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THE SPECTRAL CHILDREN. Multiple screen video installation (2006)

FACELESS – THE SPECTRAL CHILDREN (UK/AT 2006, 15 min)
multiscreen video by Manu Luksch based on interventions in public and commercial surveilled spaces
surround Dolby surround 5.1 soundtrack by mukul
co-produced by Amour Fou and Ambient Information Systems
language: English

Video installation that uses CCTV images obtained under the UK Data Protection Act as 'legal readymades (objets trouvés)'. Four screens simultaneously show the story of the Spectral Children from the multi-angle view of the CCTV control room. The work is made under the rules of the 'Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers'.

Limited edition. contact  Gallery Barry Keldoulis (Sydney)


 

london, 2033

new towers mark the skyline
glass facades flashing code
to the central watchtower


a holographic web 
of risk and trade

woven through the data cloud
of radioactive smog

that chokes those overlooked
by the optical revolution
 

far below, in the nether city
in the pavlovian underbelly
familiar patterns repeat
ad infinitum


except... look: 
Ma Nu is moving home
in an anarchic break 
from the everyday drone  
 

back at work:  
the daily grind
at the Daily Myth
Ma Nu shapes worldviews
by shuffling old data 
into new news
 

unfamiliar surroundings beget
a sleepless night
full of lurking anxiety
half-remembered encounters
or half-forgotten myths?


in the morning: 
is Ma Nu out of sync?
time passes dizzyingly fast
but all are oblivious
light-headed
she stumbles to work
 

panic!
where everyone else has a gaping void
Ma Nu has 
- a face!


out, damned face!
but it does not wash off
so Ma Nu fashions a mask
to cover the abomination
and her retreat from the office 
 

to a secluded place:
maskless Ma Nu breathes easier
and puzzles over her face 
and her newly-paced timespace


at a loss, adrift, at wit's end:

alone she cannot proceed

she must seek out an oracle
 

the oracle speaks 
of time's acceleration
and its eternal return
that has eclipsed peoples' faces
and rendered humans uninhabitated
for years


"but hope lies in the spectral child
seek her out
(many hundreds you may find)
by following her heart
she slips through time
and through her dance 
of every face she reminds."