Andrew Stones - Victorian Car Chase 2002

Videotape with stereo sound, duration 7:15 minutes, PAL Digital Video / DVD

Available for exhibition - email: admin AT brighter DOT org

Victorian Car Chase is primarily a soundtrack to an absent film. For most of the work the visual element is limited to a grey screen with brief texts announcing scene changes; and subtitles (sometimes in German; sometimes in English) which approximately translate elements of dialogue woven into a dense, compelling sound montage.

If it were present, the film might be an amalgam of the crime and 'caper' movies from which elements of the soundtrack are drawn: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Blue Lamp; The Lavender Hill Mob; The Italian Job; etc; seasoned with a dash of BBC commentary. The soundtrack is decoded in detail in a 'credit' roll which lists each distinctive sound used, and its source, in order of appearance. In this way, the twin narratives of the work are revealed: one a disjointed crime caper; the other a collection of the traces of Englishness expressed in the collective soundtrack of 20th-century cinema, television and radio.

Victorian Car Chase is suitable for theatre screening, or gallery screening as a continuous loop.