Condition Of Illusion

1975
Country: UK
Duration: 35 mins
Colour,
Sound: Silent
Ratio: 4:3
Available Format/s: 16mm
Original Format: 16mm film

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‘The practice of Structural/Materialist Film is defined in…process, construction, displaced reflexively…not displaced uniformly into the pattern of a narrative bound up for the stable subject-centred image. Structural/Materialist film has no place for the look, ceaselessly displaced, outphased, a problem of seeing, it is anti-voyeuristic.”
In Conditions of Illusion what is not achieved is the stabilisation of reproduction into the terms of a representation: effectively, the materials of reproduction that are engaged by the film are not stabilised into a representation (the photograph given precisely as holdable moment, why else a photograph if not for that?) The distinction between reproduction and representation is important though difficult. In a sense all the films of yours that I have seen are full of the materials of reproduction held off of – not fixed into – representation. Duration and narrative thus come apart, narrative being exactly fixing, stabilisation. In the phrase “reproduction of reality” reality itself means a specific set of reproduced reproducible representations, positions, stabilities, clarities. Representation is a series of positions for the spectator to a certain clarity of position and meaning. In Conditions of Illusion nothing is held into a representation.’ – Stephen Heath, Cambridge Tapes on Narrative, 1978.

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