Vignettes of the Prepocalypse
‘Vignettes of the Prepocalypse’ is a two-screen video installation by Jan Nagle and Brian Milbrand. Created as a two channel installation, the videos face each other with similar scenarios shot at the same locations. The viewer, standing between the two projections, is unable to see both images fully at the same time. The two characters make their way through dilapidated, abandoned industrial landscapes that leave the viewer wondering if they are watching pre-apocalyptic paranoid delusions of doom, post apocalyptic tableaux, or daydreams/memories of what the world was like before the cataclysm. Shot on hand-processed super-8 film, including one of the last rolls of Kodachrome [which was lab-processed at Dwayne’s Photographic in the very last historical batch of Kodachrome processing], the installation focuses on film as a dying medium, heading into its own apocalypse, ultimately and ironically digitized for projection. The characters are played by the artists themselves, perhaps embodying film itself facing physical doom, or perhaps simply coming to terms with the inevitable loss of their chosen medium.