Synopsis
To celebrate the publication of the catalogue of the Mindaugas Triennial, XI Baltic Triennial which took place in August/ September 2012, and the current XII Baltic Triennial taking place in Vilnius, Lithuania we present Mark Aerial Waller’s feature film Time Together which was produced as a daily broadcast within the exhibition. Mindaugas Triennial was curated by Defne Ayas, Director of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and Benjamin Cook, Director of LUX, London together with New York-based artists Ieva Misevičiūtė and Michael Portnoy
Time Together was commissioned for the 11th Baltic Triennal (co-curated by Defne Ayas and Benjamin Cook in 2012) as a daily broadcast in twelve episodes. A fictional scenario unravels in parallel and within the daily performances of the Triennial. This methodology finds its origins in the ethnographic cinema of Jean Rouch, where ‘Radical Fabulation’ provides a relation between the ethnographic authentic image and the inauthenticity of cinema.
In the case of Time Together, the narrative begins when a young woman misses her stop on the train and arrives at Vilnius station. A woman who watches her from the train offers a lift, which starts a disconcerting relationship between them, hovering between cult entrapment, emergence of a political cell, a predatory sexual drive or indeed, friendship.
Each day the episode is introduced by a physicist explaining phenomena related to our Sun and its electromagnetic radiation reaching Earth. His announcements to camera bring the audience into the constellation of levels of representation that Time Together joins up. As we plunge into the narrative we become astutely aware of the mechanisms surrounding our characters, their elusive organisation, the Triennial, the performances, the audience, and the universe.
Starring Smiltė Bagdžiūnė, Monika Bičiunaitė, Gintaras Makarevičius, Dr. Gediminas Žukauskas
Director Mark Aerial Waller / Cinematographer Vydmantas Plepys / Sound Recordist & Assistant Editor Mikas Žukauskas / Line Producer & Assistant Director Monika Lipchitz / Hair, Makeup & Continuity Giedrė Jarockaitė
Mark Aerial Waller
Mark Aerial Waller was born in High Wycombe in 1969. He studied film and video with sculpture at St Martins School of Art.
International exhibitions include: Athens Bienale 8, Museo D’arteContemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE), Naples, Musée d’ArtModern de la Ville de Paris, France, and the South London Gallery.
Waller founded the event based project The Wayward Canon in 2001, where archival film and video artworks are reconfigured with audience and spatial considerations, events include Simon and the Radioactive Flesh (collaboration with Giles Round) (2006), Platform Garanti, Istanbul and La Societe des Amis de Judex (2007) at Tate Modern, London.
He produces interdisciplinary, cinematic time travelogues that refute any predictable balance between our romance for the ancient past and our fetish for a streamlined future. By jamming multiple time streams and technical formats he stages elliptical, psychological landscapes in which fantasy and documentary become almost interchangeable.
Stuart Comer
