Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Graham Kelly

Skull Island Part III

Vidéo | 4k | couleur | 34:46 | Royaume-Uni, Pays-Bas | 2020

Skull Island is an ongoing series of lectures, films and installations that examine a hypothetical image environment as an introspective space that reflects the sociopolitical contexts of its audience. Using the fictional island from King Kong as an analogy, cultural and technological developments define a relative position from which the viewer can view and question their surroundings. Part III is structured around two artefacts found in the visual effects archive of Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek Museum of Film and Television. A cast of the skull of the original armature for the stop-motion model of King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) and a silicone mask constructed for Kevin Bacon’s computer-generated invisible character in Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000) create a framework in which to discuss the surfaces and armatures or the skin and bones of moving images. The film examines the inherent hidden material and socio-political properties of moving images, the perpetuation of insidious ideological constructs in cinematic remakes or reboots, and traumas encapsulated in the sites and systems of moving image production.

Graham Kelly is a visual artist and filmmaker. His practice is situated in the interfaces between contemporary forms of images, physical bodies, and environments. By considering these interactions as engulfing and continuous states or effects, his work seeks to expose and dissect power structures that are cast, distorted or enforced within them. His works have been screened and exhibited in a number of international contexts that include: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kino der Kunst, EYE Filmmuseum, TENT, Transmission, NEST, Recontres Internationales, and LUX. He was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy in 2015/16 and at AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz in 2018.