online:31 July 2008 modified: 30, 31 July 2008 30 July 2008 good accidents
Camden Arts Centre, London
...that happy sensation of eating something one likes (fresh mackerel cooked on a charcoal grill) in good surroundings (a garden of grass beneath tall trees insulated from a noisy road by a wall of plate glass)... and among friendly people...
...the mackerel was suggested by the red haired man who recognised me from previous visits... he and his colleagues made me feel welcome though (as usual nowadays) I am the oldest person in sight...
...and just before this unexpected meal (i'd brought sandwiches, which i'd intended to eat on the heath)... was the good accident of finding an exhibition by one of my favourite film makers: Chantal Ackerman*... and particularly a projection of her mother and herself reading (on two screens) the diary of her grandmother (in which they had both also written)...
...the diary is about life in prison camps and elsewhere... her mother only manages to read out loud a little of the text which they discuss as she reads it... the moment of reading is shared with ourselves in the gallery by projecting facsimiles of the text on gauze screens floating in the space between us and the main screen...
...as i listened and watched i felt inspired again by the slow magic of Chantal Ackerman's way of filming with plenty of time to see each scene as a picture... as well as as an event in a story...
...and now suddenly everyone is packing up and leaving this little eden... while two or three infants cry and howl and refuse to be comforted... and everybody copes with this dictatorship of the youngest as if 'its all part of the movie'... which of course it is, it most certainly is!...
...yes, this was a good moment and it led to me re-perceiving the world and this bit of history and life as quite excellent... though not dependent on plaudits... the rightness of reality predominates...
*...Chantal Ackerman's film installations are at the Camden Arts Centre, London, until 14 September 2008
for comfortable line length set the window to about two-thirds of the screen width
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