52 Spaces uses sounds of the city of Rome and elements of The Eclipse (1962) to create a soundtrack of an image of a city suspended in time, anonymous and surreal. A defining cinematic figure of the 1960s and 1970s with his movies Blowup (1966) and Zabriskie Point (1970), Antonioni’s films explore the tiny details of our lives. Using L’Eclisse as its inspirational focal point, Scanner attempts to reassemble the memory of sound and locations in the film as well as his personal experience of Rome, where the work is set. The result is a distilled narrative of seductive conversation, musical fragments and city soundscapes. Selecting a series of 52 framed images from the closing moments of the film slowed down to a kind of mnemonic slide show and accompanied by audio culled from the movie processed with twinkling elements from the soundtrack’s original melody, Scanner conveys a complex and mysterious chronicle, offering up a space for contemplation and reflection as the soundtrack weaves an imaginary narrative. L’Eclisse charts the beginning of the end, evoking a sense of loss, suggesting that modern industrial society can obliterate the emotions between people. Essentially about the relationship between a man and a woman, the emptiness of their affections mirrored in the iconic metropolis, Antonioni’s classic film is reflected back to the audience in harmonics, hushed voices and sound effects. Through this performance, Scanner reconstructs an understanding of the characters, how they commune with their physical environment and how sound is crucial to our understanding of their story. Capturing, manipulating and redirecting these moments back into the public consciousness, 52 Spaces establishes an archaeology of personal experiences and missed connections, assembling a momentary forgotten past within our digital future. [Robin Rimbaud]