Oliver Hockenhull “Life directs. I perform.”
by Christopher Landry
How would you classify a project like E V O? Do you prefer to call it a film? A video? A media project?
I am not a great believer in classifications for my works. Convergence is not only a hardware issue and the syncretic approach is at times a more viable tactic when considering tangled philosophical and sociological issues. E V O is a video communiqué that, among other things, accommodates some of the modular editing possibilities of the DVD medium as a means to deal with the aggregate of heterogeneous material that radiates from developments in evolutionary theory. It can be screened as a linear film, or presented as an installation as a perpetually changing edit. It can also be further experienced via one’s own PC at a personal pace.
Given these different exhibition possibilities, which is the most common for E V O?
It is commonly screened as a linear work. But it is also picked up by people for personal use.
Is there an ideal one?
Ideally E V O should be presented as a usual linear screening – and also as an installation – in its variable mode – on a wide screen monitor.
Has evolutionary theory always been a research interest for you?
The theory of evolution is, unequivocally, the most informative intellectual schematic for the modern, post-modern, and future eras. It should be a subject taught -like English is taught – at Grade School, High School, and University. So yeah, it has always been a research interest.
How did it come up as the topic for a media work?
Circuitously by way of Aldous Huxley, by way of T. H. Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog), by way of digital artificial life and studies in l-systems (Lindenmayer algorithms) morphogenetic programming, and by the popular science writing of Stephen Jay Gould and Dr. Richard Dawkins.
E V O is a film that blurs the genre of documentary and experimental film. Which do you feel most close to?
Again, I am not so interested in genre filmmaking. Ultimately an “experimental genre” should be considered an oxymoron and it is telling of the state of experimental film that it has devolved into a genre of filmmaking. My intent with E V O is to explore as fully as possible and to the best of my abilities, the complexity of issues arising from my study and research into the topic of contemporary evolutionary theory. I think that both the genre of the documentary and the genre of experimental film are archaic and conservative forms. E V O is devoted to the potentialities of media expression, not to the well worn devices of either type of filmmaking.
There are moments in E V O in which otherwise static “talking head” sequences become manipulated, appearing out of focus and shifting from colour to black and white. Are these interventions a means of making the feature come across as something artificial and constructed? If so, why do you do this?
There are numerous reasons for the use of particular effects – but each effect is used individually as an aesthetic device to support (in one way or another) particular meanings or reveals of the discourse. It is via diverse formal mechanisms by which I can tone the discourse, to layer in additional inflections. The effects are not there to simply expose the audience to the so-called artificial nature of the presentation, it is not simply a means of self-reflexivity of the filmmaking formula, but a responsibility to the tools of the filmmaking process as the language of the cinematic.
E V O is a very sensory film in that the viewer is confronted with an intricate array of imagery, voice-over narration and written text. For you is there a relationship between the sensory aspect of the film and the topic of evolution?
Clearly. As humans are social animals who are dependents of language, and as language has become less the spoken or written word but cinematic representation –
E V O is an assay at immersion of an audience into the imagistically presented latency of the theory of evolution. A geneticist who saw the film and bought a copy of the DVD told me that he felt it captured some of his own understandings and dreams, what was inside his head. That to me, as a filmmaker, was a highly gratifying remark.
Moments in E V O are very academic at times with the dialogue of Oxford professor Dr. Richard Dawkins and paleontologist Dr. Desmond Collins. Contrasting this there’s a wonderful part in which a taxi driver narrates his thoughts on prejudice and happiness. How did this part come about? Was it an actually testimonial as part of another work or was it specifically conceived for E V O?
It was specifically conceived for E V O.
How do you choose your subjects?
Life directs. I perform.