Life

The films show close ups of what he describes as ‘non-reversible state changes’: a match igniting and burning down, an aspirin dissolving in a glass, a balloon deflating. In each case the object has been given two dots and a line, the absolute minimum to evoke a face. The dots are not eyes, the line is not a mouth, yet the aspirin acquires a sinister personality, continuing to glare out from the glass as its eyes dissolve and enlarge into the eye-sockets of a skull. In the same way, the balloon’s slow deflation from plump jiggling certainty to flaccid impotence becomes full of pathos, particularly given the minimal soundtrack: apart from one balloon which bursts with a bang, the awful change is endured in silence. It is as though the line and dot face is a spell which acts on us even though we know it shouldn’t; this bleak, persuasive magic performed with minimal resources also occurs in the work of American poet Charles Simic, for example,

Austerities:

From the heel
Of a half loaf
Of black bread,
They made a child’s head.

Child, they said,
We’ve nothing for eyes,
Nothing to spare for ears
And nose.

Just a knife
To make a slit
Where your mouth
Ought to be.

You can grin,
You can eat,
Spit the crumbs
Into our faces.

[Lawrence Bradby, 2007]