‘A Complexity of Specialists’ Three New Films by Faye Heller
Faye Heller’s three films offer a register of contemporary English industrial society, of its capitalist and consumer core, through documenting the concealed and oft-forgotten labour that lies behind the goods we consume. Although Heller’s films are obviously concerned with production, finished objects are noticeably absent; it is the unformed and the unfashioned that provides her subject matter. In the mesmerising, ‘Going My Way’, Heller captures a Mini’s body being slowly spun around to the horizontal. Similarly, in the chthonic ‘Body Workshop’ we witness a procession of Minis set amidst subterranean pyrotechnics, as mechanised arms work on the car frames. In both films, then, we are presented with empty shells, while in the half-light of Heller’s second piece these are barely visible and are thus unidentifiable as Minis. This concern with process over product is emphasised in ‘The Sniffer’ where the commodity itself is completely missing – there is no beer here - as the film instead shows empty barrels being checked over. Heller underscores this further as she reserves the single zoom in her series of films for a barren drum.
It is the particular that Heller captures in her three films. We are shown certain aspects of processes: mechanised arms welding Mini carapaces and ‘the sniffer’ illuminating recently steamed beer barrels with a phosphorescing rod. Her films thus encourage us to contemplate the primal scenes of production and to recognise the (specific) labour that has gone into the items we consume. Indeed, prompted by John Windham’s classic dystopic novel The Day of the Trifids (1951), Heller’s analysis illuminates how English society is (in Wyndham’s words) ‘a complexity of specialists all attending to their own jobs with more or less efficiency, and expecting others to do the same’. The form of the films enhances her subject matter: the camera does not rove but is (mostly) held static, thus emphasising particular details over narrative or teleology.
Heller’s films also document the changing industrial landscape of England (from the inside). The sorts of heavy manufacturing Heller presents have been in steady decline for years, as businesses migrate abroad in search of cheaper labour and overheads, and are replaced by the growth of intelligence industries. We are thus further removed from the origins of what we consume since most products now available on the English market are stamped ‘made in Taiwan’. (The Mini is, of course, owned and manufactured by BMW). Although the brewery in Wandsworth is still British-owned it moved sites shortly after Heller shot her footage, imbuing ‘The Sniffer’ with a different sort of longing. These strains of nostalgia are complimented by Heller’s choice of medium – all three are shot in Super 8 - which is itself gradually being usurped by the rise of digital film.
Heller’s three pieces, however, are lent a sinister edge when considered alongside recent photomontages. In the ‘Works Desire’ series Heller juxtaposes and superimposes close ups of fragmented female body parts – eroticised facets of femininity such as legs, bottoms and breasts - with stills from her films. In these pieces the production of traditional accoutrements of masculinity – beer and cars – are aligned with the construction of the white female body. Embedded in Heller’s social commentary, then, one can detect, if not a feminist critique, then a dis-ease with the construction and consumption of normative femininity. This is most obvious in the second film, whose title ‘Body Work’, gestures to body modification treatments, most obviously the flesh welding of plastic surgery. Like cars, we are to infer, breasts, legs and bottoms are (literally) moulded for the caress of the male hand.
Fiona Phillip
2007 Return to Articles, Reviews and Events index |