undertitled (2018)

Live participatory performance and three-screen video installation

undertitled (2018-2019) is the second collaboration by Vicki Thornton and Adam J B Walker. It exists as a three-screen video installation (completed in 2019) and as a live performative film event which took place as part of the Projections artists’ moving image event series curated by Adam Pugh at Tyneside Cinema in November 2018.

A video-montage of contemporary and nostalgic found footage is cut over two original interviews: one with the developer of a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency and the other with a Ukrainian translator who worked on ‘teaching’ languages to Siri. The two voices are at first accurately subtitled, but this text is gradually pushed away by a third voice which directly addresses the audience. During the live performance of undertitled at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, camera-operators filmed the audience’s engagement with this third voice, and wore screens which at times displayed it. Within the final three-channel video, footage from this performance within the cinema space is incorporated. Camera operators are rendered performers and vice versa, as the eventual three-channel video reflects back the first performance’s imagining of its own future filmic (mis-)translation.

Script / Direction: Vicki Thornton & Adam J B Walker

Editing: Vicki Thornton