Chapters Trailer by Haris Epaminonda

Purple TV presents the trailer from Berlin-based artist Haris Epaminonda’s film Chapters (2013), a four-channel video installation. Chapters is a poetic series of meticulously staged scenes, with underlying narrative elements of love, longing, afterlife and ritual. One encounters a universe of melancholic beauty in which Epaminonda crafts timeless atmospheres, placing Cypriot landscapes as the protagonists. Many of the objects, sets and costumes have been designed and produced in Cyprus, others have been granted by the Cyprus Theatre Organization. The scenes duel between light and dark, day and night, interior and exterior, the near and the far. The actors, objects, animals and spaces shift back and forth between sculptural representations and their own symbolic and metaphorical meanings. There are various references to ancient myths and poetry, Renaissance painting and Byzantine iconography. The use of fixed camera is reminiscent of the tableaux-vivant from avant-garde cinema. A contemporary epic, Chapters is challenging the nature of classical film-making. Originally filmed in 16mm film, and later converted into digital, it consists of four asynchronous projections (each varying in length approximating about an hour long), totaling in a four-hour length film installation. The projections are playing simultaneously and on loop, with no beginning or end. There is no particular narrative structure or linearity, taking us on an associative journey that is constantly altered and recombined by the action of chance, time and the viewer’s gaze.The mesmerizing soundtrack is composed by British sound artists Kelly Jayne Jones and Pascal Nichols, also known as Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides. The artists employ flute, percussion and electronics alongside a vast cache of sonic artifacts to create a bold and evocative ancient/modern sound spectrum.

Epaminonda emerged on the international scene in 2007, representing Cyprus at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Educated at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art & Design, she has since gone to exhibit at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany.

An excerpt of a short single screen version of ‘Chapters’ will be screened today at the ICA. Book tickets here.

“Chapters” 2013, 16mm film transferred to digital, four-channel video installation, duration: approx. 4 hrs, sound by “Part Wild Horses Main On Both Sides” UK

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