Fiona Banner - film descriptions

Fiona Banner, Apocalypse Now, 1997, installation view (above) and detail (below).

Fiona Banner produced a series of works, in the late 90s, which transcribed deadpan descriptions of a series of films on giant canvases (the kind of size and shape we might expect of a movie screen itself). The long lines of (handwritten) text made the narrative difficult to follow, and engage us in a curious play of looking and reading, frustrated narrative expectation, time and immediacy. Banner's texts describing a number of Vietnam-war movies were turned into a thousand-page book, THE NAM,  and also a twenty-hour audio book. (The films she describes, back to back, would be only 11 hours!)