Dedicated to legendary model Donyale Luna, Nan Goldin's hypnotic film uses found footage to explore addiction and its effects.
Screened exclusively for PHOTO 2024’s Ideas Summit, Sirens (2019–2021) is Nan Goldin’s first film made entirely from found footage, using familiar scenes to touch upon the subject of addiction and its effects. Goldin references the Sirens of Greek mythology, whose beautiful songs seduced desperate sailors to a tragic death at sea. The film prompts a similar hypnotic effect on the viewer, entrancing them into a sensual feeling of delirium. The work is dedicated to and features Donyale Luna, the world’s first Black supermodel, who died of a heroin overdose in 1979.
Sirens is composed of short clips from thirty films including footage from a 1988 London rave, and works by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Lynne Ramsay, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
The hypnotic soundtrack includes music by Mica Levi, Soundwalk Collective and Franz Schubert.
About Nan Goldin
Born in 1953, Nan Goldin was given her first camera when she was 15 years old while studying at Satya Community School in Boston, where she began taking polaroids of herself and those around her...
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