RAZZLE DAZZLE the Lost World

Ken Jacobs is a virtuoso. Yes, a magician in changing, distorting, disrupting and renewing existing film images. They may be his own film images, but also the oldest cinematographic archive material. For RAZZLE DAZZLE the Lost World he set off from an early film by Thomas Edison for an adventurous journey through time and celluloid. The real maker was A.C. Abadie, who worked for Edison’s company. The film dates from 1903 and it is a recording of people in a turning fairground attraction. As if through a microscope, Jacobs investigates each movement and each cell in the material that comes to life in his hands. In addition he uses other historic pictures, such as so-called stereoptic photos suggesting depth in his story about a ‘lost world’. That qualification does not only refer to life at the beginning of the twentieth century, but primarily also to the cinematographic medium he is investigating.
As in a visual dance, the work is full of repetitions that have a consciously allaying effect and that turn the original documentary material into what you’re more likely to call a hallucination.
The film takes its time – and space, you could say – to thoroughly deconstruct the old images and give them new life. A life full of mystery and hidden meanings. (GjZ)

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