Parallel Forces

Parallel Forces is an eight-channel video installation commissioned for the exhibition Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences in 2011.

The eight-screen Parallel Forces is Gladwell’s most ambitious exploration of the dual, mirrored image in terms of scale and composition. With four pairs of opposing screens set on the walls of the gallery like a hall of mirrors, it brings together the key elements of the classic ozploitation film – choppers, fast cars, motorcycles, daring physical feats and dramatic locations – and strips them of any cinematic logic or narrative to create a succession of experiments that play with point of view, audience perspective and the limits of speed.

On each set of screens a body/machine performs a series of tightly sequenced manoeuvres in parallel while simultaneously fixing its gaze on its opposite across the gallery corridor. In Parallel 2 x EC 120s (French Island), a cameraman, rigged to a harness attached to the interior of one of two identical Eurocopters, trains his camera on the other helicopter as they both hover above the wetlands and swoop through the rugged terrain of French Island, on Victoria’s south-east coast. The camera captures the impact of the choppers’ movement on the landscape – the brushed grass, the swaying branches. In Parallel 2 x XBs (Silverton) two interceptors (the modified black Ford from George Miller’s Mad Max series) flank each other on the dusty red highways of outback Broken Hill (the Mad Max series location), a cameraman perched on the window with his lens pointed at the vehicle opposite. The car wheels scar the earth with their combined speed and weight, red dust billowing in their wake. On the third set of screens, Parallel 2 x R6s (M5), twin Yamaha YZs speed through Sydney’s M5 underpass. On the last set, Parallel 2 x 4 ABEC 5s (Domain), two skateboarders train their cameras through the transparent barrier between the two travelators under Sydney’s Domain car park, again filming each other.

Caught between these opposing parallels it is impossible for the viewer to calculate the speed and velocity of these bodies and machines. Perfectly matched in their movement and progress towards an unknown entity, there is a sense of movement yet there is no definite evidence that anything is moving at all. As Gladwell describes it: ‘If I were trying to direct a narrative feature with these elements I’d want the film to be the first “ambient” action film… Parallel Forces contains the fragments of a potential action film. It is a series of film sequences reflecting back on itself.’ But this seems to be action that is unencumbered by any narrative framework, explored and enjoyed for its inherent qualities.