Ma Tête

Distributed by PORTLAND GREEN™ and part of the Moving Image/Moving Bodies Screening Programme

Ma Tête
1998
Caitlin Hulscher
2’20” aspect ratio

The camera is focused on a woman’s head, somewhere under water. Her white face and black hair contrast with a background of phosphorescent blues and greens. The woman’s eyes are closed, the head moves erratically from left to right. However, this subdued and quiescent scene is gradually and subtly being disturbed. What we hear are not underwater sounds, but those of crickets in the night and a single bird beating time. At the same time, a voice-over is speaking three sentences in French, a monologue intérieur: ‘… so I moved on / the night continues / it is totally torn apart, my head’. The unrest swells as the head begins to move more violently and seems to be transcending its own boundaries. What we see here is both sleep and dream, rest and unrest. Hulscher’s work shows us quiescent images, withdrawn from time, reflecting another state of consciousness. A state in which a moment lasts an eternity, and an eternity lasts only a moment; in which all is clear and at the same time obscure, both far away and nearby.

Moving Images/Moving Bodies and Netherlands Media Art Institute
part of Moving Image/Moving Bodies Screening Programme

Rights held: programme@portlandgreen.com