sha xin wei & lina dib
studies inspired by walter benjamin, and memory.
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
-- Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, IX, Illuminations.
the video was staged and shot by lina, and composited in jitter and imovie by sxw.
#1 paper horse in water (lo-res)
#2 lina over rails (medium, lo-res)
#3 lina over rails, and rising stones (lo-res)
#4 breathing water: cavern wind, wind in cherry trees
see also: the il y a project
19 july 2009, montreal