A short documentary on the life and art of Steina and Woody Vasulka, produced in 1996. The Vasulkas speak candidly about their work and worldviews, and the piece features excerpts from their early works and a glimpse into their '90s output.
In public places like parks, squares and the cemeteries of Paris lie our fugitive fragments of memory. Our impulse to gaze with a sweeping action over these things a little invites us to play or guess at multiple histories. Time stops for a moment, creating a space in which to think, a place where we can each recreate our history.
Héloïse in her home waits for husband Abelard and accomplishes many household chores while humming love songs. Fragments of bodies and gestures like the fragmentation of certain women's lives; joy of young brides and self-forgetfulness.
Memory is an attempt to reconstruct the functioning of the memory process and, in particular, the phenomenon of triggering a memory from elements perceived in the outside world. The lens of the camera corresponds to the gaze of a single subject - the one who records and then remembers. This translates into an alternation of "real" sequences and "faked" souvenir sequences.
Dominique Belloir and Rainer Werbitz experimenting with the use of the video synthesizer which, by various processing, explores the fascination of an apparently harmless game, pinball-- The artificial quickly becomes pulsating, violent and sexualized in a frenzy.
