on est le Flâneur
(2010)
makers: Hannah Brasier, Megan Kiantos, Melissa Hellard, Michelle Williams and Niadin Harte.
As a teacher you eventually learn that you can say, and tell (they're the same thing) as much as you like but until students work it out in their own way, it doesn't stick. So it was good to open a project that not only had a credit sequence but also was brave and confident enough to name the work and provide a link, from right within the screen. I guess this is sort of needed if you're going to have a thoroughly French title and a theoretical term that has managed to pass into English.
So, what do we get? Five video thumbnails, now rendered small and in black and white, all silent. The frame rate has been dropped right down, partly so that they are very small so will load and play easily online, but also to pick up a staccato sort of feel. The black and white reflects the sort of visual tone of Melbourne, let's face it, it's a grey city, but it also means that when you choose to load a thumbnail and you get the colour, larger size, frame, data rate, and sound, there is enough difference between the video thumbs and the video to make choosing them meaningful. Sometimes when video thumbs are used little, if anything, is gained from actually clicking on them, aside from making a reading decision. But here the difference matters. In addition, the compression has been done properly for the project, so the larger videos also look good.
There is single line of text that accompanies each clip, each of which begins with "she". These all describe the city, poetically and in parts, presumably in a manner that is wanting to pick up the tenor of the flaneur. Casual, strolling sorts of observations. And "she" because it is a city that is being feminised - which is reinforced by not making factual but rather open, loose, fluid observations. The text is very large, making it a key visual element that gives it its own visual authority. It is not a sort of apologetic aside hidden away but wants to be as significant as the image. Similarly, the thumbnails are small enough to not crowd or drown the main video window. About the only thing I"d have tried to shift, though there isn't really room for it, is the title of the work, perhaps making it smaller as if the left edge of the title aligned with the right edge of the video then I think it would have really nailed it.
The work itself seems to consist of at least three clouds. I couldn't determine the connection between them, but after viewing many clips there seems to be a constellation around RMIT that involves being on the street, then another constellation that emphasies movement, and then a third around colour and pattern that has graffiti, maps, signage, public art. I'm not sure if you return to these once you've been through and out, and each is quite densely interconnected, but it does reward spending some time. Restarting the work I discover that the opening thumbnails provide connections to the constellations that I've recognised, perhaps there are others? Finally, there is a continuous ambient soundtrack that sits under all, city sounds, the sounds you'd here as you strolled the inner city here. This to some extent solves the production problem that can occur when clips have their own sound and they are all at different levels. This is good work given the constraints.