Barefoot in the great expectations
installation view at Immigration office gallery
Barefoot in the Great Expectations is a sound installation, which consists of a sound piece played back over 4 speakers. Various sounds (sentences or samples from movies) are diffused in a room with a projection seen on one of the walls; however, the projection itself is blank. The audience will hear but never really see; the acoustic samples appear – something heard (not seen)from selected movies. Whisper-like the sounds traverse the room, underpinning any expectations rising from looking at a blank projection; expectations that are never met.
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The sound piece explores the duality of imagined or „fictional“ emotions we experience while watching movies and the empty room (the room “outside” the film) where this sound piece is being played. It is set in this space between the two states of „real“ and „fictional“ emotions.
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) Directed by John Cassavetes, film still
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Directed by Blake Edwards, film still
The listener hears a constant sound of an old film projector running and parts of jingles of famous film studious (WarnerBros, Columbia Pictures, DreamWorks) along wiht cut-ups of sentences, phrases, words or sounds from American movies. What is left after seeing all of these movies is a sense of longing for things we never had, but our characters did. The monologue of Minnie, Gena Rowlands’ character in Cassavetes’ film Minnie and Moskowitz underlines the piece as a hole and questions these expectations we have from romance and the image of a women and femininity.
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) Directed by John Cassavetes, film still