Gospels

With His terrible beauty, passion and drive, He has a profound effect on the people whose lives He touches. His presence generates a physical and spiritual experience, a euphoria that fascinates and frightens. Sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting each other, accounts of this undefined figure contain some sort of coherence in the tone of the speakers’ voices and in the way they raise their hands. The artist sometimes “caught a glimpse of a silhouette reflected in their eyes.” Who is this mysterious ’He’ – a prophet, a preacher, a genius? In fact, this is not a documentary about one man but a compilation of disparate clips. Whilst searching through Hollywood archive material, Bünger stumbled across more and more interviews in which there seemed to be a lack of clarity as to whom the person on camera was actually referring to. Using monotonous and ethereal background music, and periodically blanking the screen with a white light, the artist creates the impression of coherence across the excerpts. The thread of continuity relies on the verbal and non-verbal language of religion, possession and passion that is used throughout. Bünger’s ongoing and open-ended “canon in the making” is a powerful invitation to reflect on our need to create gods.