Malta Contemporary Sounds (Daria's Vision) (L-Ahhar Moll)
2-video projection installation
This work by Ruth Bianco focuses upon contemporary international tensions realised through a conceptual post-production of a segment from a 1970 cult film by Michelangelo Antonioni. It seeks to relate issues that were prevalent in the 60s counterculture setting of Zabriskie Point [the original title of Antonioni’s movie], noted for its erosional landscape located in Death Valley, National Park in the USA as seen through the New Wave cinematography of that era. That period exploded from global protests partly in response to the Vietnam War, and the subsequent student rebellion against conservative and over controlling governments. The video work is brought up to date with similar upheavals that have recently occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, rippling onto other places, with repercussions even in Malta.
Daria’s Vision is a reflective re-enactment of her rebellious vision against an unfair and capitalist society. Appropriating the iconic explosion scene featuring Daria Halprin and Pink Floyd’s soundtrack, the video bends time by warping the original sequence of the earlier movie. This play reengages ready footage to rearrange time factors transforming a pre-existing context and produce new narratives and meanings. The film protagonist, Daria, represents both herself transfixed in her visionary state, and the artist’s or spectator’s viewpoint when she turns her head back and dissolves into images of the future. The ending sunset refocuses upon Nature’s momentum set against a volatile political backdrop.
The music in the video work was composed by Mariella Cassar. The violoncello and violin interjections are merged in the original sound track; the latter being manipulated and worked out according to the tempo of the post-production art work. The music comprises techniques which when maneuvered into sound-wave segments generate sound effects which give yet another dimension to the presentation. The singer, Marisa Galea, who echoes Daria, the artist and the viewer, captures a reflective line, almost a lament, which evokes still another facet to the artistic/musical scenario.
This interdisciplinary project is part of Ruth Bianco’s post-doctoral creative and academic research whilst the musical intervention is part of Mariella Cassar’s ongoing doctoral studies in music composition.
Daria’s Vision is a conceptual détournement that plays upon the regurgitation of history and events, images and media. This manipulation of the iconic explosion scene from Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni) into a split-screen video disrupts the original sequence in order to add further comment and reposition the spectator’s position.
The rebellious youthful spirit of the 70s reflected in Daria is transported into the present through black/white journalistic insertions of today’s protesting youth in recent politics. These appropriated superimpositions of the present into the earlier film therefore become its “future”. In the first still, for instance, Daria echoes today’s young rebel through a dissolving superimposition of a recent protesting Arab female student. The juxtaposed obvious Hiroshima reference [Antonioni’s film also builds on documentary of the time] adds to the conceptual regurgitation of the world’s condition as a “collage on collage on collage”.
In the bottom still, I have juxtaposed the cliché ending [where the hero walks into the sunset] with a superimposition of the recent tsunami in Japan whereby Daria’s car appears to be slowly sinking into the water [not dissimilar to the way Virginia Woolf slowly sinks herself in the water in the film called The Hours].
14 minutes video loop
A multimedia video installation.
This work developed as a collaboration between contemporary Art and Music at the invitation of the Malta Association for Contemporary Music as part of a Contemporary Sounds project with an installation art component called 3 Artists – 3 Composers. Daria’s Vision, which formed part of this project, was launched at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta, with a live voice intervention performance as a one-off component presented on 10 July 2011, followed by a regular video/sound projection exhibition running until 23 July 2011.
A conceptual text-video accompanies Video 1 described above. Video 2 is a looped rolling text-video extracted from a small section of dialogue between Daria and Mark from the original film-script. It echoes a playful though poignant exchange conveying the youthful and futuristic desire for freedom.
Exhibition
- 10 July 2011: Performance launch at Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta.
Exhibition Photos
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