Visual art / Inferno, by Mikaela Stafford. At National Film and Sound Archive, until November 16. Reviewed by SOPHIA HALLOWAY.
You enter Mikaela Stafford’s audiovisual installation at the National Film and Sound Archive by passing through a curtain, like stepping over a threshold into another world.
Your first encounter is with five tall transparent panels, etched with text. The panels are layered one in front of the other, causing the text to overlap. The structure of the text is akin to poetic stanzas – perhaps a nod to Dante’s Inferno, a core influence of Stafford’s installation – but none of the prose corresponds precisely with the 14th century poet’s epic.
The viewer can capture glimpses of meaning from these words but it is difficult to discern a full narrative, which sets the tone for Stafford’s Inferno.
Stepping around the panels, you discover an enigmatic three-legged figure, organic and otherworldly. The figure is luminous. The surface it stands on – secretion or rocky landscape? – captures echoes of the moving image behind it.
The centerpiece of Inferno is the durational work that spans a 12-metre screen at the rear of the gallery space. Stafford has used 3D animation, complemented by a techno score by electronic composer Kate Durman, to produce a hyperreal narrative that plays out in silvery monochrome.
A mysterious figure, shrouded in billowing fabric, traverses a foreign landscape, sometimes barren, other times swarming with plant life.
The effect is trance-inducing. The seven-minute duration is over quickly, like a dream which seems to stretch on forever but in fact only lasted a few minutes.
Meaning is as difficult to deduce as that of our own dreams, but one shouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to interpret meaning too literally – this installation asks more questions than it answers.
The commission was developed during Stafford’s residency at the NFSA, and includes nods to classical literature, popular culture and the NFSA’s own collection.
Beyond Dante’s Inferno, Stafford has referenced contemporary and archival film and production materials, such as props and costumes, from the NFSA’s own collection. Stafford draws on the cinematography and themes of films such as Dark City (1998), The Mystical Rose (1976) and Metropolis (1927) to create her own world.
The commission is an engaging device to activate the NFSA’s collection, drawing out the continuing relevance of historical film collections, their influence on contemporary filmmaking and artistic practice, and the enduring questions they seek to answer about humanity, as our lives become increasingly mediated through a screen.
Stafford’s Inferno interprets this particular descent into hell as a spiritual journey that we can emerge from, transformed. In doing so, Stafford probes at the increasingly tenuous distinctions between our biological and digital worlds, interpreting our past and imagining our futures.
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