When it comes to dramatic representations of airplane-based terrorism, the feeling, at least for Americans, is by and large still “too soon?” – but Johan Grimonprez’s unsettling art film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y actually predates 9/11 by three years. The Belgian mixed-media artist constructed Dial from archival news footage from the first televised hijacking in the Seventies and onward, spliced with seeming non sequiturs (a title card reads “Dog lovers live longer than cat lovers”), tonally discordant music selections (“The Hustle”), and diegetic narration excerpted from Don DeLillo’s thematically complementary novels Mao II and White Noise. Sometimes playful, frequently horrifying, and always unnerving, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y’s targets include Hollywood action porn and reactionaries of all stripes, but what the film most chillingly conveys is the evolution of news media’s depiction, even commercialization, of tragedy.
Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y screens in the auditorium at the Blanton Museum of Art on Thursday, July 15, 7pm. See www.blantonmuseum.org for more info.
This article appears in July 9 • 2010.
