Mark Aerial Waller
Reversion of the Beast Folk
4th February - 27th March 2004
Reversion of the Beast Folk 2004
DVD Projection (3m x 1.68m)
Polyurethane foam cave (4.5m x 4m x 2.5m)
electronic trigger for 5 red fluorescent tubes
Mark Aerial Waller’s Reversion
of the Beast Folk is a film, a piece for fluorescent strip
lights, an expanded foam cave, and a selection of masks and drawings
of movie icons. The film opens with the view from the passenger
seat of a Lamborghini Countach, which screeches through traffic
on an endless highway, passing cars inside and out. Cutting to
a barren landscape, two figures are seen to emerge from behind
a rock and meander through the depth of field. Here Waller, who
approaches his work through the reading of classic literature,
employs H.G. Wells’ endlessly perverted The Island of
Doctor Moreau as his field of agitation.
Reversion of the Beast Folk concerns the conquest of new
territory, pre-judgement and swift punishment, and the laying
down of a New Law. For the film’s soundtrack Waller employs
Beethoven’s Emperor in collision with recordings of
the camera’s own mechanism. The work climazes with Brazilian
Umbanda, music for religious ritual dedicated to the goddess
of sex, Pomba Gira, with the gallery bathed in red fluorescents
for the entr’acte.
Still from Reversion of the
Beast Folk
As well as being an artist interested in producing densely coded
filmworks that are open to a complex range of interpretations
Waller also operates The Wayward Canon, a flexible platform for
the critical re-evaluation of cinematic practices. Recent exhibitions
to which he has contributed include Traversees (Musee d’Art
Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2002) and Changing Times
(Tate Britain, London 2003).
Still from Reversion of the Beast
Folk
