Clare Langan
Clare Langan’s three-screen film installation is a visually sumptuous meditation on the human place in the world. It centres on stunning footage of Skellig Michael soaring starkly from the sea, juxtaposed with views of Dubai, a city of skyscrapers that seems to float on a sea of clouds. And, finally, Montserrat offers views of a world engulfed by sand. A sense of precarious fragility comes through.
Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.
This poetic interpretation of the familiar is seen through the lens as a vast uncompromising force of nature taking it to a place in the viewer’s mind beyond reality. It is a film which explores time, highlighting mankind’s brief fragile existence in the face of the apparently limitless forces of nature.
