A love story that could not be more hypnotic and mysterious: Based on a deteriorating scene from James Young's silent film The Bells (1926) Morrison stages the encounter between a woman and a soldier in the forest to the composition of Michael Gordon’s piercingly atmospheric music in a completely new light. Seen through the roiling emulsion of the material with its sepia-toned swirls and deformations, the artist observes the events always from the inside. The seductively suggestive, abstract film paintings he produces out of the melted nitrate film slides correlate with Gordon’s high-pitched violine strains – sometimes pulling on another, sometimes pushing each other apart, similar to the couple in the film. The interaction between both the visual and musical forces creates a strangely meditative dance of beguilingly beautiful images on screen.
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Bill Morrison