MARK THEMANN

Passed For Export, 2004

 

Location One, New York City

Video (NTSC 20 minutes) – two channels

 

Male voice with severe stutter attempts to read the Preamble to the The Constitution of the United States. Video footage is of Southern US states (desert landscapes) and Northern US States, (fertile landscapes). Footage on left is duplicate of  screen on  the right, with clour removed. The voice stumbles  and strains through a reading of this document.

 

The video footage of both landscapes across both screens are edited, according to cadence and rhythm of this voice, with its innumerable inflections and shifts in tenor. Projections are synched to the dynamics of this one voice.

 

As the stuttering reader articulates each word, or each sentence, the moving image flow speeds up or slow, changes colour, freezes or reverse. In unison with the rhythms of the enunciating voice, the video on every screen, at times shudders, phases, shifts colour (shift to sepia, or to B&W, and back).