Pasolini loop Video/Installation (1999)

The video installation Pasolini Loop, 1997-99. On entering the church like space, the viewer was immediately assaulted by image and sound, with videos simultaneously projected onto three walls and the ceiling. Where was the sound coming from? Why were the images distorted? At what point in the narrative were we? In fact, the artist had recut Pasolini’s 1975 film Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom, into three short, interconnected stories, and projected them at different angles to create distortions; only one segment had sound at any given time. In the original film, Pasolini reimagined Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom in Fascist Italy, a super-imposition that is not easy to bear. For Hansen, re-editing the film presented “a series of problems: ideological, historical, aesthectical, moral, and cinematographic.” He regards the resulting narratives as “meditations rather than commentaries, which reconcile me with the film that shows what cannot be shown.” The “loop” in Hansen’s title evokes the eternal return.