FOUR FRAGMENTS FOR

A CHRONOLOGY OF CHANCE

2008
Installation: 300 4’x8’ cardboard sheets, 21 cardboard doors, four cardboard windows, four paper plants, linoleum, dimensions variable.
University of San Diego, California.

In Four Fragments for a Chronology of Chance, C.T. Jasper further explores the ability of architectural fragments to convey cinematic narratives. As with his earlier work On Chapels, Caves and Erotic Misery, this large-scale installation finds its origin in a film—in this case Giulio Berruti’s 1979 film Killer Nun—and is constructed almost entirely out of the cheap and ephemeral material of cardboard. The environment Jasper creates with these materials evokes the corridors of the hospital in Berruti’s film: whitewashed and sterile, with an occasional potted plant that only seems to highlight its emptiness. The characters from the film have been erased in the space of the installation. Instead, the viewer navigates corridors lined with doors that do not open, circling from one fragmented space to the next around an unreachable central room encased in windows made from translucent wax paper. Much like On Chapels, this installation provides an intervention into its inciting film that draws into question the mechanisms of enduring cinematic power. Here, processes such as editing and scene-setting are made physical, as if Jasper has placed the viewer both inside and outside of the film at the same time.