Double Take. Photography, Film, Urban Experiences and Capital

This is an essay which discusses filmic exploration through re-staging and reshooting. The text focuses on the works: 'Remembrance of Things Past', 2006 by Sutapa Biswas and 'London/London', 2010, by Thorsten Knaub. The text explores different uses of double screen projection and synchronicity to set up temporal relationships that invoke and encourage remembrance. Knaub's London/London is the result of a shot for shot, take for take reshoot of the artist's father’s holiday home movie made in London 30 years prior to the reshoot. The film explores the experience of the city, both through the personal narratives and relationship between father and son, and the public narratives of changes in the city's architecture. Biswas' film work, where both screens are out of synch to create a time-slip, is the result of re-staging. Biswas used film crew and actors to recreate a scene she had witnessed several years earlier. What at first appears to be an insignificant scene is given poignancy through the artist's treatment of the event, focusing on individuals, as well as knowledge of the artist’s personal relationships to the city space and actors within the film work.

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