THE DESERT PEOPLE
USA, 1974, sound, colour, 48 mins, 16mm
David Lamelas is best known as one
of the pioneers of the Conceptual Art
practice that emerged in the 1960s and
1970s. Over the last thirty years, he has
produced an extraordinary body of films
and videos which consistently challenge
our conventional understanding of how
meaning is made and information is
imparted. In this programme of some of his
early films, Lamelas experiments with both
the elliptical constructs of fiction which
frame and contain meaning, and the vérité
qualities of durational documentation and
straight to camera testimony.
Born in Argentina, Lamelas was originally
a sculptor, but came to prominence
when he represented his country at the
Venice Biennale with a piece called Office
of Information about the Vietnam war on
Three Levels: The Visual Image,Text and
Audio. It was here that he met Antwerp-
based gallerists from Wide White Space
and Marcel Broodthaers, and the contacts
he made helped to precipitate his later
move to Europe. After Venice he moved to
London, where he studied on a scholarship
at St Martins School of Art which was still
in the grip of monolithic abstraction under
the direction of Anthony Caro. But it was
during his time in England, whilst using
photographs and text as material, that
Lamelas began working in film. Through
a desire to “produce sculptural forms
without any physical volume”, the core
concerns of his work emerged : time, space
and language.
During the subsequent years Lamelas has
lived and made work across Europe and
the Americas, each location exerting
its specific influence on his work. And it
is this personal experience of dislocation
and his efforts to understand and
assimilate new cultures that gives his
conceptualist concerns a warmth and
humour. For Lamelas, location and place
are primary: ”Space has a reality, it exists”.
Yet about time he asserts, “Time doesn’t
exist, our consciousness constructs it.
Time is a fiction.”
Curated by Jacqueline Holt
www.lux.org.uk/lamelas
TIME IS A FICTION
DAVID LAMELAS
READING OF AN EXTRACT FROM
LABYRINTHS BY J. L. BORGES
UK, 1970, silent, B&W, 5 mins, 16mm
The film Reading of an Extract from
Labyrinths by J. L. Borges shows a
young woman reading an essay by
Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges
titled Nueva refutación del tiempo (New
Refutation of Time) out loud. Her lips can
be seen moving but her voice cannot
be heard. The phrases pronounced
are actually shown in subtitles, but
the length of the presentation is too
short to permit them to be read and
comprehended. This displacement and
the disorder it generates reveal different
levels of information de-codification
in the work. The film makes the limits
of our perception manifest, and in this
way echoes Borges’ rejection of both
simultaneity and succession – in other
words, of the concatenation of deeds
which make a narrative.
TO POUR MILK INTO A GLASS
UK, 1972, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm
Many of David Lamelas’s works are
exercises designed to test how meaning
is constructed in film. “I wanted to find
symbols for ‘container’ and ‘contents’
– to represent how the camera frames
– and what is shown on screen.
…I decided to use a glass and milk.
The eight sequences end with… the glass
being shattered and the milk splattering
all over the table, which implies that there
is no way to contain information”.
Other films by David Lamelas are available
individually from LUX, including his latest
feature The Light at the Edge of a Nightmare
TIME AS ACTIVITY (DÜSSELDORF)
Germany, 1969, silent, B&W, 13 mins, 16mm
Time as Activity (Düsseldorf), made in
1969, is comprised of three four-minute
sequences that register real time from
a fixed point, at three different places
in the city (in the area surrounding the
Kunsthalle, a fountain and the city’s
commercial centre).
Part of the Time As Activity series.
A DVD of David Lamelas’ early films will be
released by Bureau des Videos in summer 2005
www.bureaudesvideos.com
A STUDY OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
INNER AND OUTER SPACE
UK, 1969, sound, B&W, 20 mins, 16mm
David Lamelas’ first film, A Study of
Relationships between Inner and Outer
Space, analyses the architectural, social,
climatic, or sociological data that make
up the exhibition’s spatial environment,
that of the institution and its geographical
location. Beginning with the empty
exhibition hall, the description is neutral
and analytical. It progresses in ever
larger circles, placing emphasis on all
the important functional elements, from
the electronic devices in the exhibition
space, to the city’s traffic regulation, to
the communication and information media
and, finally, to the climatic conditions
of the London environment. The film
concludes with six interviews regarding
the big news item of the day: the future
“landing” of the first men on the moon.
David Lamelas is featured in Issue 11 of
the journal Afterall. Out now!
www.afterall.org
David Lamelas describes it as “a study
on American film production”. The Desert
People begins like a classic road-movie.
The setting is completely familiar to us:
a car crossing the desert with a group of
people travelling on board. But as soon as
the narration begins, it is interrupted by
documentary-style interviews. Passing in
this way from one film genre to another,
Lamelas manages to blur the boundary
between fact and fiction.
The five passengers describe their
experience on a North American native
Indian reservation. Each member of the
group has his or her own perspective
on the Papago tribe. One offers an
anthropological analysis while another
discusses writing a feature article for
a women’s magazine. They each present
their version of the ‘truth’ about how
the Papago live. Whilst they examine
the tribe’s social behaviour, there is
Image overleaf : still from Desert People by David Lamelas. Design by Alex Czinczel
little self-reflection on their own group
dynamic. Ironically, numerous cuts to
their car journey reveal a complete lack
of interaction between the travellers.
The final interviewee, Manny, a
Papago Indian, comments on the
way the American influence on Native
Americans is leading to the loss of his
own indigenous culture. His English
drifts into Spanish and then Papago,
as if the meaning of what he wishes to
communicate would be lost in translation.
For the English-speaking viewer this
shift is confusing and demonstrates the
difficulty of knowing another culture
from the outside. The film ends
unexpectedly with a jump cut back
to the feature film scenario.
DAVID LAMELAS:
TIME IS A FICTION