In one of his books, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman noted that the modern world is now suggesting to people a paradise on earth, rather than that fictional, which in bygone times was proclaimed to be achievable only in the afterlife. The diversity of human beings is the reason for the infinite varieties of perceptions, ideas, intrinsic measures of the quality of life, and the dissimilar kinds of a Garden of Earthly Delights. In order to pursue this value, people tend to build sophisticated houses, enjoy the tastiest food and consume the drink of gods – wine, they praise paintings and music, whilst idolising those who create it; it involves every single aspect of human life. Here, the most important thing becomes not the result, but a process.
Apparently, film is the only art form that can encapsulate this process, illuminate it and be involved again in the lives of others.
“Film is an excellent project around which we can build a discussion what kinds of images, what kind of liveliness, what kinds of sensualities we want in our lives. And of course, that is what art does, that is what art delivers to us: special moments of sensuality and experience, that, I think, you cannot otherwise have.” – Juliana Engberg
Bearing in mind the evolution of filmmaking, probably, the famous Thomas Edison or brothers Lumière could exemplify the beginning of it. But when we are considering its end, when the laws of the marketplace have inevitably decreed that digital media rules supreme, Tacita Dean could be announced as the icon of the disappearing indispensable medium – the real film.
There is no digital production in her works, all made by using the traditional celluloid film camera, techniques such as aperture gate masking, glass matte painting, hand-tinting, double-exposure. All things that make Dean’s work so unique, digital media is reckoning as a mistake:
“You do not know what you are going to get till you process it. And things go wrong, of course; you lose great things, but then you gain great things, because there is another thing, that is important – it is the mistake.” – Tacita Dean
Nevertheless, in this battlefield Dean, armoured with her honest and poetical works, is striking to prove this medium's importance and difference to digital, where the fissiparous aspect is a kind of image and texture which artists can achieve. It is, as Jonas Mekas epitomized, like in painting, whereby "the equivalent of high-definition maybe would be oil but some people like watercolors, so there is this immense choice that we have; the fact that now we have the high-definition does not mean it is all we should do."
Film, emphasizes artist, is a medium of time - time is built into it. And it is not only inbuilt literally. Filmmaking requires knowledge, patience and sincere dedication. Basically, the entire process from scratch could be baptized as a pure piece of art. The relationship between work and artist along the film creation, where are several stages of this magical transformation, imbue the work. As Dean says, “it is not only emulsion versus pixels, or light versus electronics but something deeper – something to do with poetry” and herein lies its difference to the digital medium.
Even if Dean says that she is not consciously interested in the passing of time, she is still coherently paying attention to the things that are in it. Thus, if one has built a temple for himself to make pleasurable everyday being and nothingness, Dean has built something unselfish, distilling the essence of momentary sensations, which by all means is a process which gives that quality of life to her and to others.
Short artist’s bio: - https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/bio/tacita_dean
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