: artglue :: Approximations/Contradictions by Ana Torfs

For Approximations/Contradictions, Torfs casted 21 performers of various origins⁴, most of them living in Belgium, to each sing one song from the Hollywood Songbook, a collection of 49 songs for piano and one voice by the German-Austrian composer Hanns Eisler, written in 1942-43 while he was in exile in California. The lyrics of the 21 pieces she chose to include, which concentrate on themes of war, exile, and Hollywood, were written by Eisler's frequent collaborator, Bertolt Brecht. Torfs asked the performers to make a list of the songs they most preferred to sing, then she assigned one song to each person in consultation with them.
She filmed the performers in close-up, framing them in a style consistent with a portrait: a bust with a little headroom, cropped mid-chest, with a white background. Her professional training as a filmmaker quickly becomes evident - the quality of the footage is impressive, with the camera's focus and the audio recording so precise that the subjects, as well as their voices, feel eerily present.