Peter Gidal
2003 
25mins Colour 16mm 

Volcano, half hour, silent, shot on 16mm on a volcano in Hawaii..the film attempts to deal iwth those qustions of representation that persist as problematic, for me, for the basic questions of aesthetics, what it is to view, how to view the unknownm as to view the known is not possibly a viewing.

The question of recognition, the impossibility of recognition or, better said, the impossibility of a viewer viewing at all if it is predicated upon recognition..at that moment, you the viewer i the viewer am no longer part of a process, a material however metaphysical or not process of making meaning through the conflicts of perception of something..in this film volcano light's afterimage, the shot of light after image, becomes as obliterative as dark's.. thereby the temporal break caused by transparent leader, and by black leader, becomes differently spatial and temporal, as to the "something missing"..

and there are or are meant to be in all this particular, specific differences to be experienced in the "breaks" and "interruptions" caused by light versus those caused by darkness..in relation to specific film-questions of space, questions of time...for example in relation to lacunae (emptiness), nonlacunae (the represented real)..such philosophical aesthetic involvements..

nothing is "missing" except the ability to "cohere" a viable realism..

From a statement by Peter Gidal, 2003.