The Diamond (Descartes' Daughter)
Artist
Emily Wardill
(Rugby, England, born 1977)
Date2008
Medium16mm colour print film projection with sound, running time 15 minutes.
ClassificationsTime-Based Media
AcquisitionPurchased in 2009 through the Contemporary Art Society's Acquisitions Scheme for Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, 2008-9.
LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub
Object numberABDAG017131
About MeEmily Wardill was born in 1977 and lives and works in London. She is part of the Collective Boxing Club working from Limehouse Town Hall and co-organises the performance, live music and screening event, Itchy Park. She is also a Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art.In this experimental film work Wardill creates a prismatic theatre of luminous images and fragmented texts. There is a narrative of sorts: the recounting of an apocryphal anecdote relating to the famous French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650), taking the mythical story of the death of his daughter as a starting point to search for her again without the anchor of rational thought. The words are delivered in a mechanical sounding Swedish accent and seem to shatter like a crystal refracting light – the text breaks: sentence fragments are repeated, amended, the voice skipping as though trying to jump a programming error.
This disconcerting narrative runs alongside a visual play - in a thick black visual field, in which a diamond is protected by lasers, images appear of a girl playing on a Nintendo Wii. She wears a leotard marked with tape - a homemade version of the costume that Eitienne Jules Marey would dress his subjects in when conducting chromophotography, through logic experiments. Meanwhile, multidirectional glints of the diamond produce shards of white light against the total ink-black darkness.
The film has been described as lithe and dazzling and certainly it has a resonance that stays with those who enter its space long after they leave the Gallery.
2021
2021
