24 Hour Psycho
24 Hour Psycho
Video installation by Douglas Gordon, 1993 Video cassette, video recorder, video projector, semi-transparent fabric (300 x 400 cm or 400 x 600 cm)
24 Hour Psycho is a video installation by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon in 1993, in which he extends the classic movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock on a playing length of 24 hours. He uses to a commercial video cassette of the film, a VCR with continuously variable playback speed, a video projector and a semi-transparent screen (300 x 400 cm or 400 x 600 cm). The total installation occupies a space of at least 5.2 m x 14m x 7m to complete.
Description and interpretation
In his work, he expands a video of the classic film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960 from an original length of 109 minutes and a duration of 24 hours and presents the result to a freestanding room installation. The viewer must be optimal front of the screen looking and appears inevitable even as a shadow in the projection. Through the medium of video, it is different than that of a celluloid film not to breaks between frames, instead use the images very slowly flow into each other.
Due to the very strong expansion of the film material, the images on the screen change only very slowly and it gives the impression of a slowly changing still image, the sound is not to identify. The audience, which is usually familiar with the classic film, thinks himself to the scene and thinks this to supplement it further, without changing the image content. In this way, the past in the form of the previous scenes, in the form of the presence of the still picture and the future in the form of further projected contents are mixed and compacted in the consideration.
Classification in the artist's work
Through the work of 24 hours Psycho the artist Douglas Gordon was known in 1993 with his first exhibitions. The interest for the alienation of cinema icons determined since his oeuvre: 1998 created the idea of The Searchers by John Ford from 1956 to the duration of action of the film, 5 years to extend (5 year drive by ). It was, in the desert of Monument Valley, realized in part on the set of the film.
In other works, the artist makes use of the expanded concept of time and already uses existing footage in the form of so-called cinematic readymades to abstraction. Where the factor of time, together with its memory and expectation also in other works in the foreground.