JUST A DREAM by Gordon Culshaw | UK | 2021 

Duration: 00:01:34

A range of iconic movies which use the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop are edited together. The protagonist in each film suddenly realizes that Abraham Lincoln has been removed and just an empty chair remains.

DIRECTOR, ARTIST : Gordon Culshaw

CONTACTS / LINKS : https://gordonculshaw.net @gordonculshaw 

SOURCES: Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939); The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); Planet of the Apes (2001); The Handmaids Tale (2019); March on Washington archive footage  (1963)

The Lincoln Memorial has featured as the backdrop to a number of era defining speeches. It has also formed the backdrop to a number of iconic Hollywood movies. A selection of scenes from some of those cinematic pieces and some archive news footage have been woven together in this short video montage.

Perhaps there is an attempt to ponder to what extent our own personal understanding and a wider collective conscience might in some way be shaped by an unconscious merging of news footage and cinematic images. Is cinematic representation influenced by historical events or is our understanding of historical events shaped by our familiarity with a canon of cinematic images.

In each frame of each shot, Lincoln’s statue has been painstakingly removed, as if to ask, who or what has the capacity to alter our collective memory and understanding of history?

The title references Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. The video features some archive news footage from the 1963, March on Washington.

Artist statement
I am interested in modes of cultural representation and ways in which individuals choose to create their own personal reality by relating themselves to different combinations of cultural artefacts. With the breakdown of the subject/object dialectic, we now, wittingly or unwittingly, increasingly rely on technology and the objects it creates as a means to define ourselves as subjects. Much of my work is informed by Flusser’s idea that ‘although technology is a tool which does what we want it to do, we can only want what technology can do’.

A lot of my recent work is video based: the found footage I use often coming from iconic cinema used in a way that attempts to understand how the productions might have shaped and created a particular sense of cultural identity. I am interested by the degree to which our understanding of history is influenced, not only by how it is portrayed in the cinematic process, but also by the decisions as to which episodes of our national history need to be told. These decisions, made by writers, directors but ultimately studio or corporate heads are based, not only on perceived values and preconceptions of the audience, but perhaps more importantly on a desire to maintain a particular societal view of our role as a nation.

Bio
Gordon Culshaw is a UK based artist, interested in how an individual’s collection of cultural artefacts is used to create an identity.

He looks at everyday objects, and, in searching for new ways in which they can be used, attempts to understand their position in a hierarchy of cultural artefacts and our relationship to them. Much of his recent work is video based, the found footage he uses often coming from iconic cinema used in a way that attempts to understand how the productions might have shaped and created a particular sense of cultural identity.

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