Blackout

A 10 minute single channel video work blending archive film and newly shot footage to explore the language of cinema through engagement with questions of collective memory, subjectivity and narrative structure. Blackout takes as its starting point a dialogue between two characters in a Hollywood film (The Swimmer, 1968). By blending archive film and newly shot video material through cinematic devices, Hollywood fiction and autobiographical fact are distilled into a poetic form as Maziere playfully tricks the viewer into connecting disparate images of varied historical and geographical contexts. In this way the work aims to present individual emotional experiences as conditioned and read through the mediated and collective world of cinema. It is the language of cinema that informs this current investigation, as part of an ongoing engagement with collective memory, subjectivity and narrative structure. Through the denuded narrative and deliberate absence of clear characterisation, Blackout examines how the viewer is compelled to fill the contextual vacuum and create a more intense personal, perceptual framework to experience the work. Blackout was constructed using only minutes of material culled from over 40 hours of newly shot footage and research into dozens of feature films from Hollywood film noir and European cinema. The theoretical background to this work is rooted in Maziere’s own theoretical writings and publishing at that period, notably the The Undercut Reader, Nina Danino/Michael Maziere (ed), Wallflower Press, London, 2002. Originally exhibited at Wigmore Fine Art, London (January 2001). Subsequently selected for two major international touring exhibitions: ‘Light Structures’ curated by Dryden Goodwyn launched at Tate Britain; ‘Desktop Icons’, curated by Chris Byrne went on to 22 international venues. Also exhibited at over 30 international festivals and venues including, New York, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Milano, Amsterdam, Vienna, Lima, Palermo, Athens and Basel. Subsequently the artist was selected to lead the International Residency at BANFF in Canada. Citations include Elwes (2005)