CONTEXT 1:
Where We’re Calling From: Relativity

For our MA Interim Show, I wish to make a new work with the Instagram project, but moving over from Psycho and use another classic film to express other dimensions of time. In the first work I use the scrolling of the account’s profile page, this time I am keen to explore the “Story” interface. I have been thinking about 12 Angry Men, the 1957 courtroom drama film by Sidney Lumet. While it is universally acclaimed for its quest on the reasonable doubt, I am more interested in its representation of time. There is a scene in which the jurors re-enact to test whether the witness could have walked to his front door and saw the suspect escaped in the time he specified. The re-enactment is presented as a one-take shot of walking sequence, after which the juror announces that it takes 41 seconds to complete. Using Enrico Terrone’s framework of the cinematic duration, the scene is easily recognised as “real time cinema”, as Terrone does cite 12 Angry Men as an example of real time films in his essay. What he does not point out is that the scene of re-enactment only lasts 30 seconds on screen, which makes the duration Ds different from Df (the concept is elaborated in the Critical Reflection). Again, I break down the sequence into individual frames and posted them on Instagram, this time using the Story interface. When looking at Stories, there is a tendency of users to tap rapidly and skip to the next one. I decide to make an installation that does not allow users to skip through the Stories, making each post (the individual frame of the sequence) to stay for five seconds, which is the platform’s native setting. To experience a film in this way, a 30-second walking sequence would take an hour to complete. I display a phone screen recording of the whole sequence on a large TV screen, while having another identical screen to be connected to a camcorder that points to the ground. Putting both screen side by side on the ground against the wall, viewers can look at their own feet in one screen, and in real time, and compare their walking postures with the very slow walking sequence on the other screen.

By juxtaposing both walking sequences, my original thought is to use walking gestures to compare time. The work did attract attention at the exhibition, and a number of visitors came forward to interact with the work. While some of them did compare their walking posture to that in the film, more of them did all sort of things in front of the camcorder, from making funny faces to dancing, seemingly to ignore what was happening on the other screen. I still embrace what they did even they deviate from my original intent. It makes me think of the human nature to react with our own images. Half of the installation acts as a mirror, that attract visitors to come close and interact almost instinctively. They become spectators of their own images, without thinking about the fact that it actually consists of a camcorder, which can record every act they did. It is in fact a form of surveillance, a topic that I am always interested in my practice and explored in the Unit 1 work. The self-presentation also echoes the spirit of social media, which is one of the dimensions I hope to address.

In the hindsight, for my original intent to work, I should not make the visit notice that they are being recorded, nor let them see their own images. I can still use a camcorder to look at the phone that show the Instagram Stories. The phone shall occupy half of the frame, leaving space to capture the visitors’ walking postures. I actually did envision this setting at one point during the process of developing this work. On the last day of the exhibition, I quietly put this setup beside my installation and let it sit for half an hour.