When the Sun Sets It's All Red, Then It Disappears
Original title: När solen går ner är den alldeles röd, sen försvinner den
Video and sound installation, 2008
Video I: 9 min loop, color, sound
Video II: 90 min loop, color, silent
Dimensions variable
Lina Selander’s work When the Sun Sets It's All Red, Then It Disappears takes Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 film La Chinoise as its starting point. It is an installation in three parts: a series of almost entirely black-and-white stills, a film showing the shadow on a wall from the moving foliage of a tree, colored red, and a voice reading a text. It examines the relationship between political, utopian, and emotional expressions in words and images, it explores the revolutionary zeal of a time and the desire to start all over again.
La Chinoise is a film in the making, a film that tells the story of a revolutionary and truth-seeking common narrative while at the same time trying to be a part of it, sharing its inherent expressions and problems. Lina Selander’s installation is also a work in the making, engaging and evolving around Godard’s film and the questions it addresses and responds to. But it is also an installation about photography and storytelling.
Most of the photographs in the series of stills are from the 1968 student revolts in Paris and Stockholm, taken at meetings and manifestations. But they also show other motifs, such as a close-up of a growing blob of moisture on a news reel showing Chairman Mao swimming in the Yellow River, personal photos, and some stills from La Chinoise. All images have been photographed with flash and all photos have a white circular reflection on them, which may represent or constitute a common space where the spectator’s space and that of the motif overlap, but where they are also defined as separate – a blinding dazzle or hole in the image that ultimately blocks any final narrative and forces itself into the motifs and events that are being documented.
Watch film:
https://vimeo.com/24710943.
