Wildness of Waves
An audio-visual installation by Helena Wittmann and Nika Son, based on the interaction of the shape and the sound from waves. The delicate image-installation arouses an awe of audiovisual senses to the audience. The shape of waves, the pitch of sound, and the innumerably changing waves made by screens of two different sizes, create the message of formation, evolution and extinction in the audio-visual, synesthetic sense.
Helena Wittmann
Nika Son
Also Directed by Helena Wittmann
For the 30th anniversaire of FIDMarseille about thirty directors have done us the honor of offering us some very beautiful short films.
Two women spend a weekend in the North Sea. One of them will soon return to her family in Argentina, whereas the other one will try to come a step closer to the ocean. She will cross the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing vessel. Time leaves the beaten track and the swell lulls to deep sleep. The sea takes over the narration. When the other one reappears, the wind is still in her hair while the ground beneath her feet is solid. She returns and the other one could ask: “Have you changed?”
This precisely calibrated domestic diorama alights upon the imagined futures of a group of anonymous young adults. In Helena Wittmann’s warmly rendered feat of formalist filmmaking, questions of time and the realities of space convene in languid interior pans, incremental shifts in light, and the private reflections of her subjects.
The film is a form-concious study of a city as well as of a site specific artwork by Anthony McCall. In it’s own way the film enables to re-experience this city again and again. On the other hand the film is a documentation of the artwork; of its conditions and its becoming.
Ida lives with a crew of five on a sailing yacht. During a shore leave in Marseille, the French Foreign Legion attracts Ida’s attention and she sets herself a new goal. Via Corsica, where the largest regiment of the Legion is stationed, the route leads to the Algerian town of Sidi-Bel-Abbes, which served as the Legion’s headquarter until the country gained independence in 1962. On their journey, Ida and her crew do not only breakthrough geographical borders. The past is reflected in the present, different languages seek their common ground, bacteria and fungi penetrate the film material and social hierarchies are reshaped. With every day of the journey, the different layers of narration become increasingly interwoven. The film traces connections and conditions that describe our present and therefore takes an example from the sea. As the origin of all life, the sea contains all information about it, but in the constant transition from one state to the next it can never be determined.
In addition to demonstrating the unexpected complexities of individual life paths, THE WILD establishes the possibility of “cinematic space” becoming a type of “third space”. Two seemingly contrasting spaces merge to construct a new space. The first space is the living room of a retired couple. The second space is embodied in Super 8 recordings filmed by the old man during his numerous trips to Africa and Asia during the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The pictures show exotic animals which are projected directly onto the walls and furniture of the house. The assembly of these differing spaces does not create a more succinct boundary between them, but rather assists in the mingling of the two spaces. In this fleeting moment of third space, as it is limited by time, a new cinematic reality is formed.
The image of a room, its appearance changing with the shades of light. A window front, seen through the window. Changing flower arrangements on a side table. Sounds, entering the room from outside the frame. A construction site hints at changes in the exterior. Rehearsals. Are the sound waves of the piano reaching us from downstairs or from next door? In 21.3°C Helena Wittmann reduces the filmic elements to the essentials: light, shadow, sound, direction. Out of this minimum, stories emerge that linger, atmospheres that resonate. Little by little the viewer is thrown back upon herself/himself. Through the facing window front someone seems to look back at us. Only the temperature remains the same.
Quixadá, Brazil. The sun goes down and the darkness reveals its fine layers of light on the last mountain to fall into darkness. The light continues inside it. Darkness is not only the absence of light in vision. It is clearly audible.
Over and over again, structures of larger contexts can be retrieved in details. They mirror, they contradict, they caricature each other. And again, all human thinking seems to be an enormous utopia within the framework we can hardly adjust. Our physical space is limited, but therein, mental constructions come to improbable proportions. The film connects fragments of memories, thoughts and observations, finding recurrent themes in different graduation. Therefore these fragments become something different, they form their own.