Guy Ben-Ner, still from “Soundtrack” (2013), color video with sound, 11 min, 12 sec
CHICAGO — Typical American movie moments of heightened tension use signal sounds in tandem with the emotions portrayed by the actors on screen. The family dog knocks over a precious antique plate, and an ominous tune rolls in to signify that the pup is about to get in trouble. Dad arrives home only to catch his adolescent daughter in the act — a sharp, shrill note strikes just as he opens the door to her bedroom. In the world of Guy Ben-Ner’s “Soundtrack” (2013), the opposite types of moments occur, representing a shift in the notions of a family “drama.” For the piece, Ben-Ner appropriated eleven minutes of the soundtrack for Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds, a sci-fi disaster film, and shot images of his family in the kitchen to match it. He calls the process “budding,” rather than the dubbing of an audio track, and it upends the traditional Hollywood action movie narrative.
“In ‘Soundtrack,’ the idea was to reverse the usual American film projection — the world as a projection of family drama — into the situation where the world is projected into the family,” says Ben-Ner.
Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/67595/guy-ben-ner-chicago-soundtrack/
