Visible Inventory 6: Motel Dissolve (1978)
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Visible Inventory 6: Motel Dissolve is a space of time filled with moving ... the camera coolly surveys the interiors of motel rooms in which the filmmaker stayed during semi-annual transcontinental auto trips. Superimposed over the screen image are the names of the towns in which the rooms are located and the car's odometer reading at each location. Otherwise, these homogenous accommodations lack locational cues.
The sound track consists of two Gertrude Stein texts: American I Came and Here I Am and American Food and American Houses, both from 1935. The film counterpoints printed word, spoken text, and photographs giving the viewer the alternate options of reading, viewing and listening. Funded in part by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council. running time: 14 min. color optical sound 16mm film available for rental as 16mm optical sound film or digital file from http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=1578 |
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"To celebrate the 2025 screening of Visible Inventory Six: Motel Dissolve at Xcentric in Barcelona, Francisco Algarín Navarro translated the incredible chapter "Making America Strange Again", which forms part of Jordis Lau's book Appropriations of Literary Modernism in Media Art, in which it addresses in depth the relationship that the film establishes between the two accompanying texts, "I Came and Here I Am" and "American Food and American Houses", both published in 1935 by Gertrude Stein, the writing and personality of Stein herself and the successive rooms of different motels we see in the film. It all makes for a fascinating questioning about the idea of identity or culture in America and Europe through concepts like home or food. " F.A. Navarro
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