Stephen Prina
What´s Wrong? Open the Door! What’s Wrong? Open the Door!… I was Scared. What Happened?… You Can’t Lie Underwater Like on a Bed and then Just Wait. You Can’t Lie Underwater Like on a Bed and then Just Wait… It’s Impossible… Wait for that?… Idiot, 1996
Stephen Prina
What´s Wrong? Open the Door! What’s Wrong? Open the Door!… I was Scared. What Happened?… You Can’t Lie Underwater Like on a Bed and then Just Wait. You Can’t Lie Underwater Like on a Bed and then Just Wait… It’s Impossible… Wait for that?… Idiot, 1996
Ilfachrome print, cast vinyl computer film
80.3 x 62.5 x 3.8 cm

The work emerged from a class Prina taught where each week the students would watch the same movie, each time trying to find new meanings in its repetition. Each of the three photographs are stills from a scene from The Devil, Probably (dir. Robert Bresson, 1977), and are overlaid with a section of vinyl with portions of letters cut from it in a unique font designed by the artist. Originally the framed works were part of a single body of work with the same title. When displayed as a whole, the sections of the letters make up legible words, across the installation. When shown as a complete work, Prina removes a selection of images form the sequence and hangs them together, making new words from the fragments.

Formally, Prina employs vinyl-cut text to emphasize language as the means through which cultural objects are viewed and interpreted rationally. However, this analytical approach stands in counterpoint to the psychological trauma represented in the cinematic image of a failed suicide attempt, a condition that cannot, ultimately, be put into words.