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Ghost Story
Video with sound, 16:00 duration, 2023
A crankie theatre is a simple device: two scrolls are mounted on dowels, in a box one face of which has been cut away; as one dowel is turned the material on the other scroll pays out; a story unfolds in our seeing.
In this crankie theatre the story is the substrate — we see no picture, but rather texture: swatches of dyed cloth (shirts? there are pockets) rudely sewn together to make a bolt the sections of which unfurl/refurl continuously in our sight.
What story is woven into the fabric of these shirts? Who wore them, washed them, sweated in them?
Behind the crankie theatre we see a person, the operator of the device: is he (are they a he?) the teller of this story? A treble voice begins to speak (whose voice?):
She was married, and she was married; I’m gonna tell you a ghost story.
Now there are other voices, treble and bass; they sing a clumsy tune. The story is stretched over this tune as over a rack:
There was a girl who was having a rough time, and walking around like a ghost in her lifetime, and walking around like a ghost in her lifetime …
As the voices speak — or sing, or tell — the crankie theatre transforms: a filmic/photographic narrative is now unfolding. A child in a snowsuit, apparently alone, trudges along the shoulder of a rural road. An expanse of water; black spruce in the foreground; scrobbly fields; then a person, fragmentary, in a mirror....
Who are these people? How are they connected?
Now we are in a suburban driveway; a(nother?) well-dressed person struggles with the keyfob to his (her? their?) Audi.... the image is breaking up.
And now a(nother?) person, in a studio, opening a box. (Wait: is this the box that will become the crankie theatre?)
The story gathers layers and momentum – there are cities (London, Cambridge, Toronto, Vancouver ...), a commute, some talk of ‘rocky mental health’, a person who misses their train because of ‘a suicide upon the tracks by King’s Cross station’.... And now a student learns chord structure in a place of tall trees and of waterfalls; a violinist flips the pages of Bach’s chaconne (we see ‘GOD’ pencilled in the score); a person picks out a piece on the piano; a violinist plays; we see shirts on hangers (wait: whose shirts? we recognize these fabrics) turning in the wind; and then another person folding shirts (the same shirts?) and packing them into a box (again, we recognize this box)....
In text, image, and music, a set of characters (I/you; he/she/they) haunts one another, as versions of each other past and future, even as these characters also accompany one another on the way.
She is him; we are them; you are me.
Words, images, & music by
THIRTYMINUTES
& Luke Hathaway
A crankie theatre is a simple device: two scrolls are mounted on dowels, in a box one face of which has been cut away; as one dowel is turned the material on the other scroll pays out; a story unfolds in our seeing.
In this crankie theatre the story is the substrate — we see no picture, but rather texture: swatches of dyed cloth (shirts? there are pockets) rudely sewn together to make a bolt the sections of which unfurl/refurl continuously in our sight.
What story is woven into the fabric of these shirts? Who wore them, washed them, sweated in them?
Behind the crankie theatre we see a person, the operator of the device: is he (are they a he?) the teller of this story? A treble voice begins to speak (whose voice?):
She was married, and she was married; I’m gonna tell you a ghost story.
Now there are other voices, treble and bass; they sing a clumsy tune. The story is stretched over this tune as over a rack:
There was a girl who was having a rough time, and walking around like a ghost in her lifetime, and walking around like a ghost in her lifetime …
As the voices speak — or sing, or tell — the crankie theatre transforms: a filmic/photographic narrative is now unfolding. A child in a snowsuit, apparently alone, trudges along the shoulder of a rural road. An expanse of water; black spruce in the foreground; scrobbly fields; then a person, fragmentary, in a mirror....
Who are these people? How are they connected?
Now we are in a suburban driveway; a(nother?) well-dressed person struggles with the keyfob to his (her? their?) Audi.... the image is breaking up.
And now a(nother?) person, in a studio, opening a box. (Wait: is this the box that will become the crankie theatre?)
The story gathers layers and momentum – there are cities (London, Cambridge, Toronto, Vancouver ...), a commute, some talk of ‘rocky mental health’, a person who misses their train because of ‘a suicide upon the tracks by King’s Cross station’.... And now a student learns chord structure in a place of tall trees and of waterfalls; a violinist flips the pages of Bach’s chaconne (we see ‘GOD’ pencilled in the score); a person picks out a piece on the piano; a violinist plays; we see shirts on hangers (wait: whose shirts? we recognize these fabrics) turning in the wind; and then another person folding shirts (the same shirts?) and packing them into a box (again, we recognize this box)....
In text, image, and music, a set of characters (I/you; he/she/they) haunts one another, as versions of each other past and future, even as these characters also accompany one another on the way.
She is him; we are them; you are me.
Words, images, & music by
THIRTYMINUTES
& Luke Hathaway
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