Atopia; Nude with Coverlet
1994 digital edit 2021
Super-8mm film
transferred to single channel video
stereo sound
Performance: 1 hour
Film duration:
3’56”
Location: 145 Bermondsey Street, London
Atopia is a moving image work I made from a performance to Super-8mm film. Dousing my hair in the filthy puddles of a vacant warehouse building in the Bermondsey district of South London, I flay droplets onto the wall behind me creating a transient trace of my presence. As if possessed, clutching a sheet around me, this strange repeated action finds its place in a dream-like atopia. In the digital edit I layer the black and white films with a sound track made from field recordings to heighten the disquiet.
flaying water from its stagnation
onto the palimpsest plastered walls
an atopia,
where history silently watches
the event without trace