The protagonists of a dusty spaghetti western are separated in the gallery, forcing them to perpetually continue their standoff, silently, yet disquietingly, staring at each other across the space.

Films offer a way of viewing and understanding time based on sequence: a linear flow of scene and narrative, one thing happening after another. Stemming from a desire to watch the characters play out the scene simultaneously instead of sequentially, this work disrupts the linear order of time within a film.

Using Sergio Leonie’s The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, every sixth split second of the penultimate standoff at Sadhill Cemetery is captured as a still image. These are then reconfigured into separate films of each character. As the projections approximate the characters’ positions within the circular graveyard, the viewer takes the fourth position within the standoff. The viewer becomes the implicated but unobserved fourth person to the scene, echoing the characters’ watchful twitches as they anticipate the draw.

Shown At:
This work has shown most recently during An Unkindness of Ravens (2012 and 2013).

Three-Channel Video Projection

Photographs by Yoon Tae Kim