Waterworx (A Clear Day and No Memories)

The waterworks in the Beaches area of Toronto is the source of an eidetic-like image from early childhood. It was always an enigma to me, and after returning years later to shoot this film, I was still not satisfied it was merely a filtration plant. Its architecture functioned more significantly as some kind of temporal metaphor. Wallace Stevens’ ironic and equally enigmatic poem, “A Clear Day And No Memories,” was sought out to address this phenomenon, and to appear as interruptive graphic for the same reason the editing is interruptive – that is, to both work with the alluring nature of the image, yet force an intellectual distancing. Just as the supposedly clear air is used as the protagonist in Stevens’ poem, the precisionist clarity of imagery is foregrounded in the film. The structure reinforces human memory processing, and later, when the first half of the film is repeated (recalled), the Stevens’ text, generated by computer memory, runs across the screen in a style contradicting the mood of the picture and sound, which are now forced into the background. (RH) “What I find most impressive about ‘Waterworx’ is Hancox’s ability to fuse Stevens’ poem and his own imagery and sound, not only without doing damage to the poem, but so that the film provides an effective reading of it… The clear, empty vistas of the film (empty action, of people) reflect those of the poem, and yet both are haunted by the presence of the poetic mind in its process of forming what we are experiencing.” – Scott MacDonald, Afterimage, March 1986