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Deus Ex Machina/Closet of Angels

1993; The MIT Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1575830

1530-9282

Deborah Whitman,

Cinema and Media Studies

I have made film sculptures since 1977 by looping Super-8 film on reels through a wooden structure, creating a mechanism [1]. The film projects onto screens within the structure. Running continuously, the film sculptures are like allegorical machines with whimsical features that involve the audience in poetic narratives. The film sculptures run continuously. It is as though the audience saw a play, a mythical play like a Greek play or a symbolic play like Shakespeare, and then it continued playing in a room somewhere and occasionally the audience would open the door to that room and would immediately recognize the play whether they chose to stay for part of it or not. The audience could also close the door and say, Oh yes, that's Hamlet or That's Antigone and the plays would just continue playing endlessly and they would know that about those rooms. Except in the film sculptures, the plots continue to change and the audience becomes characters within them, even if their stay is brief. In Deus ex Machina/Closet of Angels (1992) (Fig. 4), there is a white closet (3 x 6 ft) that is mechanized by a film loop that runs up from a film projector at the base to a reel on the side. There are two doors on the front of the closet and a rear screen projection. A large screen (4 x 6 ft) is hanging to the left of the closet. The film first projects onto a mirror placed 9 ft behind the closet, which then reflects the images back onto the screens. The mirror is cut into two facets, the angles of which are adjustable, so as to throw the images to the two separate screens. The film format is divided in half. The left half of the image projects onto the large screen. The right half projects into the closet and is chiefly of angels ascending and descending. The projector, the mirror and the film loop establish the Deus ex Machina. The film runs continuously but the actual length is 2 min, 35 sec. The Closet of Angels is at an angle to the hanging screen so that the two screens are viewed separately from the front and together from behind. From the front, where both screens are viewed separately, there is a sense of two locations. The steady ascending and descending of angels in the closet mimics the infinite expanse of the heavenly spheres. The images projected onto the large screen are of objects that contain infinity for a moment, such as ajar of air, a shadow in the comer, a door partly open. As infinity is represented by blue in both screens, from behind where the two screens are seen together, there is a sense of one continuous plane. The objects seem to be states of being which enclose eternity for awhile to then return as part of it-stones by a river, ajar of stones. The clockwork of the Deus ex Machina is disclosed, a conductor of the ebb and flow of infinity within and without the forms, ascending and descending the angels.