A small fragment of an uninteresting whole should, logically, be even less interesting than the whole itself. Liisa Lounila's work shows that, while this may be true, the audio-visual fragment still carries a suggestive force that can be effectively manipulated. 
 
Lounila makes images at the threshold between photography and cinematography. Her claim to fame is a series or films shot with a homemade device that creates bullet-time effect, giving the impression of a camera moving through a space frozen in time. Some of these films were shown in the Nordic Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale. 
 
Lounila's recent exhibition at the Marabou Park Annex [September 15—October 29, 2006] included two text-based works, two of the bullet-time films—Flirt, 2001, and Play>>, 2003—and Roma, 2003, a series of lenticular prints. Mounted with a special technique, these photographs give a vague impression of movement and spatiality as you look at them from different angles, similar to the postcards that miraculously show different things when you manipulate them. 
 
Flirt stages ambiguously hostile scenes where people either light or embrace. The film is set in a pitch-black space. and the action is suspended in time. The camera seems to circle around the protagonists, accompanied by an eerie soundtrack designed to evoke horror movies. Play>> is set in an underground Berlin bar. The camera sweeps past people doing what people do in bars. The action is once again suspended in time. The soundtrack pIays a club tune, and is designed to give the film a music-video feel. An air of anticipation reigns. 
 
In both of these films, Lounila's use of temporal suspension and atmospheric sound is clearly intended to heighten the emotional charge. The bullet-time effect converts the films' scenes into slices of a larger narrative. The sound produces a feeling of impending drama or joy. Combined, these techniques give rise to expectations of totality that nevertheless remains undefined. Lounila does experiment with or even question the most traditional of narrative structures. She just renders storytelling elliptic. In fact, the films' cinematic language and logic are both close to those of television commercials and movie trailers. The only difference is that Lounila's work does not have any actual products or movies to sell. 
 
The exhibition's press materials present Lounila's work as an experiment with, or an investigation of, the borders between still and moving images. Her lo-fi appropriation of advanced special-effect techniques is also emphasized. However, the border zone between photography and film is, obviously, no uncharted territory. It even has its own canon. Chris Marker's still film La Jetée, 1962, an undisputed masterpiece in the genre, creates an impossible, tragic fusion between the nostalgic, indexical powers of the photograph and the ability of cinematography to produce the illusion of a living present. Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series, 1977-1980, also employs cinematic atmosphere to decidedly critical aims. By contrast, Lounila seems content to exploit the zones of undecidability between photography and cinematography for mere seduction and thrill. 
 
This could also be said of her lo-fi appropriation of the bullet-time effect. The production of complex special effects with a homemade pinhole camera is, undoubtedly, an impressive technical feat but this is where the complexity of Lounila's works seems to end. It divulges no subversive intentions, nor does it yield any problematization. In addition, bullet-time and frozen time effects are widely used today in video games, movies, commercials, and music videos. They even feel a bit dated. 
 
Lounila's films combine the suggestive and nostalgic qualities of the photograph or the snapshot with the film clip's force of seduction. They are fragments of a whole that does not exist, and that would not be interesting if it did.

- Kim West