“The Flooded Rooms”
The Flooded Rooms explores the extreme forces of nature on mankind and it’s environments. This 4-minute film leads the viewer through a series of flooded rooms where it appears that nature has taken over the interiors created by mankind and claimed them as it’s own new landscape. Empty of their former inhabitants, their serenity seems almost normal.
Unlike Langan’s previous film work, which has always been shot in existing environments and landscapes, The Flooded Rooms is shot in created environments. These maquettes were built by the artist while doing a 2-month residency at Moly Sabata, on the Rhone, France from August – September 2005. The Flooded Rooms is inspired by the studio’s proximity to the river, but also mirrors Langan’s sand-filled rooms in her 2001 film Too Dark for Night. Langan’s familiar use of hand-painted glass filters used in front of the camera lens aid in blurring the boundaries between the real and the unreal. The use of exaggerated slow motion in the film has an almost hypnotic quality with the moving water as well as the effect of extending time.
There has always been a crossover between photography, film and painting within Langan’s practice. The use of hand-painted filters and lens attachments employs a very site-specific approach, as well as an obvious reference to painting. Each shot in the film is taken through specifically fabricated hand painted filters, altering the image as it comes into the camera. Its is accompanied by an original score by Jurgen Simpson.
