The giSt n (2011)
Single screen version

Installation shots from Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), RPI, New York

The giSt n is a video work existing in a number of different incarnations - from single screen to four screen installation.
At the core of the work is 100 hours of footage shot at EMPAC in January 2010, using a script that was a re-imagining of
a 'making of' documentary entitled The Art of The Sting (a documentary made for the DVD edition of the 1973 film The Sting,
for its release in 2006). The Sting itself was based on a book by the American linguist David Maurer, who wrote a linguistic
study of the American criminal classes in the late 19th and early 20th century - a book that turned out to inadvertently be the key
sociological account of the American confidence trick as it developed in tandem with the railroad system.

The giSt n was filmed as a series of studio 'interviews' with a new cast whose parts were labelled only as archetypes
(Younger Male Lead, Musician, Female Character) and the actors were filmed in isolation from each other.
The edits and mise en scene initially speak of a familiar documentary form, but the piece quickly frays into an unreliable place.
Performance styles vary; microphones intrude into shot; takes extend for too long or are cut short; line rehearsals make it to the
final cut - and that cut continually reminds the viewer of its own unreliability. At times it is not clear what is being described
(a film? a con?) - and every witness, in front of and behind the camera, becomes suspect.

Each exhibited version of The giSt n is modular and features a new edit.

The giSt n was first exhibited as part of "The Confidence Man' exhibition at EMPAC, March 2011

Performers: Tom Pearl, Anthony Perullo, Licia Zegar, Ina Parker, Geoff Poppler, Jim Fletcher
Director of Photography: Ben Tiven
Camera Operators: Graham Parker, Jesse French, Ryan Jenkins, Blair Neal, Ben Tiven
Sound Recordist: Matthew Girard
Production Consultant: H.Spencer Young
Proof of Concept performers: Denis O'Hare, Lucas Caleb Rooney
Directed and Edited by Graham Parker