The real highlight of the exhibit, and the most blatant exploration of “doubles”, is Between Darkness and Light (After William Blake), 1997, which consists of a giant translucent screen. Upon one side, the 1943 religious drama The Song of Bernadette is projected… and upon the other, the 1973 classic The Exorcist. Both films are steeped in religious iconography (obviously), and the startling images that result from both films playing over one another are occasionally quite beautiful, even incredibly so. I popped into the room a few times, and found things to consider at different points of the program.

At one point, a discussion between Father Karras (Jason Miller) and Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) was layered atop of a discussion between Father Payramale (Charles Bickford) and Sister Marie Therese Vauzous (Gladys Cooper). Given that Karras’s character was intended to be a closeted homosexual (it’s explicit in the book but tamed down considerably to a juvenile “Fuck him!” or two from the taunting demon in the film), it was interesting to note that the piece superimposed the image of the nun over Karras consistently, while the patriarchal figure of the older priest was consistently matched. Later I returned and was delighted to behold the sight of a woofed-out Linda Blair hovering in crucifixion pose over the heads of 40 nuns praying in the desert (the nuns having just witnessed a vision of the Blessed Virgin). It was all really quite glorious and occasionally hilarious. Interestingly, as the films are different lengths, the two are never lined up together in exactly the same way (in fact, the combination of images will be radically different depending on the start time). But that doesn’t seem important – the images from both films are so rich with connotation and moral weight that almost any combination of the two films is going to create fireworks. And really, isn’t art all about finding meaning in whatever’s put in front of you?

Another piece that has special significance to us horror nuts (and even more particular, downright eerie significance to me, as you’ll see) is 24 Hour Psycho, 1993. Here Gordon has taken what is arguably the father of the modern horror film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and slowed it down such that its duration – originally a sensible 109 minutes – is 24 full hours. To be quite honest with you, the result is rather infuriating – the action is so slow and the next scene so impossibly distant (the piece moves at a frame every 5 seconds or so) that it feels like you’re trapped in a nightmare. I know this film backwards and forwards, every line, glance, eyebrow-raise. And while I was riveted to the screen it made me want to scream.

But this is the great part: remember how, about a month ago, I used a still from Psycho as a challenge in the I Still Know movie still contest? And remember how I said that the moment in the den when Marion regards her toast as if she had never seen bread before is my favorite moment in the entire film? Wouldn’t you know, as luck would have it I happened to walk up to this piece at that very moment. What are the chances that in a 24-hour loop, I would be in the room during the five seconds that this specific frame was projected? It seriously blows my mind, much as that toast blew Marion’s.

Amazing.

Gordon continues his Hitchcock fascination with M: FUTILE FEAR, 2006, a video installation that features three screens containing identical images: the center image is normal, the two flanking it are upside-down. The images are close-ups and extreme close-ups of conductor James Conlon as he directs the orchestra of the Paris National Opera in realizing the score for Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The sequence of normal and flipped images, jarringly tight framing, and hypnotic score make for a dizzying experience that lulls you into a kind of trance. Gordon uses similar trance-inducing techniques in left is right and right is wrong and left is wrong and right is right, 1999, which utilizes a mirrored double-image of Otto Preminger’s 1949 Whirlpool split into even and odd frames, which creates a strobe effect and distorted soundtrack that eerily supports the film’s themes of hypnotism and mind control (as with many of Gordon’s pieces, the protagonist is not in control of her actions).

The most immediately accessible and fun piece in the exhibit is 30 seconds text, 1996, which consists of white text on a black wall and a lightbulb on a 30-second timer. The text describes an experiment conducted by a doctor in early-twentieth-century France in which he held up the head of a freshly-decapitated man to see if it would have any response to stimuli after being separated from the body. The doctor notes that the man’s eyes would open and close as a response to his name being shouted for approximately 30 seconds – which, coincidentally (as the text tells you), is how long it will take you to read the story, and the time that the light bulb is set to remain illuminated before plunging you into blackness. The clever interplay among the text, the poor dead man’s perceptions, and your own “deadline” is the simplest distillation of Gordon’s themes, and the most satisfying piece for me.

But then again, I’m no critic.