| . | Marie Jager, The Purple Cloud, 2006, 10'09" |
| . | The Purple Cloud is named after and inspired by a novel from 1901 by the writer M.P. Shiel. It tells of a cloud of poisonous dust erupting from a volcano in South East Asia and then going around the globe, killing all living beings, apart from one man. The story is typical Victorian science fiction but is also related to a real happening, Krakatau, the first "global" event at the start of the industrial revolution. The film focuses on three scenes that have captured the artist's imagination: the character who survives after reaching the North Pole, his journey back home and his subsequent realization that the whole world had gathered in Norway and the North Sea. The film is made using direct cut-outs from the book, a collage on Xerox backgrounds relating to the locations of the book, characters and objects from magazines and contemporary music. The Purple Cloud is a "cine povera" type of film with an abstract, minimal use of fiction that employs limited resources in a highly efficient way. In a steady rhythm and laconic flow of images it makes us aware of a world formerly composed of difference, a diversity that is no less at risk than the natural world. |
| . | Marie Jager (b. 1975 in Copenhagen, Denmark) lives and works in Los Angeles. |