Dana Berman Duff

The finale of the "Catalogue" series: A cockroach, a woman, a dramatic encounter in a closet— from the roach's point of view. Inspired by "The Passion According to G.H." (1964) by Clarice Lispector. Chicago sound artist A.J. McClenon was commissioned to “play” the empty house by knocking, pounding, scraping different surfaces.

What does it mean to decipher History in the making? Here is the “potentiality” at stake in Dana Berman Duff’s film, developed in two movements. First movement: words, framed in extreme close-up shots, cut out from what appears to be a newspaper page, as can be guessed from the greyish, see-through paper and the black ink of the printed letters. Words read in silence, traces of the rumble of international news. Second movement: how can one testify, bear witness for the witness, as Celan says? When they were prisoners at Theresienstadt concentration camp, now known as a showcase and an instrument of propaganda meant to hide the reality of extermination, musician Viktor Ullmann and librettist Peter Kien, who were later killed in Auschwitz, composed an opera in 1943-44: Der Kaiser von Atlantis.

Catalogue is a series of 16mm films and videos that consider the time it takes to look at desirable objects, in this case, the objects for sale in a mainstream furniture catalogue of knockoff designs. Catalogue Vol. 4 takes the “Lighting” catalogue as its subject and uses a pulse of electronic sound and light to rep- resent each fixture, shot in the order that they were found in the original catalogue. The intervals of black were derived by a matter of taste: items that the filmmaker found less appealing were excised from the sequence.

Catalogue Vol. 6 was shot using a furniture catalogue while audio clips from a horror movie that mention the word “house” or names of rooms, or parts of the house, such as “upstairs,” played in the studio so that each shot acquired a random soundtrack. The lm clips were then organized as a “tour” through the rooms of a house: foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, study, bath, ending at the bedroom.

Takes as its subject the "Rugs" volume of the commercial catalogue and uses diegetic sound (actual sound in the space) to expose, in contrast to the silent images of constructed rooms, the room behind the camera. In addition, the center fold of the catalogue takes on importance as a visual clue as to the true dimensionality of the image.

Dana Berman Duff uses black-and-white 16mm to heighten the staged romanticism of a commercial catalogue's dreamily desaturated photos of designer furniture knock-offs.