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These are my friendly hands
by Helen Dowling
2013, 6′ 00″
Original Format: HD
Presented at Lo Schermo dell’arte Film Festival 2014
Tropical foliage, rocky landscapes, wave formations, anthropomorphic hands, sign language, clapping, pointing, fingers obscuring the camera lens and bursts of light – all of these moments are edited together to bring the viewer into the rhythm of the video. Movement through the camera, being hit or buffeted about, emphasises the camera equipments’ physicality and animates the filming process within the finished product of the video. The sound is composed of clicks, whistles, whistling languages, claps and interference. Without verbal communication, written words or the human face, it is a work about language, otherness, anthropomorphism and the experience of moving image.
Helen Dowling (Gran Bretagna, 1982). Born in 1982 in the UK, she lives and works in The Netherlands having attended the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. She works mainly with recorded mediums of video, sound and photography using the acts of filming and editing to interrogate the experience of what it is to view and be viewed. Her works engage with formal aspects of language, experience and learning, mimesis and anthropomorphism. She received her BA at Goldsmiths College, London, 2004 and MA at Slade School of Fine Art, London, 2008. Recent exhibitions include Euritmie, The Castelvecchio Museum, Disabled by Normality, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, L’evento immobile, Casa Masaccio, Tuscany and Niet Normaal, Blue Coat Gallery, Liverpool. Her current research project, investigating the possibilities of rhythmic entrainment in the context of moving images, has been awarded funding by the Mondriaan Foundation.