STATI D'ANIMO 2006-2011
This work continues to engage with the contemporary world of global networks and connectivity explored in my earlier works - Connected 2003 and the 2005 series of still images and video triptych also titled Stati d'Animo, that were shown at Stills Gallery, Sydney.
The images were captured at Charles de Gaulle, Darwin, Dubai, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Hong Kong, JFK, Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles, Pudong, Singapore, Sofia, Sydney and Vienna airports through 2004-05. They were shot on a Sony HDV camera. While Stati d'Animo contains footage of airports, and records the voices of people found there, it is not a work of investigative or ethnographic documentary. The owners of the voices on the soundtrack are, with one exception, not named, and do not appear in the visuals. Nothing specific is revealed. The aim is to achieve a sense of things rather than a direct account or story.
SYNOPSIS
In the elusive zone of international airports transient bodies dissolve in time and space. Anonymous figures rush past on their way to departure or arrival gates, to immigration, to baggage areas, lost in space and thought. The airwaves are dense with echoes of human drama.
Stati d'Animo references the trilogy of paintings (1911) by the Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni that addressed the mixture of dynamism, chaos, and anxiety of those who leave, those who stay behind and those who say farewell in the modern city of the early 20th century. Boccioni's title is conventionally translated as States of Mind, but in the original Italian the nuances of social climate, mood, are implied.
The international airport replaces Boccioni's railway station as the principal site of human movement. It is a zone of passage in which we suspend our usual lives, a place where we experience a heightened mix of emotions, and where we recall others in other places. It is the ever-elusive space between past and future - a black hole - where transient bodies dissolve in time and space.
There are five sequences. Each has a distinct mood that resonates within the broad themes of Arrival, Crossing, Waiting, Departure and Farewell. Airports and their environs are monitored in an unofficial surveillance operation. A sense of spaces is created that is layered with shadows, echoes and reflections. People inhabit this space provisionally, and always on the move. Time becomes duration.
People are lost in space, lost in their own thoughts. Communications between ground staff and flight crew, airport announcements, interweave with personal stories of loss and new beginnings, some freely chosen, some driven by necessity, to form "conversations" that populate the anonymous space of the airport. The airwaves are dense with the echoes of human drama.
CREDITS
written, directed, produced MERILYN FAIRSKYE
camera MERILYN FAIRSKYE
post vision + sound
GREG FERRIS
additional post sound and remix (2011) ROBERT HINDLEY
voice+guitar recording ROBERT HINDLEY
Voices: PAULA BOLLERS, ILZA BURCHETT, BERNARD DUBOIS, CHERRIE GIBSON, MATT JENSEN, VINCENT JOHNSON, SAM LAU , STEVEN LOJEWSKI, SAMMY MOHR, SUE PEDLEY, NOEL PETERS, JAIMIE REDMOND
shining silver magic written + performed by JOANNE WOOD>
additional music GREG FERRIS + MYLVIA HARDER
thanks to KARIN ALTMAN, PETER KNIGHT, DONNA MCSHERRY,
WWW.SLEEPINGINAIRPORTS.NET, OGNIAN PISHEV, AMELIA VENTURA
Produced with the assistance of Sydney College of the Arts,
University of Sydney
TECHNICAL
Stati d'Animo 2006-2011 was shot primarily on HDV with some SD footage. It was edited in Final Cut Pro and After Effects. It has been output to BluRay, HDCam, DVD/HD/Desktop/DigiBeta/Betacam SP formats. It is available with Stereo sound. Duration: 24:34.
Produced in Association with the Australian Film Commission