In his videos, installations and texts, Douglas Gordon often plays with viewers’ perceptions, memories and expectations through a cinematic gaze. Film Noir (Fly) shows a close-up of a fly lying on its back, twitching its legs as it dies on screen. While hundreds of flies die every minute, the fact that we are witnesses to this particular death makes us voyeuristic accomplices to the artist. According to Gordon, this work represents “an image of something that we kill everyday. We see them dying in corners of rooms at home; we don’t care about them. […] But seeing something like this in a museum becomes a much more distressing game to play.” The work’s title refers to a genre of Hollywood crime dramas from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Just as these films were characterized by showing a sordid version of reality, the videos in Gordon’s Film Noir series become a vehicle to investigate guilt and the questions that surround moral and ethical ambiguity.