A rough cut from the Porcelain Androids' own cutting room. "PORCELAINE PARIS", told again from the Dining Car, and played to Porcelaine, the film's song, re-performed as a classical art song: soprano in French, string quartet, grand piano.
The mint-tiled carriage. She walks the aisle in the toile dress with the puff sleeves and the porcelain opera gloves, the bird on her arm and the cage in her hand, and the dinner-suited passengers watch her from behind the glass. The bird gets out. The doves burst down the car and turn to blue-and-white porcelain in the air. The tulle curtain comes down across the aisle, her hand pressed against it, and the glaze creeps over the fabric until that is porcelain too. The teacups in her hair crack and fly. She walks away up the car and is gone, and the curtain is drawn across the empty carriage.
The programme's interference is still in the footage, and the Androids are still trying to erase it. It comes with the music and goes with the music. Every time the song arrives somewhere, the picture breaks, and every time, they wipe it clean. Something always stays. Something always leaks back. By the end they have almost won: the song finishes on the curtain, still and clean, and then, in the last second, one more leak. The red ink in her hair glows through all of it, the one thing in the carriage they are not trying to erase.
The music is the film's own soundtrack, re-performed as a classical piece, sung in French, played from start to end. Nothing is laid over it.
1/1. 1236 × 1668, 24 fps, 2 minutes 19 seconds, the whole song, stereo. Sound on. Collector receives a downloadable music file of the track.
Miss AL Simpson, Scotland, 2026.
