Empire

In 1964 Andy Warhol made an 8 hour film of the Empire State Building, a continuous shot of the same static image, broken only by the need for reel changes. A one hour excerpt is included on a compilation of short films by Warhol obtainable from Raro Video in Italy or Xploited Cinema in the US. The full 8 hours was projected onto a wall in the South Bank last September, but I missed it. Watching the hour-long version, I was surprised by the amount of activity on screen - I was actually hoping for large parts of the movie that the activity would settle down and I could simply look at the image without being distracted! There are so many processing errors or flaws in the film stock that the subject of the film is as much about the nature of recording and the beauty to be found in its imperfection as it is about the contemplation of commercial or political power. And because there is in spite of all this only one scene to look at, because the star of the film never moves or changes its expression, it is all the harder for the viewer to turn from the screen - I didn't want to miss a single frame unless I missed something important. The Empire State Building glows fiercely in the night, slightly over-exposed. My feelings towards it changed continually, but for the most part it seemed baleful. For the duration of the film its energy is contained within the frame and its power is held in stasis by the camera. The constant flares and laboratory marks seem to testify to the difficulty of keeping its power within bounds - it interferes with the attempt at recording like a ghost in a recorded séance.