Three sequences, three mini-fictions based on the perception of time, cultural signs, and the advertising language that names them and marks out their turf. Three critical reactions relating to schemas of speed, narration and framing inherent to the transmission of motion pictures.

In Fuse, a candle divides the image horizontally, cutting the space into two parts. The time it takes for the candle to burn down, from left to right, is marked by a text that scrolls along the opposite axis (an excerpt from Believe in the Spirit of San-Tan, a 2nd century Zen writer). This metalanguage expresses a few truncated phrases about speech and silence, the human vision of time versus eternity. Timer shows the symbolic signs of temporal representation: the image of the egg timer, the sound of the alarm clock, the voice of the speaking clock. Interpreted symbols, isolated by a language, a phrase, figurative concepts that slide vertically down the length of the object until it is empty. Slow Down varies the speed of scrolling of the words from top to bottom, rendering them too fast or too slow for human perception, concomitantly with the water that runs from a tap until it drips drop by drop. This movement works on the idea of the liquidity of time, of the water drip as a natural timer.  These three sequences play on the variation of objective and subjective perception of discourse, the limits of integration of information for spectators as they are offered to them.

Antoni Muntadas represents the nature and volume of transmission, of our receptivity, just as much as he represents our cultural, historical, spatial and temporal conceptions, all the stereotypes, prototypes, and standards related to the consumer society (such as the saying "time is money").

Stéphanie Moisdon
Translated by Anna Knight