Driving Movie speaks about the relation between
reality and spectacle (specifically cinema). The title refers to the movie
fragments from Part 1 as well as to the driving clips
from Part 2. Most significantly, it refers to the work’s
composition, as both Part 1 and Part 2 are
shown as projections in a room of which we can see only the ceiling, most likely
a cinema hall. The projections are off centred as though the viewer is looking
from the side of the cinema hall. The distanced position that the viewer is
placed, this second-hand viewing, comments on the effect spectacle has onto
reality and perception.
Part 1: Marion’s Rear Car Window uses
clips from Hitchcock's film “Phsycho” as runaway Marion Crane drives towards
Bates Motel. The original clips from Hitchcock's film show Marion at the centre
of the frame and of our interest; what happens outside the car is of secondary
importance to the story. On the contrary, in Part 1 we only
see the fragment of the road visible through the car’s rear window. Here,
fragmentation implies the subjective element (what one sees in a movie is a
fragment, a projection of what each viewer wants to see), the objective (what
one sees in a movie is framed by what the movie wants to communicate) and the
rational/irrational (the impact of a movie does not lie in the “centre” but in
the “background”, behind the obvious, in what the obvious really means and
which is subconsciously internalised in the viewer).
Part 2: Reality Upon Marion Reclaimed uses
clips from inside a car taken with a mobile camera. Its “amateuristic style”
alludes to reality, but how real is this reality? Part 2 inherits
an aura from spectacle and becomes cinematic as well. To the extent that
reality draws from spectacle, Marion (the spectacle) has reclaimed reality and
has transformed it. To the extent that reality is at the end of the day
something not fictional, reality has re-claimed reality from Marion, but this
recovery has brought another transformation: As the aura of spectacle slowly
fades away, the video becomes more and more aggressive in a desperate attempt
to stick to the spectacle.
