Michael John Whelan
Video Installation
Film
Photography
Objects
Paper & Sound
Info
News
Frontier
Now the shadows I measure
An echo and a shadow
Mercer
Baribal
The sun shone on the
nothing new

Reprieve
A Perfect Circle
Assembly
Kindred
Clearing
Since
The Memoirs of a Madman
And penance is the play
Cathedral
The Memoirs of a Madman
2007
hand marked 16mm film transferred to video, colour, silent
6:30 min
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This 16mm film work is made up of fragments of appropriated German educational films about volcanic activity from the 1960s. Once edited together into a new linear sequence, the entire length of film was inscribed with the text 'The Memoirs of a Madman' (1884) by Leo Tolstoy. The text is written longitudinally along the film. When projected, the effect is such that the short piece of writing becomes completely impossible to decipher, only visible as random and organic forms overlaid on the fragmented moving image.