Little Poet Thomas

2017 | 16:9 video | colour | sound | duration 2' 16"

Two young women in a cemetery at night ask a wizard using a gravestone as a Pythagorean veil to recite his latest poem.

The persistent interruption of a film production clapperboard in the foreground reveals the reading to be an ongoing attempt to transform the literary material into the visual medium of film.

The presence of the clapperboard suggests his amateurish performance and missed cues may in time be corrected through subsequent takes.

The angle of the large gravestone however is also counterpoised to fall, crushing anything that happens to be standing behind it into permanent invisibility.

Featuring Jane Safarian and Beth Otenstein

Appropriated Sound: The Writers Block 2007 (Virginia and Karla) SYN Radio broadcast from RMIT University [90.7 FM] Poetry sample: Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard

First shown in Something’s trying to tell us some things
at Five Walls Projects (2017) Curator: Kieran Boland

Thanks to Aaron Martin, 上田美鈴, Johnson Nguyen, James Thorn and Christian Bishop