Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press: Phantom

Drones, flight and conflict, the slippage between fictional narrative and conflict come into play in Banner's film Phantom, in which a drone camera simultaneously observes and chases the artist’s illustrated reprint of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (2015), like a hawk chasing down its prey. The publication takes the form of a glossy magazine bringing to mind notions of luxury and desire. As the drone attempts to focus on the text and images, the downdraught from its blades blows the pages back and forth in an endless fluttering dance; in its attempt to scrutinise the magazine, eventually the force of the downdraught blows it apart and finally shreds it. A sense hubris and absurdity are emphasised by the film’s urgent soundtrack. The text of Heart of Darkness, a tale of colonial brutality and trade, that starts on London’s River Thames, and ends in Belgium occupied Congo, is paired with images of the Europe’s financial center, the City of London, that Banner commissioned from Magnum conflict photographer Paolo Pellegrin, who captures a sense of fin de siècle, a jaded culture of trade, corruption and excess. The Banner first came across Heart of Darkness through the Hollywood movie Apocalypse Now, which features in her 1994 book The Nam, amongst other works. (FB)

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press lives and works in London, UK. Her work explores gender, language and publishing through a range of mediums, including drawing, sculpture, performance and the moving image. The struggle between language and its limitations is central to Banner’s work. Banner often works under the moniker of The Vanity Press. She established the imprint in 1997, with her seminal book The Nam. Since then, she has published many works, some in the form of books, some sculptural, some performance based. In 2009 she issued herself an ISBN number and registered herself as a publication under her own name.