[-empyre-] Response to Artwork #2 - Bill Santen "Dark Green"

[Maia Conran]

I missed the bit where the decision to move to the country was taken. Shame, because I enjoyed the transition from flat to the city and especially enjoyed the time in the flat.

I used to teach a seminar on Murnau’s classic Sunrise -  A Song of Two Humans, it won’t leave me alone as I think about this woman’s return to nature. Somehow, it’s a very city thing to do to move into nature starting with an outfit design. Brilliantly City.    


This woman blows Murnau’s typically patriarchal approach out of the water. It’s still a love story but for a planet maybe or a cause, the country still wins, the city once she joins it is dangerous and complex and yes, she starts with an outfit.


It seems an appropriate foil to a comparison with the patriarchal history of film that she worries that the filmmaker might feel taken advantage of.


I like the pace, the evident and slow process of filming, the time as she lives though a cold winter in her flat, and the punchy speeches.   


There’s the fabulous scene in Sunrise where during a country tryst, the city appears in sky surrounded by the mists of the marshy country. I imagine similar mist around thought bubbles appearing above the head of our protagonist. What would they contain?


 …Maybe it’s appropriate that it’s a film without spoken dialogue which I’m most reminded of in a discussion around voice.  


Maia Conran
www.maiaconran.com



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