Video Installation
34′ loop
8 x 3 meter projection
2 projector, 3-channel video
Stereo sound
2000
Man to Man is based on the Vietnam War. As in White Flight, original black and white documentary material is combined with present-day footage, and represent personal and historical relationships as the juxtaposition of images unfold.
Here, the gaze moves away from the single event and focuses on those structures of a society that bring forth violence, and “those which constitute violence itself”, as stated by Stokely Carmichael in the film – one of the central figures in the Black Panther movement.
In this expanded documentary form, there is no clear beginning or end. Film sequences run parallel to each other in loops of images, merging to form non-linear narratives – a formal analogy to the non-chronological structure of memory and of its images and effects. As such, it is a study “between the lines,” a sounding out of perceptual structures and attitudes that usually remain unaddressed in grand historical narratives of global war and conflict, if only for brief moments.
Man to Man is the second part of a trilogy, see also: