Tower Block, 2006, black and white film, 18 min., subtitle animation
The last film so far, and I hope the most pregnant, in which a multi-layered sequence of texts is employed, is the film “Tower Block”. It is also a typical ABS video, though it differs from the preceding ones very fundamentally in the method in which the texts were acquired. The recording was conducted, that is, by means of bugging. The reason was an attempt to acquire authentic testimonies unmitigated by reason or speculation. For this purpose I had special bugging devices made, which were composed of a Dictaphone, earphones, acoustic cable, set of directional microphones and funnels. These devices enabled me to record the sound from individual apartments through the entrance doors. Equipped with this equipment, I conducted for one month a risky, adventurous exploration into the selected tower block to acquire the required recordings. The recordings for the most part took the form of dialogues and not the individual testimonies regarding subconscious thoughts as in the case of the preceding recordings. The phonetically transcribed subtitles also contain transcriptions of television and radio programmes, the ticking of clocks, dogs barking etc. During animation I allowed the subtitles to flow freely out of the format, which gives the image a specific dynamic in the form of a sort of rising “mental wind”, which thus releases from the anonymous box of the tower block a different, “mental dimension”.
