Fuga

Eugenia Balcells
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In this piece the artist Eugenia Balcells presents an interesting reflection on the relationship between image, space and time. For this she uses a Bolex camera, a technical device which allows her to fastforward and rewind the film according to a precise sequence of space and time frames. The camera is placed in a fixed point in the middle of a space (an interior one), and is turned 360º at the same height from the floor in order for it to film the whole of the space, in 12 sections, recalling a clock's face.

On screen, the spectator is witness to various scenes belonging to the everyday routine of a home, ranging from a person reading, to a child playing with a ball. Nevertheless, any attempt to fit what is happening on screen into a narrative, to give it a linear meaning, is frustrated by the discontinuity of the images, which are linked together by what seems to be a chance rhythmic structure, such that no scene seems to be able to reach a conclusion, nor does the space manage to determine what is to come about. Both time and space acquire an ethereal character.

Although the characters appearing on screen are always in different spaces, as different film fragments overlap (up to 5 times), they end up coexisting in a similar image-space. However, in their activities, actions and lives, they never manage to interact with each other. The spatial isolation to which these characters are subjected is therefore reverted within the image space, so that they coexist with the spectral presences of the other inhabitants of the space.

This piece instances numerous meditations on the different possible ways of understanding the spatial and temporal dimensions, and about how the image, as a mediating agent, can blend into new categories of perception.

Technical datasheet

  • Title: Fuga
  • Direction: Eugenia Balcells
  • Production: Eugenia Balcells. 1979.
  • Team:

    Muntatge: Ernest Blasi
    Protagonistes: Eugenia Balcells, Eugeni Bonet, Carles Mor, Nati Ribas

  • Duration: 00:20:21
  • Original format: 16 mm
  • Formats: Betacam Digital - DVD
  • TV systems: PAL
  • License: Copyright