Suspension of Disbelief - 2011

From Saturday, 12 February 2011, the public can also experience this magical exhibition, which runs for almost three months. Lester has specially created an immersive total installation composed of a dozen or so new and earlier works that explore concepts such as fortune and misfortune, expectations, superstition, rituals, magical beliefs, prophecies and, most especially, destiny and fate. Fate and magical beliefs play a pivotal role in Suspension of Disbelief.

This exhibition seems to suggest that the attribution of value to non-existent connections is one of the means of surviving in an unpredictable world. Lester’s installations and films present various examples of people trying to fathom out fate.

Magical Films
Are you curious about the films that Gabriel Lester will be screening in his Suspension of Disbelief presentation? For a teaser of ‘The Big One’ click here. This film depicts an inexplicable gathering of people that the viewer will be quick to interpret as a ritual invocation of fate. The film demonstrates people’s readiness to think magically and their tendency to ascribe value to non-existent interrelationships: people perceive it as a magical gathering despite there being no other indications of this. The other film by Lester, ‘Cleromancy #2’, is an abstract interplay of colour and movement composed of fragments of footage of lottery draws all around the globe.

Literary term
The title ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ was originally a literary term that found its way into cinema in the course of the 20th century. It concerns the readiness of the public to accept a film as true, even though it contains elements that are highly improbable. With this title Lester is alluding not only to the significance of cinema in his work, but is also using the term in the sense of ‘wanting to believe in’ and ‘accepting’ the illusion.