Deadpan (S)

"Deadpan" is described in the catalog for the exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 1999–2000 as follows: "Steven McQueen restages the “selfconcious exhibitionism” of early silent cinema in Deadpan by isolating and repeating in a continuous loop, a moment from an American silent film of the 1920s. Playing the central character, he reenacts a shot in a Buster Keaton comedy, Steamboat Bill Jr., in which Keaton stands immobile as four walls of a house come crashing down around him, then emerges unscathed. McQueen reverses this process. The loop, replaying the same moment, shot from different angles, repeatedly for four minutes, refuses the forward movement of narrative continuity and exposes the discontinuous fragmentation of reality. The speed at which the frame house collapses around McQueen increases toward the end of the film, suggesting a dramatic climax that is never realized".