Date: 30 October 2006 | Season: London Film Festival 2006 | Tags: London Film Festival
LIVE PERFORMANCE: LUIS RECODER + SANDRA GIBSON
Monday 30 October 2006, at 7:30pm
London ICA Theatre
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, Untitled, USA, 2006, variable duration
New York artists Luis Recoder + Sandra Gibson create innovative and engaging light works in which they interact with and manipulate the projected image. Though their work is grounded in cinema, it goes beyond an understanding of what film is, taking into consideration the architecture and conditions of the performing / viewing situation and the physical and emotional presence of light itself. From the inventive ways that they create images on the film strip to the use of multiple projection in live performance, Recoder + Gibson are two of the most vital young artists active in the field of ‘expanded cinema’. Rarely seen in the UK, their work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial and many major festivals. This untitled piece was developed in collaboration with experimental musician Daniel Menche and first presented at ‘Kill Your Timid Notion’ in Dundee earlier this year. The performance uses multiple 16mm projectors and an ingenious method of refracting and transforming the beams of light. As the work unfolds, Recoder + Gibson subtly manipulate the projectors, creating a constantly changing and hypnotic sequence of abstract imagery reminiscent of Rothko and colour field painting.
Please Note: Arrive Early ! This piece will be running as an installation from 19.00 and will shift into the live performance sometime after 19.30. The performance will be between 60-90 minutes long.
PROGRAMME NOTES
LUIS RECODER + SANDRA GIBSON
Monday 30 October 2006, at 7:30pm
London ICA Theatre
UNTITLED
Luis Recoder, Sandra Gibson & Daniel Menche, USA, 2006, 2 x 16mm, colour, sound, variable duration
Luis Recoder + Sandra Gibson are two filmmakers who create films and performed film installations of gracefully shifting abstractions, flickering geometry and real, honest beauty. Looped film, created without the use of a camera, is gently coaxed by hand into investigations of pure colour with the aid of water, glass and mist. The piece has been developed with Daniel Menche, a US experimental musician whose approach to sound shares startling similarities to Luis and Sandra’s approach to light and film; pure sound is born of and mediated by the body and its interaction with objects. Menche sources sound live from his heart, lungs or larynx or from contact with natural elements, a stone on glass, wind or water. (www.courtisane.be)
The hand absorbs the light. Obscures, darkens. An opaque appearance in the field of light ‘materialises’ the light. Discloses its light-ness. For light itself is not enough to show this. For light to show this it must be obscured, covered-over, withheld. It must be stopped, stopped-up, stopped-down, in order to achieve the point of clearest resolution. It is only then that the light, absorbed by the hand, returns the gesture as if reaching out to greet the latter. The cut-out dark figure in the field of light throws into relief the dialectic: light-and-shadow. Shadow points to light, and not the other way around. The one holds the key to the other and are by no means self-contained containers of metaphysical essences. If the hand in the light is a sign that the mind perceives the light, it is not the purity of light itself that issues forth this knowledge but the cut-out figure of an opacity articulating its powers of resolution. (Recoder + Gibson)
Luis Recoder + Sandra Gibson have shown their collaborative film performances and installations at many film festivals, museums, galleries and alternative venues since, 2001. Their work touches upon the material-physical properties of the film medium – its sculptural, painterly and tactile potential. In addressing the materials and processes of their medium via performance and installation, Gibson and Recoder play with and against the illusory currents of cinema. (Waves Festival)
Thanks to the ICA, Vivienne Gaskin, Emma Quinn, Lee Curran and Danni Colgan.
Back to top
