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20/9/2006

Clement Page

E31 Gallery, Athens

Sleepwalker

E31 Gallery is pleased to present Clement Page’s Film Installations & Photographs for the first time in Greece. The exhibition will feature a large two screen film installation, ‘Sleepwalker’, 2005, and a series of photographs exploring the subject of sleep walking further in the still image.

'Sleepwalker' is conceived too be projected onto adjacent walls, in the corner of a gallery. On the right-hand screen of the film we see a man asleep, he gets out of the bed and begins to sleepwalk, engaging in a set of bizarre actions as he moves through the rooms of his house and then out into the streets of the city. By way of ‘explanation’ the left-hand screen shows the same man, but this time it depicts his dream.
which is occurring in parallel with his sleepwalking episode.

The settings for both the dream - a dilapidated and abandoned building of vast dimensions - and the ‘real’ environment of the right-hand film - run-down, graffitied parts of the city at night - refers back to an earlier series of photo works, ‘Topologies’, (2003), where the city acted as a metaphor for the dream. Repressed parts of the city stood in for the unconscious; viewed from the vantage point of a passing train one could see parts of the city that the town
planner did not intend us to see; the grey zones, gaps, wastelands, and ghettos. This uncovering of the hidden functioned as a trope for the repression of social memories, the visual erasure of the environments of the poor. Those same locations became the mise-en-sce'ne for Sleepwalker.

The physical body of the somnambulator acts in the manner of an automaton, animated as it is not by the conscious volition of the subject, but by the unrestrained forces of the unconscious mind. This relates to an early example of the uncanny as given by Ernst Jentch - whose essay on the subject preceded Freud’s - that of the uncertainty as to whether an animate object was really alive, and conversely whether an inanimate object was truly non-sentient. The sleepwalker appears to be an automaton, a puppet, animated by some unseen force. In fact, Jentch explicitly refers to somnambulism as being a state capable of invoking a sense of the uncanny in the observer for this very reason.

Written by Richard Dyer

Opening reception: Thursday, 21 September, 20:00 - 24:00

E31 Gallery
Evripidou 31-33 - Athens
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday 16:00 - 20:30, Saturday 12:00 - 16:00

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