The City Breath Project 2009
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- Last Updated on Friday, 25 March 2011 13:39
CITY BREATH Festival of Video Poetry and Performance. 4 South African cities. 20 short experimental films. 4 minutes each. Screened in Cape Town, London, Berlin, Edinburgh, Grahamstown, Vancouver, Marseille, and Johannesburg.
Participants: Anni Snyman & Erica Lüttich
I lost a poem, Johannesburg. Artist / director: Erica Luttich. Poet / artist: Anni Snyman. 3 minutes, 2009.
This video poem laments the loss of slow significant contact that a vehicle bound city inhabitant experiences, but also exalts in the infinitely interesting stream of image, noise and thought that flows by. In the timeframe of the automobile, images, moments and themes repeat continually. This transforms the city into an experience of motion and rhythm, rather than locality.
City Poems 2009
Towards the end of 2008 Kai Lossgott invited me to take part in the City Breath project. Since I know nothing about video, I was really relieved when Erica Lüttich agreed to collaborate with me. (‘Collaborate’ is a very generous term for my level of participation – she really created the entire video, while I made tea at the editing suite Linda de Jager (kindly provided at rates artists can afford). Still, I am quite pleased with ‘our’ video poem. We are both keen photographers, and have been documenting our daily journeys around the city for several years. The process of expressing our experience of Johannesburg through the filter of windscreen, traffic and weather interspersed with the flow of conversation was great fun. We hope to extend this into a series that will include other city encounters such as London and Berlin.
An exploration of memory and motion. Both spatial orientation and the state of the body at the time of an experience influence focus, level of consciousness and recall. This video poem laments the loss of slow significant contact that a vehicle bound city inhabitant experiences, but also exalts in the infinitely interesting stream of image, noise and thought that flows by. In the timeframe of the motorcar, images, moments and themes repeat continually. This transforms the city into an experience of motion and rhythm, rather than locality.
poem
http://www.annisnyman.co.za/2010/content/artGallery/burnPoem.htm
video (original rendition)
http://www.annisnyman.co.za/2010/content/artGallery/burnVideo.htm
city breath blog
http://citybreathproject.blogspot.com/
city breath trailor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95T6zKttECU
