Simon Faithfull

Simon Faithfull- Escape Vehicle no.6

Simon Faithfull- 30 km (2004)

These two short film by Simon Faithfull show the the footage of the camera, attached to a weather balloon and set free to the edge of the space. In 'Vehicle no.6', the camera shows the journey of the domestic chair, while the second film, '30 km' is 'objectless', but framed in this circular frame. Both of the films are becoming very strange at the moment when the camera is reaching the space edge, the image is not clear, the sound becomes broken, and in the rare moments of clearness of the picture the viewer can see the outlines of the earth and the darkness of the space. the mixture of these 'ingredients' create a truly surreal experience for the viewer, when it is so easy to imagine yourself sitting on that chair and flying off to the atmosphere. There is certainly something very strange about such a simple object, a chair, to be seen in such an unusual environment. It almost breaks all the odds: a chair, something so stable, something that was built to celebrate the gravity, something meant for relaxation,  being so distressed and brought 'out of a comfort zone' into the exploration of the new.

very inspiring.

Simon Faithfull's website

Limits. Short film

The aim was to create a film that would embody the dream experience. According to Gilles Fauconnier in his book ‘Mental Spaces: aspects of meaning construction in natural language’, mental space is a space of imagination, the imaginary space that the speaker refers to. So anything can be the mental space, if only the person can construct or recall it from the memory. And I have chosen the dream for my mental space at this stage. But as the dream experience is very personal, and true only for one person, I couldn’t avoid making a film very personal as well.

Reading Freud and his ‘Interpretations of dreams’, I found this idea: if a dream can be analyzed through recollection of the memories that have formed it, then it should be possible to form a dream through building the train of memories, that would have connection, and form an ‘artificial dream’.

I have used my personal recent memories to filter the ones, which would occur in my own dreams, and using them, I have recreated a dream that I could have had. Using the fear of height as the starting point, I have recalled places with the same feeling to it. I have looked at the fear of height not as a phobia, but as the strong restriction of the available ‘active space’, the space where it is possible to move. It could be argued that fear of heights is quite close to claustrophobia, if looking at it from this point of view. So this idea led me to the main theme for my film: exploration of the limits (both emotional, or attached to people, and physical).

Space of Infinity

Filming in four different locations I have tryed to bring them into one experince of an ‘endless tunnel’, whithout the exit. I have deliberately picked the tunnles with blank walls for the final edit, to keep the same theme throughout the journey. I have also excluded most of the scenes with people, and only kept them in one scene, where they are far away and appear as sillhouttes, rather than clear figures. I believe, that this has allowed me to keep the ‘dreaminess’ of the film better and to express that the shown experience is only possible and true for one person at the time.

This film has no start and no ending.

The text that is being said is made so, that it appears being on a loop, it does not have an intro, nor the final sentence. As i am investigating the mental space, which only exists in one’s head (in this case in the imagination of the maker), i have kept the theme of dream and uncertanty throughout the film.

Sigmund Freud 'Uncanny'-extractions and notes

image sourse


'...We can collect all those properties of persons, things, sensations, experiences and situations which arouses in us the feeling of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown nature of the uncanny from what they all have in common... The 'uncanny' is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar... The familiar can become uncanny and frightening.

...We tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.

...Intellectual uncertainty: so that that the uncanny would always be that in which one does not know where one is, as it were. The better orientated in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it.

...According to him [Schelling] everything is uncanny that ought to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to light.

...'doubts whether an apparently animate being as really alive; or or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact aminate' (Jentsch)

...We know from psychoanalytic experience... that fear of damaging or loosing one's eyes is a terrible fear of childhood... No bodily injury is so much dreaded by them [adults] as an injury to the eye.

...It may be true that the uncanny is nothing else than a hidden, familiar thing that has undergone repression and then emerged from it, and that everything that is uncanny fulfils this condition. But these factors do not solve the problem of the uncanny. For our proposition is clearly not convertible. Not everything that fulfils this condition-not everything that is connected with repressed desires and archaic forms of thought belonging to the past of the individual and of the race-is therefore uncanny.

...An uncanny experience occurs either when repressed infantile complexes have been revived by some impression, or when the primitive beliefs we have surmounted seem once more to be confirmed.'