John Smith (Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, UK)

The Ingleby Gallery exhibition has one work by John Smith and the rest is Jonathan Owen." Jonathan Owen's work, in both two and three dimensions, involves reducing and rethinking existing objects and images. He employs a kind of elegant vandalism to reconstruct and reinvent his ‘material’, transforming something found into something new." (Ingleby Gallery website).

Althought it was very intersting and his point of view is really fascinating, I wasn't really driven by his work, aesthetically at least.

John Smith's short film "The Girl Chewing Gum" is, on the other hand, completely absorbed me.

In a busy street of London, Smith film what is happening in front of his camera. He comments what is happening and simulate himself as a director, as if he was controlling what is happening on the street but the commments go funnier and wierder so we realise quite soon that he is not in control.

Here's what Collier White says about it : 

 "In a twelve-minute take of an ordinary busy street, a voice-over seems to direct the random events that unfold there. It quickly becomes evident that the scene is not responding to the voice, but vice-versa. Through staggering image and sound track, the voice seems to gain powerful authority over the scene, predicting events that the images thus confirm. How much is this simple trick like viewing the evening news? Much like Chris Marker’s best work, Smith’s film exposes the constructedness of the real in a way that is fundamentally destabilizing."    Collier White, review of exhibition at Artists Space, New York 2007

I quite agree with that review because it is destabilizing because he gets very autoritary sometimes and it feels like he was really ordering things to happen, it's a control/ no control relation and also he focuses on the clock at a certain moment and I believe that clock is to show how we are controlled everyday by the simpliest things in the world like Time.

The film touched me and inspired me so much because it is filmed in a very simplistic way but has so much to offer when you focus on it, here Michael Maziere from Undercut Magasine explains : 

"In relinquishing the more subtle use of voice-over in television documentary, the film draws attention to the control and directional function of that practice: imposing, judging, creating an imaginary scene from a visual trace.  This ‘Big Brother’ is not only looking at you but ordering you about as the viewer’s identification shifts from the people in the street to the camera eye overlooking the scene. The resultant voyeurism takes on an uncanny aspect as the blandness of the scene (shot in black and white on a grey day in Hackney) contrasts with the near ‘magical’ control identified with the voice.  The most surprising effect is the ease with which representation and description turn into phantasm through the determining power of language."    Michael Maziere, ‘Undercut’ magazine 1984

I totally agree with Maziere because it really not only has the directional function of control but it order to do so, like some sort of trap. 

Aesthetically I love that it's in black and white, it give not only the vintage taste of the 70's but it also creates an ambiance that goes perfectly with the control he tries to give himself, it reminds me a bit of Chapin film in the sense that the black and white gives that authority more credit than it should but our brains just work like that and I think it's working really good.
Also I love the last shot, in the countryside where there is no one and "no control" but just calm.

The Girl Chewing Gum
(1976)  12 mins. B/W. Sound. 16mm.