Nir Evron‘s film A Free Moment will be screened at the Loop art fair, Barcelona

31.05.12-02.06.12

Nir Evron, A Free Moment, 2011, still from 35mm BW film converted to HDCam

Nir Evron, A Free Moment, 2011, still from 35mm BW film converted to HDCam

‘A Free Moment’ continues Evron’s ongoing research into architecture as conductor of historical memory and a signifier of the possibility of a future, a possibility which is often revealed as a failure. This research is enriched in ‘A Free Moment’ with questions stemming from the history of structuralist-materialist cinema.

The piece was shot in a built structure located on a hill in north-east Jerusalem, known as ‘Tell el-Ful’. Construction work for King Hussein of Jordan’s Summer Palace started there in 1966 by the royal Jordanian family. The hill was a site of Jordanian-Israeli battles during the six-day war (1967) and the area was eventually occupied by Israeli forces. The building of the palace was never completed, and the concrete skeleton remains in Israeli territory until this day.

The video consists of one pre-programmed robotic shot, an unedited 4 minutes long camera movement inside the second floor of the structure. A 35mm film camera was mounted on a unique motion-control head and completed a choregraphy of 3 simultaneous camera movements: a ‘Dolly-Out’, a ‘Pan’ and a ‘Tilt-Up’.

“Hussein’s Summer Palace is a potentiality frozen in time. An unprecedented camera movement attempts to revive a forgotten possibility, to make a future with a camera.”

(Nir Evron)