Paul Pfeiffer: The Morning After the Deluge
11 November – 20 December 2003
In the middle, there’s the sun. Behind the sun, there’s the sky, a golden orange. Wisps of cloud are tinged brown. Sometimes there’s the flapping silhouette of a passing bird. And near the top, there’s some kind of black band that runs across the width of the projection. As it scrolls slowly, ever so slowly, downward, moving in front of the sun, reaching the very bottom of the image, then reappearing at the top, it ripples. It’s water.
It’s rather a neat trick. Two films of the
sky over Cape Cod – one of a sunrise, the other of a sunset – have been
combined. The midpoint of the video projection – when the ribbon of sea is
halfway down the screen, passing right through the middle of the blazing red
sun – is actually made up of an image of a half-risen sun, and upside-down,
that of a half-set sun. In one sense, then, The Morning After the Deluge
(2003) could be seen within the tradition of formalist experimentation in
film. Digital technology is used to create a seamless illusion, but one that
simultaneously alerts the viewer to the very mechanics of that illusion.
And, like the best tricks, it’s unsettling. The constant scrolling of the
black band of water, the passage of Earth’s horizon around the unmoving sun,
seems to confound human experience, while at the same time confirming what
we scientifically hold to be true. And though at first the image seems
almost serene, the perpetual repetition of day followed by day starts to
convey an awful, chilling sense of timelessness.
Pfeiffer is more typically known for his digital alterations of footage of
celebrities shown on tiny LCD screens, two of which are shown here. Live
Evil (2002) is a dancing Michael Jackson, his torso reflected on itself so
that he becomes some sinister Shiva figure. In Corner Piece (2002), a boxing
team pep-talk and towel-down become endless regressions of themselves,
instead of their star boxer. The theme is the malleable nature of identity
within the media and the narcissistic erasure of selfhood.
The title of the main work (a reference to
Turner's painting of 1843, Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning
After the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis) indicates a
continuation of these themes. In Pfeiffer’s version, there is no Moses, no
chronicler of history, no human perspective, only the perpetual blazing
daytime of the digital age.
Gabriel Coxhead