Patterns

Patterns
Video, 3:30 minutes, 2001

Patterns is an investigation into the formalities and behaviours of a crowd in a situation of distress. First, a group of young individuals are depicted running away from an unknown atrocity. Later a smaller group of individuals is seen playing a ‘game’ with predetermined rules. The human reflexes are expressed in the way the individuals react as persons and as a group.
The unique location, an empty swimming pool, is an open and closed space at the same time. The first scene is an almost two-dimensional view of a group of people running on a visible floor grid and focuses the spectator’s attention to the traditional meaning of recurring forms and the creation of patterns. A second scene where the camera is located inside the empty pool creates a three dimensional moment that stresses the mental and sociological aspects of the situation.
In this video I directed a large group of moving actors and created a fictitious reality. In my mind I had a dual roll as a choreographer: first when shooting the footage while I directed the participates with few simple instructions keeping them aware to their private movement but oblivious to the whole picture and then again, the applied digital editing and image manipulation are tantamount to Choreography.