A camera track is installed in an specific landscape. Two persons in dialog with each other sit on one end of this track at a table facing each other. A camera pointed in the direction of the two people moves on the track at a very slow speed continously back and forth.
When the camera is at the far end of the track, mostly landscape is being recorded, the track itself and on its end rather small the two people talking. The camera cannot record their dialog at that distance, but it willl record all other surrounding sounds. As the camera moves forward, the landscape slowly passes and the speakers come closer. At the close end of the track their hands and part of the table are seen.
Only in the last third of one way the camera microphon is able to record what they speak about.
A dialog can last from three to six hours. It is not meant for a public audience during the recording. The dialog itself is a searching process. Two people describe their work processes to each other, different worlds, different perspectives are being looked at. They decide when the talk is finished.
For exhibition the track is installed in a gallery with a projector mounted on the track.
It will be moving back and forth as the camera did, and the projected image will change size and focus accordingly.
Only, the projector will run in the opposite direction: the wide landscape is a small and sharply projected image, a postcard of a landscape.
As the projector moves away, the image enlarges and it will slowly lose it’s focus.
Parallel to the loss of focus, we begin to hear what is being spoken.
Dialog > Bruna Esposito/Penelope Wehrli, September ’06, Pescara Italy.