Writingandresearch
WRITING AND RESEARCH TEXT 1
CLAUDIO
ORIGINAL
WHAT
Dubai Dispositif is a 50-minute long film essay made from amateur travel footage uploaded on Youtube by ordinary people showing their experience of staying in Dubai. It is divided in seven sections - plus an intro and an outro - and can work both as a single screen film and a multi-channel installation - which I haven’t tested yet though. Every section has a title and is built around certain recurring elements of the original footage. The sections are organised in such an order that builds up a spatial experience throughout the city’s environments. The original footage is reframed by overlay black frames and it is accompanied by a text in the form of subtitles/captions. Dubai Dispositif deals mainly with notions of bodies, space (urban, architecture, environmental), (self-)representation, technology.
HOW
I binge-watched the footage and collected it - first by means of playlisting, then by offline downloading. In the editing software I broke the videos into pieces, hunting and gathering recurring fragments - always different, always identical, which I then re-arranged in compilations - the seven sections of the film. I turned all the footage in black and white, to allow a more abstract, detached viewing, as well as to emphasise its always-different-always-identical nature. I reframed the footage with overlay black frames, intended to re-orientate the viewer’s gaze towards certain features of the images used that I found significant. Every section has its own specific framing. All along the editing process I wrote a text, by additional fragments, that combines essayistic elements, quotes from readings, personal notes. The text is superimposed onto the images to create an additional layer of interpretation and meaning. Finally, I extracted the original sound from the footage and made a drone-like, mostly low-pitched soundscape that complements the images on screen.
WHY
The film speculatively considers Dubai as a hotspot of our times; as a place in which certain tendencies and processes of our times take extreme forms and become therefore paradoxically visible. Dubai as an optical prism through which reality is decomposed and made visible; as a divination crystal ball in which, through its present, a possible future can be foreseen. The main intention of the work is therefore to intercept images coming from a radically different place, to penetrate into them deeply and dissect them, to then recompose them trying to bring to sight and understand how that “other”, faraway place is closely related to “our” present and near future. To generate speculative fiction from fragments of reality, in an exercise of alienation and projection.
EDIT 1
WHAT
Dubai Dispositif is a 50-minute long film essay made from amateur travel footage uploaded on Youtube by ordinary people showing their experience of staying in Dubai. It is divided in seven sections - plus an intro and an outro - and can work both as a single screen film and a multi-channel installation - which I haven’t tested yet though. Every section has a title and is built around certain recurring elements of the original footage. The sections are organised in such an order that builds up a spatial experience throughout the city’s environments. The original footage is reframed by overlay black frames and it is accompanied by a text in the form of subtitles/captions. Dubai Dispositif revolves around notions of bodies, space (urban, architecture, environmental), (self-)representation, technology, and the intertwined relations between them.
HOW
I binge-watched the footage and collected it - first by making online playlists, then by downloading it on my computer. In the editing software I broke the videos into pieces, hunting and gathering recurring fragments - always different, yet always identical, which I then re-arranged in compilations, that constitute the seven sections of the film. I turned all the footage in black and white to allow a more abstract, detached viewing, as well as to emphasise its always-different-always-identical nature. I reframed the footage with overlay black frames, intended to re-orientate the viewer’s gaze towards certain features of the images used that I found significant. Every section has its own specific framing form. All along the editing process I wrote a text by additional fragments, that combines essayistic elements, quotes from readings, personal notes. The text is superimposed onto the images to create an additional layer of interpretation and meaning. Finally, I extracted the original sound from the footage and made a drone-like, mostly low-pitched soundscape that complements the images on screen.
WHY
The film speculatively considers Dubai as a hotspot of our times, in which certain tendencies and processes of our times take extreme forms and become therefore paradoxically visible. Figuratively speaking, it regards Dubai as an optical prism through which reality is decomposed and made visible; or as a divination crystal ball in which, by observing its present, a possible future can be foreseen. The main intention of the work is therefore to intercept images coming from a radically different place, to penetrate into them deeply and to dissect them, and then recompose them trying to bring to sight and understand how that “other”, far-away place is closely related to “our” present and near future. To generate speculative fiction from fragments of reality, moving on the edge between alienation and projection. I did not want my film to refer directly to Dubai. The word Dubai is in the title, but in the film it is never mentioned, and Dubai’s most renowned symbols are not shown. In doing so I intended to create a certain sense of ambiguity: I admittedly use images exclusively coming from Dubai, but on the other hand I do not show anything of what Dubai actually is in collective imagination and its expected representation, focusing instead on rather anonymous, generic moments, settings, actions that might possibly belong to anywhere.