Scene From A Trailer For An Existential Disaster Movie


Speakers placed outside a sealed hut play a soundtrack designed to create a state of ever-increasing tension. With the minor chord crescendo of the music, the sound of beating on a door can be heard. A mechanical device is attached to the outside door handle, moving in arcs.

The inside of the hut can be viewed via a protruding tube attached to the blacked out window, angling and positioning the viewers gaze towards the inside face of the door. As the soundtrack builds momentum and tension, a shadow of a hand suspended in mid-air hesitantly moves towards the moving door handle.

The hand wavers as it reaches the door, not quite grasping the handle, negating the final revelatory action as it retreats and the music subsides. The physical playing out of indecision is constantly repeated, the hand vacillating between two possible futile decisions in an in-escapable dialectic cycle of fear and attraction.


The shadow of the hand does not travel across the interior wall but appears to be suspended in mid air. This movement is choreographed to the ominous, portentous music, building the atmosphere of suspense yet never quite reaching the implied, impending climax. The two opposing characters are played out by two different sets of machines. The 'occupier ' (monitor, video player melotex screen) is inside the room, creating the spotlit hand-shadow.

Outside, the 'Interloper' (video player, amp, speakers, mechanical door handle device) is suggested by the door handle inside the hut moving up and down, and reinforced by an ensemble of sustained strings, and the sound of heavy knocking and kicking.

Outside the hut, the mechanics of the filmic moment are exposed to the viewer. Inside the narrative is played out within the four dimensional screen-stage of the room. The action of the occupant exists within the flat, screen form of the shadow, positioned within the real physical space. The movements of the shadow never quite escapes the confines of the notional screen, and fails to effect it's physical environment, but remains enervate, trapped within an ethereal digitality.