Trapdoor
Single channel digital video, 3 mins. 18 secs., looped, 2004.

Hidden trapdoors often appear in fiction, as entrances to secret passageways for getaways or crimes, or as literal traps into which a hapless character falls. The word trapdoor can also be used to acknowledge that something that has not gone to plan. 'Trapdoor' filmed in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, literally traps the viewer into a seemless loop. The loop is one continous shot in which the camera turns continously pointing at the ceiling and then at the floor. The idiosyncrasies of the device the protagonists are using to turn the camera and the irregularity of floor in the space distrupt the continous motion of the shot and shatter the illusion. The artist and her assistant consider the problems they are facing but little is achieved through discussion. This revolving conversation is subtitled.

© Michelle Deignan 2004