Decay, loss and impermanence are the themes of Bill Morrison’s excellent documentary movie Decasia – The state of decay which I watched today.
Made in 2001, this is a hymn to the slow process of decomposition in movie archives. With analogue film, this is a gradual process whereas with digital there is no deterioration, just loss when ‘1’s becomes zeroes.
The connection is a human one; the film stock is degraded to the point that it all but completely destroyed. Out of organic, amoeba-like blobs you glimpse shots of places and people without any context – the only link between the images is that they are all decaying before our very eyes.
In many ways it’s like a visual equivalent of William Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’, where magnetic audio tape was destroyed while being transferred to a digital format.
The score to Morrison’s film couldn’t be more different , however. It is a pulsating, mesmerising work by Michael Gordon vaguely reminiscent of Philip Glass’ score for Koyaanisqatsi.
The film is well worth seeing if only as a reminder that what survives can only be properly understood by what is lost.
