Telling Tales

Description:

Telling Tales is a single-channel, twenty-eight-minute colour video by Elizabeth Chitty, produced while in residence at Western Front.

Following Chitty’s interest in how information is conveyed, Telling Tales takes a look at narrative without attempting to structure a narrative. Various narrative aspects and devices are examined: an incomplete introduction of a “she” who decides to organize the facts of her life; the life story of someone named Simon; a history of current events framed as a quiz; a lip-sync rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s disco narrative “I Will Survive” (1978); a look at a photo news magazine; a telephone conversation that gets re-recorded, fast forwarded, and still-framed; a list of statements and questions involving cause and effect, and more. 

The tape ends with Chitty donning a trench coat and sunglasses. Before exiting the set, she lights a cigarette and addresses the camera, asserting: “She was always telling tales.”

Telling Tales was Chitty’s first video work to exist outside the context of performance, although she often engaged video in her previous dance and performance works.

The cast included Charlie Rae, Mary Jane Way, Carolyn Simmons, Hugh Poole, Marco Wanjon, Allen, Lily Cups, and Cornelia Wyngaarden.