Tim SHORE
Cabinet
Experimental film | dv, s8, 16mm | colour | 18’20” | United Kingdom | 2006
Tim Shore’s ‘Cabinet’ is a complex and multi-layered film which evokes humankind’s ambivalent relationship with history, memory and technology. The film uses the Unabomber’s Manifesto a
s its main subject, going beyond it by presenting to the viewer something simultaneously meditative and disturbing. Featuring several layers of images, sounds and texts, either original ones or chosen from archive material, this piece reminds the audience of the primary social constructions about America and its accompanying myths. It especially refers to the difficult and unsolved confrontation between the idea of its vast, pure and open spaces, and the highly complex and technological societies that have emerged from its exploration and occupation. In fact, Theodore Kaczynski’s wooden cabin which is being featured in ‘Cabinet’, is not so different, for instance, from President Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. Both places are sort of backwoods, far away from big cities and from the influences of modern life; reminiscent of mythological and pure places from a bygone era. The precise use of sound, mainly appropriated from other sources, takes a primary role within the film. This happens in association with the presence of the contemplative and pictorial landscapes which come and go, as with the typewriter who haunts the film from the beginning, only to reappear close to the end in a moment when optic and acoustic data flows refuse to stop. Now, facing a black screen, a powerful sound somewhere between that of a typewriter and a machine gun resounds. Technology and its shadow take the lead in the blind construction of history.
http://flamin.filmlondon.org.uk/showcase/assets/showcase_items/cabinet
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The Unabomber Manifesto
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future
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