Rabeda is a colorized, reversed, decelerated, delayed, and otherwise digitally distorted version of Peter Kubelka’s 1957 experimental film, Adebar. Using the original film’s seemingly sardonic cultural juxtaposition of European dance club imagery with an African tribal soundtrack, one intention of this new piece was to further amplify the ambiguous elements of an already largely ambiguous and often misunderstood work, while creating a separate and new aesthetic out of these initial image and sound sources.
Multiple colorization processes, digital artifacts, slowed speed, and feedback all serve to disrupt the original film’s strict rhythmic patterning of positive and negative spaces; motion vs stasis; and inherently analog film aesthetic. Perceptual alternations of foreground and background are in a near constant state of flux as a result. Much of my photo and video work explores the boundaries of how much visual or sonic information can be removed or transformed while remaining in a subtly identifiable state. Despite the numerous alterations and degradative processes of this piece, the ability to recognize silhouetted dancing human figures remains largely intact throughout.
