Delta series, 2005 - 2007, 12 min 32 sec. Multi-channel projection

 

The raw footage for delta was filmed in Paradise Country in Mpumalanga, an opulent landscape characterised by African bush and filled with wild animals. In the video production this landscape is reinterpreted as the delta phase of sleep that precedes REM. Delta is part of slow-wave sleep, it is very difficult to wake someone in this state and it is the stage in which nightmares, sleepwalking and sleep talking occur. During delta sleep, the realm of the imaginary is entered when the alienated self encounters primordial images of fear, conflict and survival, depicted by wild animals. The buck represents ordinary human beings and their battle for survival; the leopard internal fears and anxieties; and the giraffe local identity and clumsy indigene. For Salvador Dalí the burning giraffe represented the Spanish civil war of 1936 – 1939.

Exhibited Cité internationale des arts, Paris, December 2005

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