Time Without End

1996, 6:15 min, color, sound

In vom Bruch's video loop Time Without End, a woman (actress Gene Tierney) is continuously on the brink of falling asleep while reading a book of the same title. The scene, extracted from John M. Stahl's 1945 noir-melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, depicts several layers of escape: the woman, lounging on a train, proceeds from a work of fiction to her own dreams. Vom Bruch's decontextualization and stuttering repetition of the moment heightens the mood of timelessness and surreality, evoking a hypnotic dream-state.