Sound Shape Shifter

The work of the director Robert Martin is a video installation documented on film. This unusual

combination plays with elements of perception, the way information is adopted and processed,

manipulated, remembered, with a critical focus on American society from the second half of the 20th

century to the present day. Composed out of historical, contemporary and autobiographical elements,

this work brings them into constellations through live editing on the screen, provoking and engaging

the viewer's attention, adopted ways of reasoning, norms and patterns, as well as the relationship to the

medium itself.

The structure of this project is complex and ambiguous: first of all its "physical" setting, as the author

decided to simulate a multiple screen in real space, where various elements of this collage are

simultaneously broadcast on four screens of different sizes. The faded American flag, which is

discreetly visible in the background, at the very beginning indicates the direction and orientation that

this provocative work will have. The resulting visual collage takes on the role of a narrator who

challenges and constantly surprises the viewer, not allowing him to get comfortable. The unpredictable

sequence of images and text, as well as the chosen footage, corresponds well with the disturbing theme

of this collage, which brings to light the anomalies of American society. On one hand, the decision

behind this technique is certainly to emphasize addressing to the viewer, who accepts the boundaries of

the film frame on an unconscious level as a window into another world, into a constructed

consciousness. By skillfully separating and limiting his project from this framework, the author

reminds us at the meta level that what we are watching is actually a video, fiction, projection on

screens, creating additional distance between us and what is being shown - thus training us to give up

the adopted way of watching and passive absorption of what we see. This is further suggested by using

the segments from the documentation of Kennedy's assassination and the Moon landing, the wellknown

terrains where various conspiracy theories arose, caused by various ambiguities, disagreements

and skepticism in the objectivity of the media. Combining the photo documentation of assassination

with snippets where it is written in the form of a script only further underscores this allusion.

Further on we are witnessing the simultaneous display of photos and footage of the space race,

Kennedy's fiery speech about the priority of the space program, detailed cockpit designs mirroring the

technological progress on one hand, and photographs of the Ku Klux Klan members and articles about

their racial murders on the other. Such contradictory and extremely contrasting constellations, where

the tides of society take completely different and contradictory directions, continue throughout this

video work, leaving the impression that the world is torn to pieces, that such extremely different and

ethically incompatible tendencies, views and actions cannot co-exist in one reality - and that the only

way to process them is to actually step out of the established framework. By projecting such scenes and

documentation on different screens, the author allows us to observe the interplay of these elements

from a time distance and in conditions where our ways of consuming the medium have to change and

adapt, and this way we can acquire critical position.

The inability to perceive a coherent reality woven from such information and events, but exclusively

through a broken perspective, is the author's comment on the anomalies that permeate society to its

very foundations. Through this specific form of critical remembrance, he recalls a number of other

events and phenomena that marked his youth and the world in which he grew up. Racial, gender, social

and political inequality are central motives, presented through photographs, footage, as well as through

comments and memories of the author himself: segregation, lynching, protests against the Vietnam war,

against sexism, racial inequalities, for the rights of the LGBT community… and also personal

experiences of the director which left a deep mark and created a critical point of view on the entire

structure of society, marked by polarities. This specific "amarcord" of the author is a total anti-utopia in

remembrance of youth and the events that marked it.

Unlike the presented images and their juxtaposition, where the comment is left to the viewer, the

occasional written messages, themselves often broken on the multiple screens, are direct and personal,

in the same context as the rest of the material, but with a clear perspective. Yet again, they are

presented in such a way, that only bringing them into connection visually make them suggestions and

appeals. This way the author addresses the way how our entire language functions, which, like the film

structure, represents a field of possibilities and different connotations once we step back from the

established frame. The emotional engagement and sphere of interest play also a significant role, being

susceptible to manipulation and tending to channel our way of interpretation in the desired and already

established direction.

Written by Head Programmer Andrija Jovanovic