Layered spaces, layered meanings

The "Headmap Manifesto" proposes a new sense of space, a space of layered meanings - one in which, through the assistance of digital technologies, we can work to create our on "Temporary Autonomous Zones," areas freed from conventional power structures, ideologies and meanings. Technological measures all us to "respond" to these offical meanings with layered, alternative texts - a sort of (irreverent, oppositional) gloss on the world itself. In short, "location-aware devices" can serve to transform any place into one of Focault's heterotopias - spaces that re-define the ways we think about our place in society on a daily basis, and how that society is constructed.

Atom Egoyan, on Janet Cardiff's Whispering Room: "I was completely overwhelmed by the collision of technological artifacts — speakers, projectors, lights, wires — and narrative abstraction. I found myself drifting through the emotional residue of a personal trauma that was both immediate and distant, visceral yet disembodied. Whispering Room was an experience of installation art as a forum for dramatic storytelling. It made me feel inspired, and at the same time frustrated by the constrictions of traditional film practice... [her] characters occupy our physical space. The degree of interaction is profoundly respectful, yet extremely invasive."

Egoyan, in his conversation with Cardiff, sees this same idea (layering space with alternative meaning, through media) moving in a narrative direction in Cardiff's work. As she says, "the audience can’t just forget about their bodies for the duration of their involvement like we do in a film" - her work (as well as almost all experimental and installation work) does not allow the spectator to remain passive, instead inciting and active, questioning spectatorial mode. The spectator, in other words, moves through the film - not just passively sitting in front of it; this provokes a radical re-orientation of the spectator to the image, prompting these alternative meanings.

In this sense, Cardiff effectively combines cinematic (narrative) and installation (experimental) ideas in her work, with installations that can erase the boundary between the viewers and the film itself. In developing our own public installation and "relational" art projects - especially in the larger context of the "film school" environment - we would do well to consider this as a potential goal for our work.