Sections of a Happy Moment, by David Claerbout

"Sections of a Happy Moment (2007) depicts a single moment in the life of a Chinese family on an sunlit square, surrounded by clean social housing. The figures - grouped in a circular composition around a ball hanging in midair - have been caught in an intimate family moment by a multitude of photo cameras, placed all around the scene slideshow: the sucession of images that circumscribe "place" gradually delete expectations for movement. As the slideshow progresses the playfulness of the moment becomes like heavy, cast matter. Indeed the scene hands in its momentaneous lightness for a feeling of being controlled like propaganda. As often in David Claerbout's work duration is an important tool for altering what we see, unlocking the flow of time from a fixed situation. Despite fragmentation there is continuity, or is it that despite continuity everything is fragmented? The piano solo soundtrack, no doubt creates a smoothening feeling, like one can find in home made family album-videos, recognisable by "everybody", from China to the West." (text from the CAM Lisboa 2008 exhibition catalogue)

I was first surprised to find out the the film was not to be one, but a collection of images, it turns out 180 photographs taken by an army of cameras positioned around the scene. The ball that has been thrown adds to the impression of moment caught in time. It is very interesting how we try to impose time on the images even after we realize they are frames of the same split second. Thinking moves on a time-line, it is difficult to accept the concept of a multitude of different views - truths of the same moment. As many truths as there are eyes to see them. Is this aspect, the only points of view missing are those of the characters in this Happy Moment. They enclose their own views, we are not alowed to see through them. The size and space of the square only increase the feeling of strangeness, almost of leaving your own body and watching things from above. Unforgivable, for me, was the fact that the exibition catalogue did not mention composer or interpreter of the soundtrack that slides us, viewer, through this frozen time experience. Propaganda, politics, China and social housing could be an issue, but the punch of suspended existence and the many eyes manage to supersede all other musings.