Figure 3

This film shows a series of still images of a number of archaeological objects, filmed with slight camera movement and dissolves. Paul Sietsema’s use of the film medium derives from his profound interest in the experience produced by the perception of space and the objects in it, as a cultural and historically defined entity. His films are meticulous, delicately manufactured investigations, in which sculptural space blends with cinematic space. The viewer’s encounter with the object through this medium differs from other artistic media: Sietsema’s aim is to create a sort of dream in which the palpable and concrete dissolves into the intangible, in a space where the past is reconfigured into the present. At the same time, he is trying to do a comparative study of celluloid and post-Minimalist materials, using his readings on structuralist anthropology as the conceptual nexus. The relationship between the works and the dynamics of representation in modernity is crucial, because “many of the subjects I chose (for this project) - says the artist - are to structure a kind of loss caused by representation.”

Lola Hinojosa