FILM stills

Tacita Dean’s FILM stills stem from her 2011 work FILM, which was commissioned to be exhibited in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. FILM stills’ primary focus is the exploration of film both as medium and as object. Incited by the riddle-like allegory of René Daumal’s novel Mount Analogue (1952), a vast mountain only visible to those who believe in its existence, FILM (and by extension FILM stills) beckons the viewer to become a believer. Herself a believer in analogue (versus digital), and in the handcraft of film, Dean wrote that with this work she strove to “revive spontaneity and risk,” showing “film as film can be.”