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Steve McQueen «Deadpan»
Steve McQueen, «Deadpan», 1997
Videostill | © Steve McQueen
video still, b/w, silent


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 Steve McQueen
«Deadpan»

Reminiscent of a typcial Buster Keaton mise-en-scène, McQueen stages a deadpan humourous scene, where the house front collapses but leaves the figure mysteriously intact by leaving the door open.
«The non-use of color and sound is a classic tool of narrative film. So are sharp light/dark contrasts, unusual camera angles and perspectives. Using these elements, the British artist seems to adopt a certain aesthetic of film from the 1920s. Yet he does not use them in order to fall back on a historicizing strategy or to reinterpret the origins of moving images.»
(Source: Heike Borowski in «Seeing Time,» ZKM online)