DIVING INTO
How it feels, observational video portraiture, strangers together, united by a common goal in a shared space, Strawberry Fields forever, collective fervour and spiritual transport.
CURATOR’S NOTE
Although Prototype is a project in thrall to the new, every now and then we will look back. Today, we present Come Together, Right Now to a new, bigger audience. A year before Rapture by Angelica Mesiti – a classic of Australian observational video portraiture – came this small, magical work shot on Super 8 by Sydney artist Tina Havelock Stevens. It has never been exhibited online before, and was re-edited and digitised just last year.
In New York in the mid 2000s, Tina was magnetised by the hallowed and sacred: a vigil in Central Park for John Lennon, on what would have been his 66th birthday.
The work that came out of this moment isn’t about Lennon, it’s about who we are when we’re in a crowd and swept off our feet. In Tina’s slow-motion, sublime vision of devotion and adoration, we see popular culture bubble into the realm of spirituality, while a stuttering riff of the eternal Beatles track, Come Together, loops into the cosmos.
CREDITS
Cinematography, editing and sound design by Tina Havelock Stevens.
About Tina Havelock Stevens
Tina Havelock Stevens is a visual artist, musician and film maker who won the 65th Blake Prize in 2018.