The documentary video for the installation version of the short film “1976: Search for Life” takes us to Mars. There – between huge boulders and in the red light of our sibling planet – we find a small television set. With headphones and in an intimate atmosphere, Tess Martin shares a very personal memory of an important historical event with us.
A train journey begins. On board is a reader whose thoughts begin to move. The letters change and flow from the pages of the book, carrying us into a world of memories and associations. We meet the letters again: swimming in a tea cup. Shot, they bleed to death on a sheet of paper and at last evaporate into the night sky.
The rising sun reveals a gruesome crime. In the orange-red dawn, between the dunes and the rippling sea, a young woman is strangled to death. The victim’s neck is marked by the deep imprints of her murderer’s hands. The mother’s moving dirge – based on a poem by Percy Shelley – accompanies us as her daughter Ginevra is laid out and resurrects.
A device that can create the illusion of movement can be built by coupling the speed of a rotating disc to the recording frame rate of a camera. This so-called phonotrope is a contemporary version of the phenakistiscope. In her how-to video, Tess Martin explains how this technique works and how it was used in her film “Orbit.”
A macabre Italian children’s song tells the story of Mario, a soldier who returns from war and must learn that his girlfriend has left him for another man. Mario decides to kill her. The film picks up on the ambivalent mood of the song and reinforces its vibration in the space between blithe children’s game and brutal murder.
As we watch individual details and their interplay as a whole, presented on rotating discs, we get a spark of insight into the interactions of flora and fauna on earth and the elemental power of our central star, the sun. Temporality, rhythm and the functioning of film are hinted at. A look at the origins of life and the moving image.
A kitchen table with several objects on it stands still. But time provides movement. A candle burns down rapidly, a photo draped on the table comes to life. It shows a young woman making a cup of tea. Old hands approach the table to touch the letter lying there. Life on the photo stands still.
Without a working memory, the former sailor Jimmie is unmoored in time. Fragments of his former life and his younger self appear like islands on the horizon, glide by, disappear in the depths. The older Jimmie does not recognise himself and is frightened by the “strangers.” He gets lost in space and sinks into the empty background.
A diver encounters an injured whale. He decides to help the animal and gets a friendly look of thanks. For the space of a few seconds, the border between the two species seems permeable. The whale disappears in the depths of the ocean and leaves the diver wondering whether this was all just a projection of human hopes.
A dull underwater world filled with eerie creatures floods a bright white hospital corridor. This scenario sets the stage for a tale about an abused woman. After the rape, she finds herself not only confronted with the standardised examinations, her boyfriend’s horror and the alienation from herself: She has also lost her voice.
