Carousel

Carousel is the name I give to a 25 minute film I made in 2002.

The film simply shows, in a kind of impartial, objective, surveillance style (and in real time) the procedure involved in the closing down of a carousel ride for the night.

The beach location isolates the scene from other events, making it seem to take place at the edge or the end of the world (not just the end of the day.)

All the colourful and dynamic pleasure of the ride (decorated with orientalist Victoriana) is progressively reduced to a tent-like, still and almost monochrome object. But the circularity of both the object and the procedure relate to inexorable cycles of night and day that defy any eschatological reading.

Apart from its formal attributes there is something simply melancholic about the scene that made it popular. Perhaps because, once re-presented in another context this everyday event and familiar object offer some nevertheless elusive image of our complex relationship to the passages of time.

Carousel has been screened several times in London, at Jerwood space (in For The Sake Of The Image curated by Suki chan), Aubin Gallery (in Smoke On The Water curated by Richard Ducker,) at the Swedenborg Institue and at Yinke Shonibare’ space – as well as at a biennale in Spain.

In 2014 I used a very different, more complex and sensuous edit of Carousel as the basis for an event at Five Years, London

View Moving Image Clip of Carousel