HANABI is a one minute five second video film that is projected in a loop. Fireworks explode, fly into the sky, burst open through reversed processing in black & white. The night sky becomes white, while the exploding missile is as black as the ink in a Chinese calligraphy. Smoke, powder and pyrotechnics are combined with drawing and writing. Calligraphics inscribed on a video band turns the artist's gesture into an explosion and the rapidity of a rocket: direct, efficient and light as air. The fire that has turned black as coal for a fraction of a second, becomes solid matter for the duration of its appearance - a fraction of a second.
A volume thus permits itself to be seen, much like a sculpture that would fly through the air of space and creating the illusion of a strange autonomy that is directed by chance movements. A short time, but sufficiently long to remain printed in the mind's eye.
Embryonic sculptures, peripheral smoke that remind one of pigments - this internal breath of artistic explosion weaves a web between the work and the spectator that only lasts the time of a few useful breaths during a single minute and a few seconds. One also recognises certain domestic fireworks used to celebrate birthdays - that remind us more of personal remembrances, than of public celebrations. It is precisely the line between artificial and intimate landscapes that Amanda Riffo's video film puts into question.