Baltasar Thomas

  • Every Now and Then

    During the making of this film, I realized that the limitations of found-footage film are its strengths. The inability to pursue continuity editing forces you to combine images you would not have in a traditional narrative setup, and produces unexpected results. It converts the editing room into a creative playground where the world you are creating unfolds piece by piece, through every choice you make.

    Perhaps the result can best be described as dreamlike. Logic is not entirely absent, but never its driving force. Meaning is present, but never fixed. I like the idea of dreams being our way of sorting and processing the things we experience during waking life. ‘Every Now and Then’ may have served me in this sense as well. The selection of images was done intuitively, yet somewhere along the way the edit came to resemble a narrative: a boy is witness to the injustice in the world and aspires to help. Yet he is paralyzed by the violence seemingly inherent to his own kind.

    The film reflects doubts I have on the ability of mankind to think of himself as a species (with the aim to survive and prosper as a species), as opposed to thinking of himself as a singular being (that perpetuates conflict with other beings in order to achieve and maintain prosperity for himself). In other words, shifting from a thinking focused on competition, toward a thinking focused on cooperation.

    ‘Every Now And Then’ – SD video (found footage), 8’53, 2017

    Even though I strongly believe the atrocities in the world should be reported and talked about and not neglected or hidden, I’m painfully aware of the fact that the amount of images I’m exposed to on a daily basis, numbs me to their content. War, poverty, death and decay become abstract familiar ‘things’. There’s an al too real danger of becoming cynical and the cynic is difficult to convince to stay focused on prosperity on a scale that expands beyond his immediate surroundings and short-term personal gains.

    I want to believe art has the power to sensitize the desensitized. Either by exposing the mechanisms here described or by using images in new and unexpected ways to enable emotional response. Both methods may clear paths toward enabling the ability to consider an image worth discussing. Discussion may revive ideals.

  • El Ausente

    El Ausente is a short film about a garden that aims to persuade its inhabitants, visitors and onlookers to disengage from thinking about past (events and feelings) and future (desirable states and outcomes) and instead engage with the ever available present.

    Its images are accompanied by a voice that speaks seductively amidst a discordant melody of analogous and disparate sounds. The voice and sounds give shape to an ongoing friction between ambition, indecisiveness and acceptance.

    ‘El Ausente’ (‘The Absent’) – SD-video, 12’35, 2016
    Mira
    Escucha
    El jardin canta
    Que canta?

    No puedes escuchar?
    Tienes algo mejor que hacer?
    Seguro

    Basta
    Basta de buscar    		Look
    Listen
    The garden is singing
    What’s it singing?

    You can’t listen?
    Got something better to do?
    Are you sure?

    Stop
    Stop searching

  • Playground

    A simple objective/experiment/game: go somewhere, anywhere, and observe.

    ‘Playground’ / ‘these streets’) – HD video, 2’47, 2014

    I recorded children playing in a playground. A wide shot of a residential exterior. The shot, and consequently how I manipulated it’s textures and selected which moments to highlight in the edit, serves as a demonstration of two beliefs that central to my understanding of images:

    • a single image contains many different possible narratives and concepts.
    • these narratives and concepts can support one another or be entirely conflicting, depending on the context (among an endless amount of factors, foremostly: the social and cultural background of the viewer and the presentation of the final image/artwork).

    As an example; an image of a children’s playground can become a symbol of the uninhibited life-experience only children have access to, or it can become a symbol of the violence inherent in human nature. It can be a symbol of anything, really. The main point being: meaning is fickle, unsteady – likely to morph by slight nudging into a certain direction.

  • I could have been a dancer

    In November 2014, I was commissioned by dance company Ultima Vez to make a teaser trailer for a show called ‘Tornar’ by performer/choreographer Seppe Baeyens. During this project, I became interested in finding the balance between being a spectator and being a participant. When I’m filming something or someone, I often feel a sort of tension, caused by the fact that my role is ambiguous. I am a spectator/voyeur – yet, at the same time, my presence shapes the event taking place. The camera becomes part of the performance.

    ‘I could have been a dancer’ – HD video, 8’56, 2016’HD video, 8’56, 2016

    I also learned that the way I perceive the things unfolding before my eyes, can be transformed by these very things themselves. And this evolving perception can in turn affect how I handle the camera. Evidently, when one favours this way of ‘working by instinct’, it means taking a lot of risks, aesthetically. In 2015, I used images shot for the Tornar teaser to make a short autobiographical film called I could have been a dancer. In this film, I extended the idea of the ‘camera as performer’ to my approach in editing.

    The function of editing is setting the rules of space and time for the world I’m creating. By exposing the processes of editing (selecting, categorizing and placing frames next to one another or on top of one another), form becomes content.

  • Close Encounters

    I could say that ‘Close Encounters’ followed from the following assignment I gave myself:

    Mark the beginning (A) of a ritual/paradigm/world.
    Mark its ending (B).

    Walk from A to B.
    What do you see?

    Do its inhabitants greet you with open arms? Or do they approach with caution or even, suspicion? The answer is often: both. Your mission is to observe, and so you observe. Yet for some reason, you feel that you’ve failed. You feel alienated. The act of marking point A and point B has rendered you unable to focus on anything other than point A and point B.

    ‘Close Encounters’ – single screen video-installation, no sound, 34’15 loop, 2016

    Return home, gather your thoughts.
    What to do next?

    Return to said ritual/paradigm/world (repeat).

    Start at the ending (B) and walk toward the beginning (A).
    Only this time, walk slower.

    Return home, gather your thoughts (rinse).

    Repeat.

    Rinse and Repeat.
    Rinse and Repeat.

    Something might catch your eye, as the outlining of said world (marked by point A and B) starts to fade.