Turning Point    (2007)

Turning Point    (2007)

A performance for drivers on a bridge
Silent 80 x 35mm film carousel slide projection.
5 minutes

♦
Turning Point is told through 80 silent images projected from a 35mm carousel slide projector, some of which exist as intertitles.  It shows a man driving a car over the Øresund Bridge, between Malmö and Copenhagen. Heading towards the bridge he has felt exhausted but on the bridge he feels a clarity, excitement and a heightened perception along with a nagging sense of dread, of ‘floating effortlessly’. At the mid point of the bridge, half way between Sweden and Denmark the car runs out of petrol.  A state of suspension influences his actions in trying to resolve this problem, as though the mishap has caused him to enter a surreal dream reality.  He feels ‘as though he is wading through water’ as he gets out of his vehicle. With trucks racing past he removes a spare petrol can from the car’s boot. It is a kenyan masai milk gourd. He uses it to refuel the engine. Some of the fuel spills onto the road. He stoops to look at the puddle on the tarmac, and notices a pin. He picks the pin up and examines it and holds it out in front of him, then drops it (back onto the fuel puddle, at the halfway point on a bridge between two countries), listening for its sound. The final images show the pin falling through dark space receding from view. The last image has a burnt hole, from being stuck in the projector’s beam, another moment of stasis and suspension. And at this point the script, performance and its mediation in the gallery as a slide projection become synthesised, or solidified, as the slide turns from text into image into object, at rest.
Turning Point’s imagined status as art object is as a performance and its imagined primary audience is for a few drivers of vehicles on the Øresund Bridge, between Malmö and Copenhagen, who happened to be there at the exact time to witness passing glimpses of the actions taking place.  Its ‘secondary status’ would be as both script for these events (before it occurs) whilst simultaneously being documentation (after it happens).  A similar sense of folding occurs in the way this action became permissable; no vehicles are allowed to stop on the bridge unless, by accident, they break down.  The break down is the event; it allows the event – the performance – to take place.

The psychological and surreal impact of a highly defined small space, somewhere in the world, also appears in works such as cell-a (2002), Settlement (2004), Slip. A Flying Prison (2011), A Hostile Environment  (2019), Thru hole I blind/O/Thru hole oui see (2020). All play with the notion that that anchoring or rootedness in the particular area of landscape is also associated with migration, movement, transformation and displacement.  Exhaustion, suspension, sleep and dreams in relation to a hole puncturing 35mm film also appears in works such as Sleepers (2016).
♦

Turning Point’s intertitles:

…tired. He has
been driving for …
————————-
Finally, reaching
the bridge he
feels clearer…
————————-
…excited, beginning
to notice everything…
————————-
But also fearful
of something…
——————–
Feeling as though
he is floating,
effortlessly…
————————
But all of a sudden
the car rapidly
slows down.
————————
…pulling into the
roadside as it crawls
to a halt.
————————–
…running out of
fuel exactly in the
middle of the bridge.
—————————
His movements now
become strange
and slow…
——————————–
…as though wading
through water…
——————————–
…refuelling his car
from a gourd…
———————————
He notices something
small, shining on the
road near his feet…
——————————-
…and listens for
its drop.
—————————-

The exhibition at Signal Gallery, Malmö, also presented:  and inorout, a conversation with an opening door, together with the film piece Yet (2006).

From the Signal Gallery, press release:
All works depart from a kind of archaeological search where a retrieval/recycling of waste, excess, historical and scientific facts, tall stories, myths and conspiracy theories compose new narratives that operate between fact and fiction. The different parts in the exhibition at Signal form the ingredients for a spell with the potential to protect and heal the city. An important aspect of Adam Chodzko’s work is the inclusion of chance, coincidence and what presents itself during the working process in terms of information, encounters and found material involving misunderstandings, misreadings and collapses inadvertently appearing to provide the edges of parallel possibilities.