House

In recent years I have been working on a series of ‘empty’ films – reducing content so that focus might be thrown on forms, styles and qualities that are hard to perceive in content-driven work. In making House, I tried to achieve this by both following and subverting the logic of television. Much of the content of television is banal, but is presented in ways that aim to create a sense energy and excitement for the viewer. House follows this logic, reducing content to a series of banal shots of the interior of a house, presented in a rapid montage of whip pans. These two particular stylistic devices were the staple of title sequences for many years – sequences that were usually more interesting than the programmes they introduced. In House my aim was to draw on these outdated elements of televisual language create an audiovisual experience that is drained of ‘content’, with the result that that attention is directed towards the specific qualities of the video image. The footage was shot on two Sony AVC series black and white cameras from the 1970s, whose video tubes create particular visual effects – such as ghosting and tracing - that not only serve to foreground the image, but also increase the opacity time and space.