The Soul of Things

William Denton is one of the early pioneers exploring the art and science of psychometry. Psychometrics believes that every object emits a field of energy. That energy can transit its entire history through touch. That is every brick contains the history of what happened inside its walls and outside its walls and at the same time its own history of creation. If one is sensitive enough this energy field of historical information can be transferred and one can obtain a complete knowledge of its history. In my case the touching is filming. In our urban landscape we are continually destroying our past through destruction of buildings and replacing them with artificial man made materials. Hence removing us from our very history. William Denton performed many successful experiments in the field of psychometry documented in one of his books called The Soul of Things.

The Soul of Things (USA), which starts amongst construction detritus that seems the spatial equivalent of the temporal pileup from Nishikawa’s film, as if you rotated the camera of Tokyo – Ebisu around so that all time dimensions (and trains) collapsed and this was the resulting wreckage, shown in blown out black and white. But Angerame’s narrative gradually effaces this sense, moving from ruins to demolition to construction to the bayside stasis of resting, inactive docks, stepping away from the chaos that opens the film and finding a calm clarity. –tiffreviews