Temple of Hercules, work in progress. Rough edit.
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This is a rough, illustrative edit of the project Temple of Hercules.

The footage for Temple of Hercules was shot during a residency in Celje, Slovenia in 2009. Whereas in 10 Monologues I used unedited 30 metre rolls of film, for this film I worked with layering and montage, focusing on the contrast between the regular, repeated geometric forms of the city, and natural forms in the countryside just outside: flowers and fruit, paths through long grass. On the hills above the city, these forms came together in a ruined Roman temple.

I subsequently wrote the voiceover and recorded it in a number of acoustic environments in Belfast. It is spoken by artist Helen Sharp.

The original film was accompanied just with the ambient soundtrack recorded in Celje and the voiceover. In 2015, I added music by Stuart Watson; this is a processed sound derived from the chords of the piano and violin version of Arvo Pärt’s ‘Fratres’.

A further iteration of the piece is envisaged as a performance in which all the elements are combined live: the video clips are arranged in sequences that are cued and mixed live (as with I Burn For You), the voiceover is spoken by an actor following specific visual cues, the chords of ‘Fratres’are played live by a pianist and all the audio elements are processed by a sound technician.

In this edit, the video loop is 10 minutes in length. The footage is currently ungraded.

© Daniel Jewesbury

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