Corpse And Mirror

Corpse and Mirror questions the ability of rational language to adequately describe and control extreme mental states. Based on a monologue by Tony Allard, the tape moves non-sequentially through seven memories of Allard’s childhood experience with his father’s manic/depression and institutionalisation in a state hospital. Central to the tape is the use of poetic language–a strategy to convey the shifting unconscious through image, sound, and text–to delightfully unbalance our sense of the real. “In Corpse and Mirror, a grown son recalls his deceased father’s bout with madness. His memories are constantly tripped up by the inability of language to express extreme emotional states.”- Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archives.