Marie Shannon

The Rooms in the House (2016)

15 min 53 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Silent

"Following 'What I am Looking at' (2011) and 'The Aachen Faxes' (2012), this video work takes the form of text on a black background to tell the story of a house and family. The works act as a trio; a complementary grouping that can be shown together or separately and which now includes the whole family. Each is a natural extension of the others, and though they all use serif fonts and first person narration, they’re subtly different. The text of What I Am Looking At scrolls up the screen like movie credits as we hear Marie’s voice reading out loud to us, whereas in The Aachen Faxes it is Julian’s words that appear, fading in and out to the soundtrack of a slow, deep cello. Conversely, The Rooms in the House is silent, and while its text fades in at first, it then cuts sharply to the next sentence, precisely timed to match how long it takes for Marie to read it out loud. Until now Leo has been a background character, but here his voice is brought into the conversation, with his contributions marked by a subtle shift in text colour from white to baby pink."

Alice Tappenden

Other works in this series

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