Illusion Anti Illusion

Kemptown: Illusion Anti-illusion 2006

Format: SD Video, approx 4 minutes
Filmed on Location Brighton UK
Camera, Editing and Music: Sandra Lim
Produced by: Elizabeth Lim

Dorset Gardens in Kemptown: A back view of a tower block and terraced gardens below my window

From a third floor window looking out to the west, can be seen an office block and the workers sitting at their desks behind open blinds. On very bright and sunny days the windows are like mirrors, which reflect sky and clouds and landscape.  I imagine the office workers can see out into the derelict gardens below, just as I can with some degree of anonymity.  On gloomy overcast days, there is little privacy in looking out the window, and most curtains are drawn.  Looking to the East, a tower block of apartments looms in the distance.  Its façade is in constant repair, with scaffolding and workers zigzagging up and down its geometrical surface.  The noises of tapping hammers, drills and a mechanical lift, which crawls up and down the side of the apartments, are all carried over the landscape and in through open windows.  In the foreground, a strip of parking garage rooftops creates a landing strip for the resident seagulls – this location being only steps from the sea – they plod back and forth like the cardboard cutouts in a fairway shooting gallery.  On any given day it’s hard to find any of the gardens in use by people, some of which are overgrown and tangled, spilling over the confines of the walls.  In fact most of the human activity beyond my window, seems to be centered on building work, and the maintenance of the precarious state of things.  This derelict and uninhabited space is actually highly charged, in terms of its code of looking.  In this space, unsanctioned and hidden looks confront the human desire to engage in observing as a creative  act.

Festival Screenings:
Cinecity, The Brighton Film Festival 2006
Brighton Shorts Program
November 25th 2006
Brighton Fringe Basement
Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Versions: Single Chanel SD Video with sound, super 8 4:17 minutes

Conference and Seminar Presentations:

Sussex University
AVPhD (Audio Visual Practice Based PhD) Symposium
at The Centre for Material Digital Culture
July 4th 2007
Paper + Film Presentation: ‘Producing Audio-Visual Inscribed Field Notes in the Everyday Towards Creative Video Practice’
Single Chanel SD Video with sound, 4:17 minutes (Excerpt)
Key Words: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, Henri Lefebvre ‘The Everyday’

University of Brighton
Knowledge Through Practice Seminar Group
Screening and Talk: Interrogating the nature of practice based research
at the Centre For Research and Development (CRD)
Organized by Dr Christopher Pierce and Anna Dumitriu (IUR)
Brighton University, Grand Parade
13th October 2008, 5-7pm.

University of Brighton, PhD Research Student exhibition
10th Mar 2008 – 14th Mar 2008
University gallery and foyer, Grand Parade
Single Chanel, SD Video Installation, looped

This work by Sandra Lim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.