For Sore Eyes (2006, 23MB, 2:17 min)

I like this (though what I mean by that is sort of provisional; read on)
& also it, the piece, bothers me a lot.
I watched it once, context free, then I read a statement Anders Weberg supplied*
and quite honestly still felt pretty context free, and it’s that very elusiveness
which makes me say I like this and it’s that very elusiveness
which makes me say this bothers me, a lot.

Questions:

# Is the woman drowning, fighting for breath?

# If she is drowning & we find the film in some sense beautiful
are we then complicit in something terrible?

# Or is she frolicking in the water & does the slo-moness &
the sound mislead or, perhaps, just lead us.

# Is the footage appropriated or was it shot especially?

# If yes, was it slow in the original?

# Was the image treated in any way other than (possibly) being slowed down?

# Did either the music or the sound come with the original?

# Either way, is the provenance of music & sound different?

# It sounds like the sound really is the sound of something
(perhaps something terrible, I don’t like to think) happening underwater.
Is it?

# Is there a general lightening of tone just before the end?

# Does she free herself from the water?

# Is she now safe?

# We’re happy because she’s safe. Does this feeling
in us represent a cop out by either filmaker ( if there
are two, the original & the appropriator), a failure to follow
through,a failure of nerve?

# Or is she just leaping from her frolicking in the water,
shaking it from her hair in a kind of elemental ecstacy?

# Why is everything so dark?

# If everything is OK why is everything so dark?

*‘For Sore Eyes is another exploration of the ambivalence of the male
gaze and gendered (dis)order.
It is a suggestive reflection of life in the
pyrotechnic insanitarium of consumerism freedom.
But what really is freedom?’