In chronophotography, in editing processes, in the surprising solutions of the avant-garde film, and in contemporary computer animation, technique and manipulation have the same starting point and the same goal – to give a time dimension (manifested as motion) to a static figure. The time created through the means of such space-time pastiche is the time of simulation, hybrid time; where photographs and moving scenes evolve into an illusion of mechanically created motion – the basis of film.
Nicole claims that the frame is the basic point of departure in her work. The frame inside the footage is motionless on the level of photography and it is set in motion on the level of film. [“When I say film, I mean a moving sequence of still images.“ Nicole Hewitt]
From her early works such as Herman's Burden (1989) to her most recent film Waltz, A Mock Ball (2004) by using artistic, film, mechanical, technical, and digital media in animated films and in experimental films and videos Nicole Hewitt has been questioning the conventional view and definition of animation, i.e. forms of editing as its basic procedure, and has been opening the discussion on the problems of media, picture, language, translation, society, and culture. Her works deal with social conventions and also question cinematic conventions – the conventions of her own means of expression.
The core of the opus presented at the retrospective contains her works produced in the last five years – from 1999 to 2004 – which also include the films In/Dividu, In Between, Bridge, and Waltz, A Mock Ball..
The reference field of Waltz, A Mock Ball is connected to the hegemonic discourse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the preserving of the Viennese tradition and the Viennese Waltz, which slide into the fictional realm. In Waltz, A Mock Ball the slow motion, the slowing down that makes an illusion of a dissolving picture (dissolve is an animation technique, an effect she uses), and the stop frame editing all add to the rise of prolonged duration of photographic images. Using film syntax on the edges of the film and video media she creates a video inscription in slow motion, which is similar to dreams (the transition into dreams or the waking state). She emphasises the collision of the static and dynamic images. Extending the time dimension of the image in its paradoxical structure the figurative motion conventionally depicted with moving images implodes at the point of a single image unit – that is how the time continuity is destroyed and the frozen incrusted image is created.
The film Gloria made in the cross-section of (spoken and foreign) languages, as well as the language of film, questions film's means of communication and its genre conventions (for instance romantic or soap opera), but its surprising structure, its long duration and numerous prolonged cuts of monochrome blackness, as well as its specific sound and image editing make it demanding for the audience. In Between contains an environmental consciousness, it uses a documentary-type technique, and it animates frame by frame discarded objects/the city dump. Notes on Continuity is an animation of puppets inspired by silent films from the early period of German cinematography, i.e. with an atmosphere of film expressionism.
Through the communication with other territories, for instance by connecting dance, film and painting, the works of Nicole Hewitt become treasuries that deny the clean distinctions between individual artistic means of expression. Using the techniques of image 'metamorphosis' and hybridisation she intertwines artistic genres and media and (re)constructs stories, history, and culture. And thus using different technical possibilities a connection to history (with the help) of media is created.
Branka Benčič