At the hour of tea

At the hour of tea displays various tableaux of luxurious, slightly anachronistic collectibles such as a pocket watch, Japanese fans, and Roman coins, against the green baize backdrop of a desktop. Every so often clips of various typewritten notecards punctuate the film, and the fragmentary text on the notes in turn describes a painting. The cards as well as the envelope from which they emerge are edged in black—stationary that was usually used for a death announcement—which adds to the film’s slightly melancholy atmosphere.

For the artist, the objects in the film represent the leisure, bourgeois activity of collecting but also the idea of collection as work that takes place in a studio of some kind. This circular logic about the spaces of art and work as well as their attendant, somewhat old-fashioned symbols also mirrors the artist’s own interest in skeuomorphism, the design practice wherein the icon for a particular action on a computer’s desktop looks like the anachronistic thing it has now come to replace: an envelope for an email inbox, or a trash can for a folder that receives trash. Just as Sietsema’s medium of 16mm film is nearly obsolete (although like many other important artists today, he continues to work with it particularly for its formal qualities and other connotations), so almost are the objects he displays in this lush and evocative film.