The Diamond (Descartes’s Daughter) is inspired by the mythical story that French philosopher, mathematician and physicist René Descartes constructed a mechanical toy as a surrogate after the death of his own daughter, only for this animated machine to be thrown overboard by superstitious sailors during inclement weather on his final journey to Sweden. A girl is seen playing a Nintendo Wii in a homemade costume that Étienne-Jules Marey would dress the subjects of his chronophotography to map (or mechanise) their movements. She is in a darkened room, pinned in by lasers – a recreation of the scene from an unlocatable film where lasers protect a diamond that is about to be stolen. Language shatters like light refracted through a crystal, sentences repeat, are amended and the voice we hear skips as though trying to jump across the scratch of a programming error. (Ian White)

Courtesy the artist and Carlier Gebauer, Berlin, STANDARD (OSLO) and Altman Siegal, San Francisco

• Sektion Section: Film
• Programm Programme: Emily Wardill 2