The Starfish from Kalle Hamm on Vimeo.
DV PAL 16:9 15,38 min, 2009
The Starfish is a remake of Man Ray’s surrealistic film L’Ètoile de mer which was made in Paris 1928. It’s based on Robert Desnos’s surrealistic poem which he wrote under hypnosis. He read this poem to Man Ray in the bar. The both were completely drunk. Man Ray got immediately a vision how the poem should be transformed into a film. Unfortunately Robert Desnos was about to leave abroad in few days. They asked Man Ray’s lover, Kiki, and his neighbour to act in film. Man Ray guided them to act like dolls. Some additional footages were shot after Desnos’s leave and after that Man Ray edited the final version.
The Starfish is the first part of the series of video works exploring question of authenticities. A seeing of art is always making an interpretation of it. Every interpretation is unique and different and in the endless cycles of interpretations the original art work is wiped out and transformed something very different than it was in the beginning.