Tacita Dean. Antigone

The hour-long 35mm anamorphic film Antigone (2018) is the most complex work to date by British-European artist Tacita Dean. The name of this work combines the artist's personal history with the mythological world order: Antigone is the heroine in the eponymous drama by the Greek poet Sophocles. But Antigone is also the name of Tacita Dean's older sister. The name creates a double bond full of ambivalences and is the reason for Dean's exploration of the character.The leitmotif of the work is blindness. Antigone revolves around fundamental questions of foresight and destiny, seeing and not seeing, and metaphorical blindness as a necessity for artistic work. Dean found the ally for her ambitious project in her medium: for the film she reached deep into the bag of tricks from the early days of cinema, when it was still considered futuristic and enchanted the audience with illusions. To do this, she brought techniques such as masking and multiple exposures out of the sleep of oblivion…