'Suspended Animation' 2008
The project was done in collaboration with Judith Lyons and Julia Curtin
Incorporating freeze-frames from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, “The Shining”, as well as photographs of props and costumes used in the film, the images reflect the artists’ personal response to Kubrick’s film and to the physical conditions of The Kubrick Archive.
Created using a combination of back projection and still photography, the images address issues of time, duration, memory, isolation and preservation. The images reflect not only the themes running through Kubrick’s film, and Stephen King’s novel of the same name, but the artists’ own ideas and feelings about the role and concept of the archive.
Within the archival space of the glass vessel, as in The Shining’s fictitious Outlook Hotel, characters and objects are isolated, frozen and preserved in a state of suspended animation “for ever and ever”.
The artists would like to acknowledge the generous help and assistance provided by Sarah Mahurter, Richard Daniels and the team at The Stanley Kubrick Archive, which is permanently housed within the University Archives and Special Collections Centre at the London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle.
Images from The Shining are the copyright of Warner Brothers and the Kubrick Estate.