Letters to J-C #6 (Coney Island) (1991-1999)

For Notes on Bob and Nancy (1970-1977), Hafif assembled images depicting Nancy Buchanan, Robert Walker and other known actors on the beach or in domestic scenes. While editing the material, Hafif additionally co-wrote a script with Buchanan that she subsequently superimposed over the images to make a unifying narrative. Without any dialogue in the film, the narration is done entirely through voice-over. Hafif tells the story of two artists, Bob and Nancy, their relationship and eventual separation.

During a stay in Vienna, Hafif was stuck by store window mannequins, which fascinated her with their highly artificial quality. The discovery inspired her to create a series of photographs of the figures. Standing in the street, the artist captured them in their ‘natural habitat,’ which is to say, behind a pane of glass. Folding the surrounding scene into the pictures, the reflections in the windows refract our gaze at the figures. On a semiotic level, urban architecture and the female body blend into each other. To expand this photographic series into the film Vienna Suite, Hafif resorted to a very basic device: she recorded the photographs with a static video camera and edited the footage to produce a sequence of ‘scenes.’

Hafif's second feature is another montage of film and voiceover narration. Hafif created it after she travelled to India with Robert Morris where the two visited workshops of local stonemasons. For the soundtrack, the artist drew on entries in her travel diary and other notes. The various textual fragments gradually coalesce around a common thematic core: the critique of a linear construction of time, which is implicitly associated with Western modes of thinking.

Colony Kitchen was shot by the Pacific Coast Highway in California. Hiding her camera, Hafif filmed a young man pacing back and forth in a restaurant parking lot. He is joined by a second man who likewise seems to be waiting for something. After a while, a car pulls into the parking lot and a woman gets out. The three talk for a while, then the woman crosses the street. The men get into a parked vehicle and drive off. Toward the end of the film, the camera pans to the right, showing the action along the shoulder of the road and the moving traffic. A little later, the woman, too, returns into the field of view.

Asked about her artistic practice after her return to the United States, Hafif said: ‘I wanted to take a break from painting and try out other creative methods. So I bought a Super 8 camera and photography equipment. The first film I produced was the best I ever made. I shot on black-and-white stock and kept the camera trained on a single cloud for three minutes. The cloud slowly changed shape and floated away.’ In the cloud, Hafif seized on a motif with a long tradition in the history of painting. The film’s ‘action’, too, prompts associations with painting: the sky appears as a ground on which the clouds stirs like a mass of paint applied with a brush. A bird crossing the screen anchors the scenery in the specific filming location: California’s Pacific coast.

In Mercer Street (circa 1975), Hafif uses Super-8 film to track 28 seconds of subtle movement on the quiet nighttime street directly below her window. Softly lit by a single streetlamp, the film moves in near total darkness.

The Clift Hotel was made by positioning the camera vis-à-vis a hotel entrance; Hafif hoped to capture guests entering or leaving the building. As it happened, no one came or went during the window of time she had set for the shoot. Lively car traffic instead dominates the static shot. The passing vehicles lend the pictorial space a horizontal structure. The hotel’s architecture looks timeless and anonymous. The car models, by contrast, unmistakably date the film to the 1970s. Several drivers notice the camera as they slow down and gaze into it with an expression of bewilderment.

This film tells us the story of a long walk through Manhattan. Hafif has been walking aimlessly throughout the island for a long time when she realizes that a woman appears to be following her. And so we visit the streets of Manhattan while she provides a detailed explanation of the route.