The title of the first episode of the 2009 edition of the Tirana Biennale was The Symbolic Efficiency of the Frame. Helpfully, the curators of this first episode provided a definition:
A “frame” is something we use in order to define, discern or cut off in order to highlight…
Adrian Paçi’s film installation Per Speculum is so well-suited to the theme of this first episode of the biennale that one could be forgiven for thinking that it was created especially for it. As a matter of fact, Per Speculum was commissioned and created in 2006 and has since been exhibited widely. The video accompanying this text is from the 2009 Lyon Biennale.
Per Speculum investigates the significance of the frame/framing in film. To be more precise, this work problematizes the relationship between film and reality by demonstrating that what we see through the lens of a camera depends on the camera’s position in relation to that which it is filming. This is achieved in two ways.
During the first part of the film, there is the revelation that what initially appears to be an objective, solid reality, when the image of the children fills up the entire screen, is in fact nothing more than a reflection, something ephemeral and fragile that a little boy with a slingshot can shatter at any moment, as he indeed does.
In the second part of the film, this is achieved by exploiting the dynamic that exists between presence, absence and light in film in a way that is both very subtle and very powerful. During this second part, Paçi juxtaposes a number of close-ups of children seated on the branches of a tree holding what are presumably pieces of the mirror that was shattered in the first part of the film, with a long-shot of the tree. During the close-ups, when the camera should be able to reveal us the children, the reflected light actually swallows them up, rendering them invisible. As we move from close-up to long-shot, however, the effect of the reflected light is to make the children’s presence known, a presence that we would otherwise not know about since the camera is simply too far away from the children for us to be able to see them.
What has all this got to do with the frame? Simply put, Paçi’s work demonstrates that film, which for a long time was believed to be the medium best suited to documenting reality, operates primarily by what it withdraws from the visible, or, put in other words, by what it does not show. Paçi is hardly the first artist who has tackled this issue in his work. Harun Farocki’s Videograms of a Revolution comes to mind. What makes Paçi’s work so refreshing, however, is that he tackles this issue on a formal level. The mirror in Paçi’s work, which represents both a faithful image (the children are indeed there, in front of the mirror) and an illusory one (what we see on the screen is an image of an image), is a great metaphor for the screen itself and the (refelcted) light emanating from the sun, which hides the children when it should reveal them and reveals them when it should not be able to, is a metaphor for the light of the projector.
If you want to see a clip from Adrian Paçi's Per Speculum please follow this link.
Adrian Paçi has been shortlisted for the 4th Artes Mundi Prize. The work of Adrian Paçi and the other seven contenders for the prize is now on display at National Museum Cardiff. Do check it out if you can!
For more information about the Artes Mundi Prize please follow.
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