Overview

Vivienne Dick - 1983 Like Dawn to Dust takes up the exploration of the rural landscape initiated in Visibility Moderate but it is characterized by a very different mode of address. Instead of appropriating from radio, television or film, Dick develops a more overtly 'poetic' aesthetic, through performance, cinematography and sound. The opening shots of a decaying 'Big House' bearing the scorch marks of a fire, are accompanied by an off-key piano, recalling stage melodrama or early cinema. The house, most likely a remnant of Anglo-Irish society, is abandoned but for the figure of Lydia Lunch, wearing her signature New York 'Goth' make-up and clothes. Lunch delivers a poetic monologue, both on screen and in voice-over, over a traditional soundtrack and her final words emphasize the circularity of Irish narratives: 'the past never dies, it just continually repeats itself.'