For my Peer Critique Session I had presented my short film “to Become, Shift, Transfer, Copy and Erase JANET LEIGH” as a spacial installation.

The film is a sequence of four different reconstructions of the shower murder scene in Hitchcock's acclaimed movie “Psycho”.

Each reconstruction is an exact replica of the original scene but every reconstruction uses different actors or even no actors at all. The four scenes are preceded by a scene that shows us from a distance the filmset used for the reconstructions. The film ends with the camera moving back to the studio (a factory hall) where the set is located. Except for the opening scene and the closing scene the movie is entirely in black and white. The whole film lasts 18 minutes. After twenty minutes the movie starts automatically again.

In the space I'd hung paper sheets with title, log-line, synopsis and credits. I hoped it would read as a title-card in a gallery, museum or other visual art context. However, some of the attendants thought it was too explanatory. I realised that log-lines and synopsises are used in TV guides or film-announcements to lure the viewer  to come and watch the movie. They are punchline-pitches.

But someone who views an installation in a gallery or museum is already in the space and doesn't need a punchline pitch anymore to be lured in. Audiences like to discover and look for their own interpretation of the work. And I actually think it is more interesting to discover how people interpret my work than to tell them how they should or how I read it. (“Death of the Author”-R.Barthes)

During the session we talked about nothing but the film, which I found remarkable. No-one mentioned the presentation part of the installation. The film was projected on a large freestanding wall that I built in the space and had a physical presence and relation to the large room it was in. The sound of the piece filled the entire space. No one wondered whether the film could have been shown on a TV-set with headphones or projected on a wall, for instance. I concluded that the presentation looked natural to the visitors.

Steven ten Thije mentioned Walter Benjamin and the concept of “seeing out of one's eye corner”. Apparently this idea of seeing things aside of the main subject was introduced to us when the photographic or cinematographic image was invented. Before this we always looked at the central subject of the image, for instance a commissioned portrait. That I found very interesting because I used the technique of repetition in the film to make people aware of things happening at the periphery of the image. From an extract of Deleuze's “Difference & Repetition” I concluded that copies always contain slight differences and changes. The more exact a copy, the more our eye will be pulled to exactly these small differences only.  So this technique of repeatedly reconstructing will make one actually look at the periphery of the image or things happening in the “corner of one's eye”. Eventually the narrative disappears and the main things one notices is all things beyond that narrative.

This did actually happen because I heard people say they weren't focusing on the narrative anymore but rather on the construction of the scene.

Interestingly some people thought that in a few of the reconstructions some shots were missing or that the last “empty” scene lasted longer than others. But this was not true. Apparently something happens to the viewer’s perception of the piece and of time, even though all the reconstructions are made the same, with the same soundtrack and the same amount of similar shots. I found it quite amazing that tiny differences could actually cause blind gaps in people's minds or stretch the perception of time.

Someone mentioned that we live in a repetition of images or that we relive images we have seen. This idea sounded familiar to me but I couldn't pin it down exactly. I was not quite sure whether this was a reference to the idea of “simulacra” (Beaudrillard). I remember Aaron mentioning he knew this movie-scene from the Simpsons and South-Park.

One last thing I noticed:

When I show  the film in a cinema it is “linear”, meaning the film has a beginning and an end.

As an installation however the film is looped “circular” and repeated more often. It has no clear beginning nor end anymore.

So in a cinema the last scene stays with the viewer most while in an installation it is more the whole amount of images together and the amount of time spent with the piece that stick with the viewer.

It was interesting to notice that in a cinematic experience viewers focus more on the shifting and deleting of actors. As an installation the focus seems to be more on the act of viewing, watching and perception itself.

Thanks for your help and attendance!

Jeroen Offerman

post notes:

a few more things came to my mind after I submitted this report:

The repetition of the scene made people de-empathise with the protagonist of the scene. I find it a pity that it is experienced like that since the piece becomes less emotional. But since I removed the actor/protagonist from the scene this is probably inevitable. By trying to make the construction of the scene visible and by making the viewer think of his/her relation with iconic imagery the work is getting related to “constructive cinema” like the works of Michael Snow.

Someone mentioned that actors can become props. Perhaps it's the other way around too; props (the set) becoming an actor.

Where as iconic images or film scenes are often glorified (like “Psycho” in the new movie “Hitchcock, a love-story” -Sacha Gervasi-) my film is demystifying it, I believe. But someone mentioned during the session that I am probably adding to the glorification of it as well. I am not sure. Could be both true.