The story came off is a two-screen videoinstallation produced in 2005 which uses as its starting-point a collection of old, 8mm film containing private, domestic recordings of a family´s birthdays, weddings, Christmas evenings and general homelines in 1960’s USA. What we are dealing with here is 8mm film which, in a peculiar way, has moved from the private sphere to a public auction where all kinds of used items are sold. I bought the collection of 8mm film on the internet auction site ebay and it therefore comprises the central element in my video project.

Another important component of the project is a group of narratives which I have built up around historical facts relating to street riots and civil rights activism in 1960’s USA. This, at times very violent, information is tied to the old 8mm footage via extracts from an idealistic 1960’s manifesto, written by Students for a Democratic Society, plus some anecdotal passages which I have composed. The extracts from the student manifesto have been changed into past tense instead of the original present tense, in order to evoke the right historic feeling.

It is clear that the function of the narratives is to complement and set into sharp perspective the nostalgic tendencies of the audience. The content of the project narratives, which take the form of a voice-over on the soundtrack, lie far-removed from the content which the project images in the 8mm footage show. There is a huge contrast between the footage and the historical facts which are presented in the narratives and which were a part of the society at the time the film footage was taken. While the audience experiences the project, they increasingly relate the narratives to the images.
When one experiences the video project, one attempts to connect the idealistic narrative text to the images and the connection is made even more clear through my brief, fictional, anecdotal touch. In this way, the project begins to draw attention to the difference between the public and the private sphere, and the distance between idealistic and domestic activity.

During the process and as a part of the project, the old 8-mm films, along with their narratives, find their way back to a member of the family that had originally recorded this footage of birthdays, weddings, Christmas evenings and general homeliness. The man who sold the films to me on ebay had no knowledge of the family from which the films originate. Many 8-mm films are sold through error as part of the estate of a dead person, or go missing when an old loft is tidied up all too hastily, and via middle men they end up on all kinds of flea-markets for used items. In the 1960’s, once one had shot some film footage, one packed the film reel in a little box which was then sent to Kodak to be developed. One wrote one’s name and address on the outside of the box and when the film was developed, Kodak sent it back in the same box. When I bought the collection of 8-mm films on ebay, the old names and addresses were still on the small boxes. I searched in the telephone book for these names and through this method managed to find a woman from the family that had made the many domestic films. I contacted her and presented her with the narratives which I had created and which I believed could function together with the old, private film footage from her family. I had a lengthy email exchange with her, and her comments on my narratives are, together with the stories themselves, a part of the soundtrack, which two actors have made as a voice-over.

The project has been shown at The Busan Biennale in Korea in 2008, at Galleri54 in Sweden in 2007, at Rooseum, Malmö in Sweden, in 2006, at Århus Kunstbygning in 2006, and at the Ude og Hjemme (Home and Away) exhibition at Overgaden, Copenhagen in 2005. The project is supported by The Danish Arts Council Committee for Visual Arts and Århus Kommunes Kulturudviklingspulje.

Sixten Therkildsen