Videoart at Midnight #42: Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon
Friday, Feb 22th, 2013, 24:00 | midnight
BABYLON, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, big cinema hall
(Eintritt frei | admission free)

Douglas Gordon FEATURE FILM, 1999
35mm film
We are very pleased to welcome Douglas Gordon as our guest and to show his work as this month’s Video Art at Midnight FEATURE FILM.

In 1999, four giants clashed with each other: There is Alfred Hitchcock’s film classic “Vertigo” from 1958 and its legendary composer Bernhard Herrmann. Hermann became world-famous through numerous films – not least through Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. There is James Conlon, one of today’s greatest conductors as leader of the Los Angeles Opera Company’s orchestra. And there is the young artist Douglas Gordon.

Gordon is the virtuoso who marvelously analyzes, disassembles, and reassembles. He separates and extracts Hermann’s music from Hitchcock’s storytelling and pictures in "Vertigo", and combines the suggestive music with the recordings of Colon’s directing of the orchestra of Paris Opera. Three cameras film the conductor – especially details like his eyes, face, and hands. Colon is Gordon's principal actor. The orchestra with its 100 musicians is not visible, only audible. It is playing the original score of “Vertigo” in its full length. The conductor becomes the medium of the music.

Today, 14 years later, the conductor’s gesture, mimicry, and body language combined with the composer’s music, evokes its own pictures. The remembrance of “Vertigo” – of romantic obsession, of Isolation and the power of the unknown – fades away.

The artist is present.