Liisa Lounila – “Popcorn”
Some months ago I went to see the Liisa Lounila show at the Anthony Wilkinson Gallery. I loved it: I went several times and dragged a few (un)fortunates along with me to see it. I didn’t write about it. I meant to but I had other things on. I’m sorry.
Liisa’s best work is a home-made version of the ‘time slice’ technique which makes Keanu appear to hang in the air while firing his big gun in The Matrix. Lounila uses the technique to appear to move around within still photographs. My favourite is “Popcorn”, a series of images of some young-and-noticeably-not-un-pretty friends of Liisa having a popcorn fight to the tune of some clunky, lovely melanchtronica. The camera seems to be inside the shots, making three dimensions from the kind of images we’re used to seeing in two.
I haven’t managed to shake “Popcorn” since I saw it this spring, I’ve kept remembering it and I wasn’t sure why. Until this morning, thinking about how the hope and excitement of Euro 2004 seems like a ridiculous dream now, how excitement at that goal (or that other goal, or whatever) seems absurd now the story, that part of the story which belonged to me in some way, has been written and finished. And I thought that “Popcorn” reminded me of how my own memories can feel (do yours?), odd half-mobile snapshots.
And I thought “there’s no real point writing about a show which finished months ago” but I’m delighted to say that Liisa Lounila has a website at which you can see “Popcorn”, only slightly spoiled by being a tiny quicktime window rather than a whole wall in a darkened room. You can also see the other film which showed at Wilkinson, “Play”, which is probably too glamorous to count as one of my memories. Click on ‘works’, in the top right corner. If you want.