Medicine Box

Medicine Box is a is a 16-mm film created in 2004 as a collaboration between John Wynne and David Leister, the American film-maker and performance artist. The thematic concerns that underlie the project relate, as its title suggests, to issues of health and medication understood in both their individual and collective dimensions.

An antique medicine box constitutes the emblematic core of this audiovisual exploration and this device suggests connection to a variety of art historical references to the presentational cabinet from Marchel Duchamp’s From or by Marcel Duchamp (1943), to Marcel Broodthaer’s Return To Matter (1966) to Damien Hirst’s God (1994).

John Wynne composed the soundtrack to the 11 minute film, and determined that it was important to eschew digital processing and production in favour of analogue tape manipulation, a decision that was justified in terms of organising a stylistic and technological convergence between the audio and visual components. The film (shot in black and white) adopts the urgent tenor of a warning to its viewers and the researcher chose to use as his source material a series of alarm sounds that he had created specifically for this project.