Anthony Shapland
Anthony Shapland, Spectate, 2003, video
Anthony Shapland shot Spectate in a cinema during a screening of Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s film After Life (Japan, 1998). In the film, set in a form of limbo, each new arrival must choose one memory from their life, which in turn is recreated as a film to accompany them to eternity. Shapland focuses on the audience rather than the film; a rotating camera pans at 1rpm across the audience, then pans below the screen level. Silent and stripped of all narrative, Spectate reveals only the film audience’s reactions as they respond to the story unfolding on screen. The secondary (gallery) audience of Spectate is denied the narrative of the film After Life. They are therefore situated in a different limbo: a twilight area between information sent and information received.
A second film, Rise, charts a streetlamp at dusk. The lamp warms up from an initial spark, moving through grey light into an orange glow, mimicking the light of sunrise. Combined with a soundtrack of the dawn chorus, this juxtaposition holds the viewer in a position between the onset of night and the beginning of day.
Anthony Shapland, Rise, 2003, video
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