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Tattan's practice consists of assembled props, a fragmented weave of projected images and scripted voice-overs, referencing memory and the processes of her practice. Her work inquires into the discords of historiography and the disruptive temporal transitions that occur between its article and its rendition. When writing the scripts she place priority on creating quasi-fictional anecdotes, as her interest lies with the failed role of the historiographer, who laces historical accounts with personal fragment.
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The Steep Place of Strangers. Slide with sound
With recent work, such as Mr Rummel�s Impromtu Performance 2007 and The Steep Place of Strangers (An Garua gCeo) 2008, there is a sense of the lost romantic to them. The romantic, not as the pursuer of sexual conquest but more as the pursuer of those lost fleeting moments, of feelings of mystery, excitement and remoteness from everyday life. The tone and style to her writing is definite and unconditional in many ways, it is archaic to a point of almost being awkward. However, its conditions for functioning are left open for the spectator to navigate.
In Tattan's films and scripts, the objective reality of the setting is important, not as a romantic companion to emotion but as an immediate and real frame of reference. Location and place is now imperative, becoming the key that unlocks the codes, of not only the interpersonal relationships of the characters, but to the historical and political content that imbues each work.
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'The Steep Place of the Strangers' 2008 conducts itself in fiction; it is the site where we are prevented from assessing the lay of the land and all that it contains. It exists as the site of W. B. Yeats� 'Hanrahan�s Vision', where we encounter a procession of lovers lost in the mist. They did not walk side by side but in a single row, prevented from embracing each other due to the crimes of their past. Their heart ache, which has been forlorn for 700 years, brought to mind the old Irish simile, 'agus e chomh crionne leis an gceo', 'him as old or wise as the fog'. Perhaps to wander aimlessly for 700 years would qualify you as an expert in air and configurations of fog.
We learn half way into 'The Steep Place of the Strangers', that the female protagonist is a botanist who is completing her field study of the long scrub grass that inhabit the moist dwells of northern Europe. We also learn of her concern for her new college and confidante who has just returned from a period of study in Western Chile, which for eight months of the year is affected by Garua 'invisible' fog. A man whose life is blighted by the follies of an ontological and epistemological haze, who continuously blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality.
Mr Rummel's Impromtu Performance. 16mm film,sound
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