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Strange Space

Leslie Thornton

1993 00:03:53 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3Video

Description

Thornton asks viewers to question how one sees “space" — whether literally or figuratively — and what is being revealed? Images of a sonogram session grant viewers access to what is typically reserved for medical analysis — “inner space.” The body, probed and revealed through technology, is collaged with imagery from lunar probes, drawing parallels with how technology also allows us to see where we were previously unable — “outer space.” A poem by Rilke about the interior quality of thought is contrasted with the clinical voice accompanying the images. 

About Leslie Thornton

Leslie Thornton is a painter turned video- and filmmaker who teaches in the Modern Culture and Media Program at Brown University. Her lush, complex works explore the mechanisms of desire and meaning, while probing past the boundaries of language and narrative conventions.  Difficult to categorize or describe, Thornton’s works are steeped in theoretical interest and filled with rich and intuitive imagery in experimental narratives crossing science fiction, ethnographic, and documentary forms.