Before analyzing Adara and Bourne, we must situate the freeze frame within media history. Early cinema used freezing due to technical limitations (e.g., damaged film stock). By the 1960s, directors like Godard and Marker employed freezes as authorial signatures. In La Jetée (1962), Marker uses still images almost exclusively, creating a haunted temporality. However, the digital era introduced the "paused" state as a user action, not a creator’s choice. Adara and Bourne reclaim the freeze as an imposed moment — the creator freezes, not the viewer.
Adara’s solo short Still Life with Interruption features a domestic scene that freezes repeatedly without warning. Each freeze lasts between 4 and 17 seconds. During these freezes, the audio continues but the image remains static. Adara has stated in interviews that she intends to mimic the experience of dissociative episodes. The September 24, 2020 collaboration with Bourne extends this by removing audio entirely, leaving only visual stasis. This silence, we argue, transforms the freeze from psychological symptom into a political statement about mediated silence during the COVID-19 lockdowns (2020–2021). freeze 24 09 20 amirah adara and sam bourne fre full
As they pondered these questions, they heard a faint... ticking. It was a soft, steady sound, like the beat of a clock. And then, almost imperceptibly at first, the world began to... unfreeze. Before analyzing Adara and Bourne, we must situate