Cuts: Elements of Observation is a compilation of static shots - the Milky Way, a view of rough seas, a window, microscopic views of bacteria, a human brain, a human hand, the numbers one to one hundred written by hand on a piece of paper, a black line on a sheet of paper, and so on.

This work is a part of a kind of investigation into the materiality of film - the image, sound, editing, and soundtrack all appear at once, as if synthesised.

The first part of the video is characterised by the static shot of a street from an apartment window, with the sounds from inside the apartment as the background noise. The interior and exterior spaces become intermingled and associated. This dynamic is upturned by a subsequent reverse shot - a static shot of a bedroom seen from the window. The room is full of the noise that comes in from the street.

The second part of the film is a collection of sounds. The camera moves along the façade of a building and as it moves, the viewer becomes aware that the appearance of each new window corresponds with a sound. The sounds are those of curtains covering each window - in other words, sounds from the interior, behind the glass. As Roswitha Mueller [1] wrote, each window is a kind of speaker that broadcasts the private sphere into the public space.

Lou Svahn

[1] MUELLER Roswitha, VALIE EXPORT. Fragments of the Imagination, Bloomington Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1994.