Single channel video (Shot by 35 mm film) , ProRes422, 1920×1080, Stereo sound, 26’29”, 2013
The Focus is loosely inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novella, The Earth’s Holocaust, in which two men converse while watching an enormous bonfire consume the sum total of mankind’s cultural production. Like Hayama’s other video work, Inaudible Footsteps (2015), The Focus is constructed almost solely out of re-photographed images taken from old photo-books – all of which share a certain iconic and mytho-poetic quality. Hayama intercuts these images – representing volcanoes, mountain-ranges, and nomadic peoples amongst others – with flashes of solid color and textual intertitles penned by the artist herself.
The Focus is a meditation on the ceaseless pursuit (and self-generation) of meaning which characterizes the phenomenon of human consciousness.