Minute 07

 Minute 07 (by Sequana Birkel)

Minute 7: WEIRD

Why weird? ‘Weird’ was my first and spontaneous thought after having seen minute 7 for the first time. Initially, I had some other ideas that differ from how my final product now looks, but I had trouble implementing them. The execution of these initial ideas failed because I simply lacked the skills to do so. 

I asked myself what could I ever do with that film minute. Eventually, I realized that I got trapped into trying to find logic, my angle was too narrow. I was chasing a false form of perfectionism. In order to make progress, I knew, I had to let go of any pre-made expectations and images from my part. Defeated, but also excited, I thought I might as well enjoy the process rather than pressuring myself into the expectation of a great final product. As stated in the beginning, my first thought was “weird what that minute is”. Now, in hindsight, my final thought is “weird what I did to it”.

In the seminar, everybody was confronted with some sort of decay, corruption, and change. I contributed to that already autonomously happening process of change with my own work, sourcing from my character and personality. The video I created is a behind-the-scenes look of what my internal monologue was while watching the minute. 

The things that the film pieces underwent, such as heat, humidity, touch etc., were random and unforeseeable. Similarly, my own creativity and the edited minute are also completely random, they happened without a plan. I have created a new state of minute 7, which joins the numerous previous states the film sequence had; a timeline of different states over time. Initially, there was only the original film state, then it changed due to and over time, eventually followed by Morrison’s state, and now finally, my own. But probably, that is not its final state. 

Change is never predictable. Creativity, too, is also never controllable or predictable, rather the contrary, the more one forces it to happen, the less likely it is to hit you. Interestingly, there is a parallel between the film minute and my edited version. A sort of meta-story moment occurred; I tell my story about trying to grasp the story of the film, which eventually led me to focus on something else than only the film. I started by concentrating on the exact images portrayed, if even identifiable, and ended up focusing on the images and story that went on inside of my own head in the process of it.