Alia Pathan - Empty Vessels

About

September 14th sees the opening of Max Warburg Space's inaugural exhibition: Empty Vessels by Alia Pathan, which has been commissioned for the 2010 Tethervision Commissions. Empty Vessels explores dialogue as an artifice to contradict an image. Using dialogue to create narratives that alter in structure and meaning, the work challenges the viewer to construct an ordered and convincing reality, reconsidering what they believe to be true and false. Our acceptance of the diegetic - the world within the screen - is continually challenged. In addition to interrogating the conventions of narrative each scene weaves and cascades into the next, destabilising our perception of linear time. Empty Vessels follows four characters; two detectives, a film editor and a producer, who each attempt to piece together a mystery in order to solve an overarching dilemma. Presenting a chicken-and-egg debate, the links between the two dilemmas become increasingly apparent and evermore entangled. Pathan's work embraces digital technological advancements with high production values. The cinematic aesthetic pays homage to storytelling on screen as a way of conveying messages and to the audience for creating meaning themselves.