The remarkable absent

els van riel

November 22 – December 6 2003
10:00 - 18:00
Opening Friday 21 November 16:00

2003, 15 x 7h/u, Els Van Riel (B)
5 computers 5 projectors, 10 speakers, 1 mixing desk

'The Remarkable Absent’ ends up being a video result on a simple trip of 5 people spending 15 days travelling to Spain: 8 days on the road, 7 days staying in the country house of a friend.
5 little mini-DV camera's and a time schedule guides the behaviour of the 5 people.
Seven corresponding hours a day, the camera records about everything and anything.
The expected result will be a research on the fragile relativity of time, following a network of different, indifferent, parallel and crossing lines of action in a comparable space. Or five different views on one recognisable reality screened parallel at the same time.


'The Remarkable Absent’ ends up being a video result on a simple trip of 5 people spending 15 days travelling to Spain: 8 days on the road, 7 days staying in the country house of a friend.

5 little mini-DV camera's and a time schedule guides the behaviour of the 5 people.

Seven corresponding hours a day, the camera’s recorded about everything and anything.
We didn’t take any screenplay or preagreed story that should happen. The camera’s were there, functioning as a stopwatch-like timerecorder. Depending on who, when and where, the camera was used as an instrument to film or to being filmed with, to look, to search. Often, the camera was only left behind, recording total views as a surveillance camera, or surveying details.

The expected result will be a research on the fragile relativity of time, following a network of different, indifferent, parallel and crossing lines of action in a comparable space. Or five different views on one recognisable reality screened parallel at the same time.

At this moment I’m working on the preparation of an editing, which means that I’m watching, describing and archiving 525 hours of video images and sounds.
I want to end up woth 5 x 5 +1 different short films, collected on one DVD.

In the meantime it became obvious to me, that the position of de naked parallel time, recorded by the five different camera’s, on itself, contains a value, that I want to explore and discover in a 'work in progress' installation. A parallel screening has to expose this complex fragility of time, directed by coincidence in an undirected action of recording and being recorded, 7 hours a day, 15 days in a row.

Posted by laurence at November 21, 2003 04:00 PM