The title Circular Breathing comes from a technique that horn and reed instrument players use to play a continuous note seemingly without taking a breath. This notion is drawn upon with the visualization of long sequences composed of five discrete scenes that migrate onto the projection field with mathematical precision.

As each of the five scenes sequentially switches from left to right onto the field, they in a sense share time. The first scene slides out from the corner of the space. Soon after its position is reached, it begins to flicker as a second adjacent scene appears. This flickering is the time being shared by the two scenes. Consequently, two scenes slow down to half speed; three screens to one-third speed, and so on. Once the field of five scenes is complete, the images begin to approach a kind of photographic stillness. The process then reverses with the first scene (on the left) disappearing, thus making the remaining scenes gather speed. Each elimination speeds up the remaining images until the last scene on the far right appears in real time. There is the sense of a disturbing narrative accumulating and dissipating through each successive set of scenes. Images from the streets of Tangier, a ship on the open sea, and the interior of a mosque juxtapose with a man chopping wood and a cigarette burning slowly in an ashtray. An older woman reading and large thick hands loading a pistol unfold next to bladed stems and a close-up of an insect dragging its prey. Throughout all the segments there is the recurring image of a woman’s hands playing a piano. Although distorted by the changes of speed, the music can be identified as Vexations by Eric Satie.