What are the limits of the catastrophic image? How can trauma and the unthinkable ever be properly represented? How do we give meaning to an event that stops and disrupts time?
In Still Time is an experimental animation that investigates the catastrophic image and spectacle through direct animation of still images onto 16mm film. The film uses still images found on the internet from the current Syrian civil war; these were laser printed directly onto the film, simultaneously abstracting these images and re-animating them. These images are juxtaposed with audio from news sources, interviews and YouTube videos posted by Syrian civilians, activists and journalists on the ground of different events that have taken place during the crisis. Through clues of shape, line, colour, and sound these abstracted images of catastrophe attempt to facilitate questions about the moral imperative to look, our ability or inability to bear witness to unthinkable human suffering and our complicity in the violence documented in the image.