Trailing Panthers

Jon Steiner's video rings with a perfect threading of detail (I don't know how he managed to plunge through the layers of years to find this footage of a sign that doesn't exist any more), and the soundscape by Stephen Adams knocks and turns through your head long after you've closed the file. This video was shot in early winter, or so I remember -- see the slow rousing of the streets -- after all, who has adequate heating in Sydney? Who doesn't start the day prepared for the worst that so rarely comes? Of course, even in winter, the poles and crusted metal plates that are jammed into the footpaths (the same ones photographed by Bettina Steiner in the paper edition of Panthers) will be ticking with an almost summery benevolence by midday -- note how there is always something in flower in Sydney, some handful of leathery leaves that forgot to fall --  but then at about three or four in the afternoon the illusion dims.