Oen Doen Den

Video projection

Duration: 4 minutes:

 

 

Oen Doen Den iis a short artist’s film projection designed for an entirely blacked-out space. The film explores overlaps between conventions of the horror-movie and representations of childhood through an intensified visual and aural rendition of the Danish ‘nonsense’ nursery rhyme: ‘oen doen den’. The film is structured by a set of simple juxtapositions: silence is broken by sudden eruptions of sounds, stretches of unnerving darkness is interrupted by flashes of light and image, and narrative sequences are awkwardly suspended by non-narrative fluidity.

 

Oen Doen Den is introduced by an interval of ‘blackness’ that is pierced by occasional flashes of stills featuring close-ups of alternately closed and open eyes. At this point in the film, the flashes provide the only source of illumination. This abrupt interplay between light and dark gradually gives way to a more mellow sequence of multiple overlays of slow-moving images juxtaposed with a growing chorus of ghostly whisperings. The film ends with a brief flash of an image both like and unlike the introductory stills.