Martin Rumsby

We are waiting for the media artist whose necessity will be to only ever make one film. A work to define both their career and the whole history of cinema.

The complete working life of this artist will consist of reworking the same material in different ways, to different ends, in different settings by releasing variations on the original ad infinitum.

The tenor of such a work would be hermetic, reflexive and self-referential. Increasingly, as variations on the film progressed, the mind of the maker and the audience would become one with the world, the film would come to seem more and more to be about its audience and its maker, less and less about the world. The project would grow in time as the processes of its creation distanced themselves from the mechanics, personalities and economy of the film's initial production ­ freedom from the social world, freedom from mundaneness, freedom to discover and follow one's own path in an unfettered, uninhibited exploration of human consciousness.

Such an artist would subscribe to the idea that we only ever need have one original idea in our entire life. The importance is to act on that idea, seeing it through all possible conclusions. Creativity here being the ability to visualize a concept from multiple points of view, working the problem from all angles, through the endless shades of grey such a meeting of specific consciousness, perception and the universe would engender. Reworking one idea as life'' aesthetic work, as spiritual exploration, as political statement, as economic activity.

This artist will start out making a 35mm narrative feature film. A hair raising, exquisitely beautiful, profoundly compelling tragic-comedic journey through our world in search of self and others, titled CIRCUMNAVIGATION. An ode of migration from the intense isolation of self consciousness, through movement, to the ecstatic merging of consciousness with nature. As the journey proceeds the finer the audience's powers of observation and perception will become until finally they arrive at a new sense of naturalness, a naturalness derived from the work itself. Maybe it is a dream. Material shot and collected for CIRCUMNAVIGATION will comprise the sum total of elements the artist will draw off for the rest of her career. It would be as if this first film were the same rock Michelangelo carved from. The rock which defines the forms that subsequently emerge from it. The second version of the film could be a reworking as a documentary, a third put through various digital permutations and manipulations toward ... whatever, the fourth version would be a collage reworking of the original, the fifth an optically printed symphonic light poem, the sixth a music video, the seventh an isolated biography of one of the characters in the original narrative film, the eighth a lyrical piece made from off-cuts and outtakes, the ninth a political polemic, the tenth, revised many years later, an historical period piece.

The visual and aural components of CIRCUMNAVIGATION will be composed independently. Existing as two separate elements filling the same time span, sound and image will combine to create an active dialog that explores various possibilities for understanding relationships between art, audience and the world. At times the sound will be synchronous with the image, sometimes it will precede the image, at other times it will follow the image. Sound image relationships in the film CIRCUMNAVIGATION will veer madly between realism, musicality, articulation and counterpoint. A complete audio work, LE SYMPHONIE CONCRETE, will be drawn from a reworking of the sound elements recorded for the original narrative feature version of the film.

Of course the artist responsible for such work will be reviled and rejected throughout her career. Labeled and dismissed as an incompetent anti- artistic heretic she will be shunned by art society and society as a whole. Conducting extensive research into, even measuring the exact nature of life and death before a mirror she will eventually define and publish her conclusions in scholarly journals. Her researches into spirit and matter will be dismissed as retrograde as will her assertion that the power of love is commensurate with the depth of human suffering. A decree will be passed ordering that her suffering be increased so that her work may exude even greater love. She will die. We will all be better for it. Everyone will agree, though for different reasons.

After the maker's death a specific cinema will be built for the sole purpose of screening CIRCUMNAVIGATION in all its variations, backwards and forwards, at half speed, quarter speed and in stop motion. A utopian cinema will be built which will allow the audience to fully circumnavigate the film. Just as the maker only ever need make one film, so the audience will only ever need to see this film. All forms of the film CIRCUMNAVIGATION will evoke a variety of relations between the audience and the work, thereby creating the possibility of the audience and the work engaging in a conversation. Devout societies of followers and interpreters will arise. Readings will differ. Sects will begin to appear. For some confused passion will turn to violence. For others thought turned to action will inspire contemplation. A few will be completely defeated by the experience of CIRCUMNAVIGATION and will collapse into forms of self destructiveness. Arbiters will be appointed to mollify the original and its variations toward a less ominous, purged form suitable for mass consumption. At this point a new artist will be called forth to create a work of equal scope and power to the original CIRCUMNAVIGATION.

What depth and integrity the artist who ventured to make such work would have. We await such an artist.