Xerox Missive 1977 / 2011: investigation of alternative, intersecting views of reality from historical archives

Ms&Mr, “Xerox Missive 1977 / 2011”, multi-channel video installation (2011)

Technically not a film but a multi-channel video art installation using old archived video recordings among other media on exhibition at the New South Wales Art Gallery (December 2011 – February 2012), this homage by the Australian art duo Ms&Mr (Richard and Stephanie nova Milne) to the American science fiction writer Phillip K Dick and his fifth wife Tessa uses old film footage of the couple as a launch-pad into investigating alternate narratives of history in which paranoia, spiritual faith and identity dominate. This work is an immersive experience: it has to be seen in a dark environment where the viewer is surrounded by four preferably very large screens onto which are projected four looped videotapes of the couple and Tessa’s jewellery. As the tapes run, an ambient looped soundtrack, also created by Ms&Mr, consisting of a rhythmic drone over which hovers a spaced-out noise ambience suggestive of giant hovering machines in a huge vacuum, cold and creepy, runs continuously and concurrently with sound recordings of Dick and Tessa making a speech or talking generally.

The films are really something to see, meshing old film footage of Dick dating as far back as 1977 when he attended a science fiction convention at Metz, France, and gave a speech about his belief that the fictional worlds he wrote of in his novels and short stories existed for real and that what we take to be real and true might actually be false, with film footage of Tessa taken by Ms&Mr in California in 2011. In one film, Tessa intrudes on the science fiction convention and sits down with Dick; in another, more remarkable film loop, the two circle each other and the camera circles them as well. Dick’s face appears to dissolve into fragmented mini-images of himself in a silhouette of his head; the camera continues to revolve around him and the images revolve and shift as well. The couple appear to float in a bright orange space like astronauts in a strange alien psychedelic universe. The voice soundtrack does not synchronise with Dick and Tessa’s moving lips or facial expressions and this lack of concurrency adds to the disorienting nature of the entire work.

The work cuts against time and memory; old archival film footage, shown in continuous repetition, loses its outdated feel and seems recent in spite of having not been tampered with at all apart from having to repeat; and seeing Dick and Tessa as a 50-something woman together looks the most natural thing in the world.

The experience of “Xerox Missive 1977 / 2011” itself is oppressive and sinister: the floating voices, the cold music and the huge screens around a dark room combine into a prison of colour, images and sound. Memories that should be warm and friendly take on a malevolent tone and even the film of still life (Tessa’s jewellery) looks otherworldly and creepy. The room, separate from the rest of the gallery by walls. might be a portal between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the viewer confronts the real possibility that what s/he thinks is real isn’t real at all and that the world as imagined by Dick in his novels and short stories is the real world.

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