |
| SERIF / “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, the Colonel was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” So reads the opening line of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. It resonates with me as one of the most compelling opening lines of any novel. Within its precision of language and visceral intonations one can traverse an entire generation of time and reconcile the searing afternoon heat with the glacial purity of the frozen water, all in one sentence. There is a seduction through the incompatible details that challenges our need to somehow comprehend the meaning, the story. In much the same way, Serif is woven together from nearly ninety different film clips carefully chosen for their narrative value and evocative nature. Seemingly disconnected, the fragments create not a storyline, but an axis upon which events accumulate or, more accurately, instigate. The structure intentionally mirrors a zoetrope, flickering constantly and rhythmically, while dependent upon a kind of persistence of vision to form some sense of logic or larger narrative triggered by one’s own imagination or experience. As in Marquez’s opening line, the “blank,” undetermined space between the “now” and the “then” is the negotiable, introspective moment owned by the viewer. The sequence, interval, and duration of the fleeting images conspire to lure the mind into the complex and creative process of association and reflection. |