DEAR ANNE-MARIE...THE LAST KEEPER

Single channel 2/4K video, stereo sound.
14 minutes 22 seconds

2016.

The Keeper: Eleonora Gusmano

Anne-Marie: Anne-Marie Creamer
Camera and lighting: John Griffin

Colour grading: John Griffin & Anne-Marie Creamer

Script and author: Anne-Marie Creamer

Translation, Francesco Buonerba

Conceived as a companion piece to the work “The Passing of the Keepers of Salento’ (2014-5), made for the Moving Landscape Project for Progetto GAP and PepeNero (Italy), “Dear Anne-Marie... The Last Keeper” proposes that on Anne-Marie’s request the last train Keeper of Salento, (a fictional construction by the artist), writes Anne-Marie a letter describing what she sees and experiences in the last two hours of her role as Keeper. It is stipulated the letter must begin, “Dear Anne-Marie”. These two hours also mark the actual historical event of the passing of the role of the Keepers into historical obsolescence in this region of Italy. The fictional Keeper never receives an acknowledgment from Anne-Marie for her efforts and in two versions of the work she either bursts into the book launch and exhibition events for the book developed for the Moving Landscape project (planned for Autumn 2015 in Italy) demanding she is heard. Or, as in this version specially made for camera, she enters a white room looking for the artist and directs her anger and sadness directly towards the eye of the camera and audience, reacting to light changes and edits in the film as ruses to evict her. All the while she is heard by a woman, her back always to the camera, who stands in the midst of am ambiguous theatre space, the site of production for a fiction.