Douglas Gordon

There is a screening of two of Douglas Gordon's films at the Warwick Arts Center. I heard about the film he did with Philippe Parreno, called Zidane and it sounded very interesting. I'm not a fan of football, but this sounded like and alternative football match, and something I could watch. It is a 90min film of a football game, but the only focus of the camera is on Zidane. Close-ups and extreme close-ups of him throughout the whole film. When we got to the screening space we were rather disappointed. The curators of the Mead Gallery chose to screen the film on about 20 TV's spread randomly around the space, and the sound of the film going in the background. From what I've been told about the film is the fact that the most interesting part about it is its rhythm, because in some parts Zidane just stands around and in some parts he is very active, so it sounds like a piece of film that should be watched in full, without interruption. So the way they chose to screen it completely disrupted this. Each TV was showing only clips of the film, interrupted and in a different order. If each TV had headphones and was showing the whole film we probably would have considered to stay, but given the set up we didn't stay. But the second film impressed us so much that it didn't matter. It took us maybe about 15min to realize what it was about (we could have read the flyer!!). In the room, there was a big screen which was screening Douglas Gordon's film called "Feature Film", which worked very much like the Zidane film. The subject was an orchestra concert, but the only focus of the film was the conductor. Close ups and extreme close-ups of him conducting; details of his eyes, mouth, hands. At the back of the room, behind the few seats set up in front of the screen, was a small TV showing the film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock on mute. After 15 min of looking from one screen to the other we realized that the orchestra in the first video was actually playing the soundtrack of Vertigo, and they were timed so the music from the orchestra coincided with the film. Now this was a very interesting because I haven't seen Vertigo, but Sam whom I went to watch it with has. So the experience we bot had of this installation was very different. He could recognize the music, and it reminded him of the film scenes and how they felt when he watched Vertigo. For me the primary focus was the video of the orchestra, and seeing this video first will change my experience of Vertigo when I watch it, as that will remind me of Gordon's film, whereas for Sam everything is the other way around. This only shows how important the viewer is when it comes to encoding and decoding a film, because it is very probable that every individual that watched a video has a completely different perception and experience of it, based on their own previous experiences. The installation worked very well as a structuralist piece I believe, because it deconstructed and re-constructed three different places and times. There was the present of the film Vertigo, the present of the film of the orchestra playing the vertigo soundtrack, and the present of the viewer who makes the links between these three 'presents' that inform, interact and influence each other. Seeing these two pieces made me realize firstly how important the space of the screening is for an installation, and second that when producing my own art films, I need to avoid trying so hard to get a certain message out, because it will never be decoded in the same way by the viewers. My experience of my own work will differ completely from the experience that the viewers will have.