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Somewhere Between

 

 

'Somewhere Between' became somewhat of a motif during my studies at the RCA, resulting in two works and the title of my thesis.

Somewhere Between an Act and an Actor, 2016

An investigation into the moments when the struggle between many personas collapse.


'Benji Jeffrey, on the Moving Image MA, was showing his ‘Work-in-Progress’, ‘Somewhere Between an Act and an Actor’, which was cleverly projected overhead in the main entrance space of a repurposed car dealership across from the main RCA buildings. The screen was hexagon-shaped and the five minute long piece played across the segments, which progressively switched between a recorded interview with Robert Downey Jr. for Channel 4 with Krishnan Guru-Murthy made in April 2015, where Downey Jr. becomes increasingly unsettled and uncomfortable (and ends up walking out) as he’s probed by Guru-Murthy – and a video made by Jeffrey of an actress, Penny Klein, mimicking Downey Jr.’s speech and facial expressions. There is a moment when Downey Jr. states “none of us are our personas”, and it is this that Jeffrey is investigating with the split-screen – ‘the act’ vs. reality, and that moment when how you think you’re perceived by others comes up against how you actually are, and in the interview, this moment is pinpointed by the camera zooming into Downey Jr.’s face, and its befuddled expression, perfectly copied by Klein, who studied the video for over two hours in preparation. Text comes up on the screen, guiding the viewer - for instance ‘Look at the eyebrows…’, further underscoring the visible shift from being in control to out of it, and heightening the car crash watchability of it.'
Alice Lubbick, Petrie Inventory
 
Shown as part of the Work In Progress show at the RCA, Panorama at the Genesis Cinema and a Spectrum Screening.

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Somewhere Between A Song And A Singer, 2016

A collaboration between writers and performers, this works explores notions of authenticity lying between the inception of a song and it’s delivery to an audience. The piece takes the jazz standard ‘It’s Only A Paper Moon’ as the nucleus around which to centre a discourse. Arrangements and performances of the song are filtered through the tropes of the webcam video, studio video and digital avatar. They are accompanied by spoken texts discussing the output and reception of contemporary media.


A project by Benji Jeffrey with Mike Barrett, Geraldine Barton, Rose Dagul, Natalie Klinger, Oliver O’Driscoll and Rob Shuttleworth exhibited at Inland Studios.

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