V&A Museum at the Prague Quadrennial
Presented at Prague Quadrennial 2019 as part of the Emergence Exhibition at the Industrial Palace, Prague and representing the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Unframed invites you to consider the spaces you inhabit and the borders that define them.
To represent the spirit of the porous borders of the biggest and longest running international performance festival in the world - Edinburgh Festival - and the richness that arrives from combining manifold points of view, a film team captured spaces, performances and interviews from multiple perspectives, using varying lenses, frame rates and shot sizes.
This wealth of footage was then edited to create collages, a technique that subverts the frame of the screen and disrupts the idea of borders within the cinematic construct. The component images in each collage are dependent on their relationship and juxtaposition with one another, creating a network of borders, which are traversed by something – a person, a car, a hat – that travels across the screen. The brain then creates a new whole, visually permeating the borders of the collage and identifying a composite single image.
The film breaks out from its 2D form by spilling into the physical realm in the form of the set model. These interdependent elements magnify and illuminate the subject and the themes, visually echoing one another, with the cut card assembly aesthetic of the model corresponding to the collage effect in the film.
Similarly, the sound design defies the 2D frame. Individual elements emanate from separate speakers, so that the sonic perspective changes depending on
the physical orientation of the viewer. No single vantage point offers a full composite sound. Instead, viewers are encouraged to seek out multiple perspectives while viewing the film and looking at the set model to enhance the experience.
Acknowledgements:
The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum wishes to express its sincere thanks to the many institutions and individuals who have assisted with this project.
Director: Emily Harris
Senior Curator: Kate Bailey
Assistant Curator: Helen Gush
Sound Design: Gareth Fry
Set Design Based on the design for Feral by Tortoise in a Nutshell, Designer Amelia Bird
Cinematography: Yoni Bentovim, Nick Gordon Smith, Sam O’Mahony
