Tacita Dean

Obsolescence is perhaps the concept that most concerns Tacita Dean. The artist dwells on specific details of reality, preferring to investigate how, while being present, certain facts, events or people seems to pertain to the past. Suspended in an autonomous temporal dimension, her works are like documents of what came before, evidence gathered before the complete disappearance of the memory. The techniques the artist adopts are intentionally not those of present day technology, but, on the contrary, favor methods and materials that are no longer easily available. Amadeus (swell consopio), 2008, documents the journey through the Channel of a small fishing boat named the Amadeus. The film, silent and shot on 16-millimeter film, begins in France, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in pre-dawn darkness. Recording the slow, rocking progress of the boat, the film continues until its arrival at Folkestone, in England. The latter location is both the place where the artist spent her childhood and a port that has become partially abandoned since a drastic decrease in the traffic of ferryboats crossing the Channel, due to the new underwater tunnel.

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