Holiday X, 2019, 16:9, HD

Holiday X takes the shape of a vacation video from a trip no one would ever want to go on. The drowsiness and boredom of a seaside resort filmed off-season are amplified by the analog texture of the image, instantly recalling home movies shot on consumer video cameras in the 1980s and 1990s. The resort shown in the film clearly had its heyday three decades ago, yet the viewer is never quite able to tell when the footage was actually recorded. The camera becomes a time machine, allowing us to slip back into the past.

From the very first seconds, a growing sense of unease slowly builds, only to fully resonate in the film’s closing sequence, which serves as a commentary on the consumerist attitude now inextricably linked with the idea of a holiday. The finale of Holiday X is a pointed reminder that the film camera is capable of seeing more than the human eye.

VHS, 2016, 16:9, HD

VHS is composed of a series of carefully constructed shots, each of them converted to emulate the visual character of Video Home System tapes. The film explores raw, suburban spaces which, if shown in the clinical sharpness and quality of full HD or 4K, would be perceived by the viewer in a completely different way. Here, form dictates perception, in line with Marshall McLuhan’s well-known dictum.

The paradox of VHS lies in the fact that the resolution actually used in the work – 1920×1080 (full HD) – intensifies the intended impression while simultaneously distancing the film from the original video format. VHS offers a precise demonstration of how form and purely technical parameters inevitably shape the way we experience an audiovisual piece.