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Mark Aerial Waller

Mark Aerial Waller
Superpower - Dakar Chapter, 2004
DV
14:00 minutes
Courtesy Rodeo, Istanbul

 

Born in High Wycombe, UK, 1969BIO (PDF)

Mark Aerial Waller is represented by:
Rodeo, Istanbul

 

Superpower - Dakar ChapterReferentially dense and elliptical in form, Superpower-Dakar Chapter has the disjointed feel of a TV soap opera crossed with West African budget horror movie genre. On closer inspection however, Superpower-Dakar Chapter reveals itself as a science fiction film of sorts. Shot entirely in the expanding modernist cityscape of the Senegalese capital of Dakar, the film unfurls a tangled scientific/fictional narrative emerging from three stars in the astronomical belt of Orion, and anthropomorphised in the form of three professors: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, played by local television stars Nideye Thiaba Diop, Ousseynou Bissichi and Dakar based artist Hassan Ndiaye.

Opening with fuzzy, colour-saturated computer animations, an introductory passage to the film presents the popular internet show Star Hustler. The star hustler provides insight into the constellation 'Orion the Hunter', the three central stars, and light travel in general. Aerial Waller uses this astronomic information to underpin the central idea of the film; that light we see on earth takes thousands of years to reach us, and is effectively a window into the past. In the unfolding narrative, we follow the three professors as they prepare to run interference on an extraterrestrial particle cloud causing temporal disturbances on earth. Aerial Waller's characters slip in and out of multiple time streams, creating a psychological landscape in which fantasy and documentary become almost interchangeable. Traditional storytelling is eschewed and narrative is built solely through awkwardly acted transitional moments, stripping away the stars and constellations, and transforming into a portrait, a representation of the fluid mutability 21st Century Dakar has become.

Superpower-Dakar Chapter adopts the position of the alienated viewer, interrupting cinematic conventions with Brechtian narrative devices, multiple cultural reference points and simultaneous timeline slippage. Waller's interest in transcending cultural position, is hinted at in the film's title: 'Dakar Chapter', an oblique reference to the Hell's Angels, nomadic outsiders who refer to their separate global branches as 'Chapters'. Aerial Waller reconfigures and at times perverts traditional filmic logic, producing disjointed, psychological time travelogues in which fact and fiction, past, present and future blur.

Exhibitions
Counter Gallery, London 2004
Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples. 2007