Research

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger is a British artist.  His work 'Angel' caught my eye quite a bit as it linked very well with my theme of reverse play and backmasking.  As a video, I found it very intriguing how he has managed to recite some verses from the bible but saying them backwards and then editing them and inverting them to make them sound as if he is saying it forwards.

Angel

Mark Wallinger has a film he made which has been reversed, where the actor is speaking in reverse however saying words that when reversed are understandable for us the viewers.  Here is the summary:

Angel is a seven and a half minute video.  The video is played continuously on a loop and can be displayed on a monitor or projected so that the image fills the gallery wall.  Each video explores the theme of religion and features Wallinger playing Blind Faith, his sightless alter ego. He is seen in a different situation in each one, singing or reciting a text drawn from classical or popular literature.

In Angel Wallinger wears dark glasses and taps the ground with a blind person's white stick. He is seen walking on the spot at the foot of a moving escalator in the Angel underground station, London. In this awkward position he delivers a monologue, repeatedly reciting the first five verses of St. John's Gospel from the King James version of the Bible:

The words are oddly indistinct and Wallinger's voice has a garbled quality that could be said to evoke the speech of the deaf. This is because the artist recorded himself saying the words backwards while attempting to maintain the original speech patterns and emphases of the correctly spoken piece.  Angel finishes as Wallinger stops walking and talking and, in a mock ascension, he rises slowly up the escalator, carried away to the triumphal sounds of Zadok the Priest.

In Angel Wallinger presents the spectator with a series of paradoxes: time and speech appear to run forwards while in fact playing backwards, going up is going down and moving is staying still. As a result viewers are unable to believe their eyes and the supposed truth of the documentary medium appears to be undermined. 

I found this video very inspiring and it has made me think of ideas of what to do as a final piece.  The idea of talking and moving is really interesting, I will be experimenting many ideas inspired from this clip.