Date: 17 April 2004 | Season: Gregory Markopoulos 2004 | Tags: Gregory Markopoulos, Markopoulos
FILMS OF PLACE
Sat 17 April 2004, at 6.20pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
Markopoulos created many impressions of buildings and places, making in-camera dissolves and superimpositions without any subsequent editing. Ming Green, a portrait of his humble apartment, painted the colour of the title, was made shortly before his departure from New York, while Sorrows was shot at the house in Switzerland built for Wagner by King Ludwig II. Gammelion is a measured and romantic portrayal of an Italian castle, extending seven minutes of photographed ‘film phrases’ with hundreds of fades in and out.
Gregory Markopoulos, Ming Green, USA, 1966, 7 min
Gregory Markopoulos, Gammelion, Italy, 1968, 54 min
Gregory Markopoulos, Sorrows, Switzerland, 1969, 6 min
The programme will be introduced by Robert Beavers, filmmaker and director of Temenos Inc.
Also Screening: Monday 19 April 2004, at 8.40pm, NFT2
PROGRAMME NOTES
FILMS OF PLACE
Sat 17 April 2004, at 6.20pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
MING GREEN
Gregory Markopoulos, USA, 1966, 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min
GAMMELION
Gregory Markopoulos, Italy, 1968, 16mm, colour, sound, 54 min
SORROWS
Gregory Markopoulos, Switzerland, 1969, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min
The work of Gregory Markopoulos occupies a unique position in the history of film. He is widely regarded as one of the masters of the cinematic art, yet since he departed the United States in 1967 his films were almost impossible to see. As a result of his need for total control over the presentation of his vision, he increasingly withdrew himself and his films from the film community he had been so actively involved in up to that point.
In recent years the films of Markopoulos have been gradually reintroduced to the viewing public and have been honoured at major museums and festivals, including retrospectives at the American Centre (Paris 1995), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York 1996), Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco 1997) The Film Society of Lincoln Centre (New York 2003) and Harvard Film Archive (2003). In May 2003, Robert Beavers and Simon Field presented a screening of Markopoulos films at the Goethe Institute, Athens, to an audience exceeding 350 people, and in June 2004, Temenos Inc. will resume the summer screening programme at the outdoor site in Lyssaraia.
This National Film Theatre season is the first time that so many of the films of Markopoulos have been shown in England on such a scale. Since he withdrew his films from exhibition in the early 1970s, they have been virtually impossible to see in the UK. This high-profile event will also act as a precursor to the resumption of outdoor Temenos projections at a remote site near Arcadia in the Peloponnese in June 2004, where restored films from the epic Eniaios cycle will be presented in public the first time. For three consecutive nights, screenings will take place from 10pm to 4am in the place chosen by Markopoulos as the ideal site for a spectator’s quest, in which his films may elevate the spectators’ sense of time while emotionally and physically connecting them to the mythic themes and locations.
In 1964, he began work on the film which would eventually become The Illiac Passion (1967). During the period in which he was editing and securing funding for that film, he made three films edited entirely in-camera. Galaxie (1966) is a series of 33 portraits of the artistic and intellectual community of Manhattan. Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill (1967) is a biographical portrait of the dancer and poet. Ming Green (1966) is an immaculately constructed portrait of his apartment that was shot in a single afternoon. This portrait, painted in the colour of the title, was made a few months before his departure from New York. It is dedicated to the filmmaker Stan Brakhage and was shot without a scenario and edited entirely in the camera: ‘The orchestration of colour, the controlled metrics of the flashing and superimposing images, the sureness of the composition, and the careful placement of musical excerpts make this film one of Markopoulos’ most successful achievements of in-camera editing’ (P. Adams Sitney)
After making Himself as Herself and Eros, O Basileus (both 1967) in New York, Markopoulos moved to Europe, ostensibly to raise money to finally print The Illiac Passion. While in Greece he made the architectural portrait Bliss (1967), and in Italy he shot Gammelion (1967-68), for which seven minutes of footage filmed in the 365 rooms of the Castello Roccasinibalda was extended to almost an hour using over a thousand fades.
‘Shot in available light and with only two rolls of film, Gammelion portrays Castello Roccasinibalda, a castle in Italy with which Markopoulos had long been entranced. Each ‘film phrase’ consisted of only a few frames which he later combined with hundreds of fade-ins and fade-outs, extending seven minutes of footage to 60. The soundtrack includes Rilke’s text: ‘To be Loved, is to be Consumed…’ read forward and in reverse.’ (Pacific Film Archives)
‘Gammelion takes its title from the Greek month suitable for marriage. As the screen slowly winks from dark to light and the reverse, tiny shots – sometimes just single frames – are interjected of the landscape around the castle. We gradually move closer and closer to it, view the corridors, glimpse a nude couple in the frescoes, and then move outside again. The impression of Gammelion is quite unlike that of any other Markopoulos film. It is at once terribly sparse and very rich.’ (P. Adams Sitney)
After The Illiac Passion, Markopoulos continued to work in Europe for the next two years up until Sorrows (1969). Set to music by Beethoven, this lyrical portrait moves from a chilled and misty exterior to the crystalline interior of the Swiss chateau that King Ludwig II built for Wagner.
‘It’s a film in which all of the editing is done in camera. It was very cold that day, there was a little bit of fog, but as I filmed, starting at the main entrance along the road, the fog sort of lifted. The first roll was the outside, the second the inside. By the time I got inside, the sun kept coming out – so it’s like a piece of crystal, it comes to light. I just used a motif from Beethoven’s Leonore overture, which Wagner liked very much.’ (Markopoulos interviewed by Jonas Mekas)
Through the 1970s, though he continued to shoot films (including Genius, 1970, a vision of Faust featuring David Hockney), they were rarely printed. Markopoulos was already developing plans for the Temenos, a dedicated theatre and archive that was to be constructed in his father’s home town of Lyssaraia in Greece. He severed his remaining ties with the film community in 1974, by disassociating himself from Anthology Film Archives and asking P. Adams Sitney to remove the chapter on his films from subsequent editions of the book Visionary Film. In the summer of 1980, Gregory Markopoulos and Robert Beavers held their first, free, open-air screenings on a hillside above Lyssaraia. The screenings were accompanied by publications and this tradition continued annually until 1986.
(Mark Webber)
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Date: 17 April 2004 | Season: Gregory Markopoulos 2004 | Tags: Gregory Markopoulos, Markopoulos
THE ILLIAC PASSION
Sat 17 April 2004, at 8.40pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
Throughout his life, Markopoulos remained closely connected to his family background, and ultimately saw the Greek landscape as the ideal setting for viewing his films. The Illiac Passion, one of his most highly acclaimed works, is a visionary interpretation of ‘Prometheus Bound’ starring mythical beings from the 60s underground including Andy Warhol, Jack Smith and Taylor Mead. The soundtrack of this contemporary re-imagining of the classical realm features a reading of Thoreau’s translation of the Aeschylus text and excerpts from Bartók. The preceding film, Bliss,is a brief study of a church on the island of Hydra.
Gregory Markopoulos, Bliss, Greece, 1967, 6 min
Gregory Markopoulos, The Illiac Passion, USA, 1967, 92 min
The programme will be introduced by Robert Beavers, filmmaker and director of Temenos Inc.
Also Screening: Tuesday 20 April 2004, at 6.20pm, NFT2
PROGRAMME NOTES
THE ILLIAC PASSION
Sat 17 April 2004, at 8.40pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
BLISS
Gregory Markopoulos, Greece, 1967, 16mm, colour, silent, 6 min
THE ILLIAC PASSION
Gregory Markopoulos, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 92 min
The work of Gregory Markopoulos occupies a unique position in the history of film. He is widely regarded as one of the masters of the cinematic art, yet since he departed the United States in 1967 his films were almost impossible to see. As a result of his need for total control over the presentation of his vision, he increasingly withdrew himself and his films from the film community he had been so actively involved in up to that point.
In recent years the films of Markopoulos have been gradually reintroduced to the viewing public and have been honoured at major museums and festivals, including retrospectives at the American Centre (Paris 1995), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York 1996), Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco 1997) The Film Society of Lincoln Centre (New York 2003) and Harvard Film Archive (2003). In May 2003, Robert Beavers and Simon Field presented a screening of Markopoulos films at the Goethe Institute, Athens, to an audience exceeding 350 people, and in June 2004, Temenos Inc. will resume the summer screening programme at the outdoor site in Lyssaraia.
This National Film Theatre season is the first time that so many of the films of Markopoulos have been shown in England on such a scale. Since he withdrew his films from exhibition in the early 1970s, they have been virtually impossible to see in the UK. This high-profile event will also act as a precursor to the resumption of outdoor Temenos projections at a remote site near Arcadia in the Peloponnese in June 2004, where restored films from the epic Eniaios cycle will be presented in public the first time. For three consecutive nights, screenings will take place from 10pm to 4am in the place chosen by Markopoulos as the ideal site for a spectator’s quest, in which his films may elevate the spectators’ sense of time while emotionally and physically connecting them to the mythic themes and locations.
After making Himself as Herself and Eros, O Basileus (both 1967) in New York, Markopoulos moved to Europe, ostensibly to raise money to finally print The Illiac Passion. While in Greece he made the architectural portrait Bliss (1967),shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.
In the autumn of 1967, Markopoulos was living in Brussels where he persuaded a consortium of businessmen to fund the completion of The Illiac Passion. The film had been shot in 1964 starring Richard Beauvais alongside a cast of well-known underground personalities including Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Taylor Mead, Beverly Grant and Jack Smith. It was originally edited in the first half of 1965, and was then intended as a three hour long, triple projection film in which 35, 16 and 8mm frames would be superimposed on each other to demonstrate different layers of consciousness. During the printing process, Markopoulos commuted between Brussels and the lab in Boulder, Colorado. After a 30-minute section had been completed, he realised that the film would never be ready in time for the film festival at Knokke-le-Zoute, so he reconceived and re-edited the film into the 92-minute version that exists today.
(Mark Webber)
For me the inspiration for The Illiac Passion was derived from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound: from the multitude of impressions I had had from time to time of what the other two, lost plays of his trilogy, might have been like. And my own golden circle of inspiration not once ignored what I had read once as a student in a wonderful essay by Gordon Craig that the actor should appear naked upon the stage. Thus, I decided to film the protagonist shaped out of Prometheus naked. The season in New York was proper towards this endeavour, and I had no difficulty once I had cast the role in either filming the protagonist naked or in the most obvious difficulty, developing the film footage. But of the main characters in the Aeschylus, I only kept three: Prometheus, Poseidon, and Io. Prometheus was cast and in my own being thought of as Prometheus (thought he has no such name in the film proper) was portrayed by Mr Richard Beauvais. Poseidon no longer arriving in a bath tub but riding an exercycle was portrayed by Mr Andy Warhol. And Io not chased by a gadfly, but cast in a kind of subterranean aura, slowly becoming porcelain, and imbued with an Asiatic quality, portrayed by Miss Clara Hoover. Of the three members, I had to film most with Richard Beauvais. Andy Warhol’s footage was shot all in one evening, with Life magazine recording the event in colour stills; the stills have never been published. Clara Hoover’s footage was shot over a period of two or three weeks; a part of the time in below zero weather with Richard Beauvais at Lloyd’s Neck, Long Island.
If the point of inspiration for the three central characters (though in essence Beauvais is the only central character) was Aeschylus’ play, the point of inspiration for the mythic characters, if they be so called, were the Greek myths which had always brought me such jubilation: the myths of Narcissus and Echo, Icarus and Daedalus, Hyacinthus and Apollo, Venus and Adonis, Orpheus and Eyrudice, Zeus and Ganymede, and many others. Using these pointillistically, as illuminated, exotic ports of departure I allowed myself to depart, to drift, to journey amongst the emotions of the players I found during my odyssey: until finally, in the final version of The Illiac Passion, the players become but the molecules of the nude protagonist, gyrating and struggling, all in love, bound and unbound, from situation to situation in the vast sea of emotion which becomes the filmmaker’s proudest endeavour.
One more characterisation should be mentioned as a direct descendant of the two characters who bind Prometheus in the opening passages of the Greek play. The characterisation which I have in mind is that of the inimitable Mr Taylor Mead (underground poet and film personality) who portrays in composite the two characters from Aeschylus: Power and Force. Some film spectators, having seen The Illiac Passion (one dissenting that he was needed in the film!), have looked to him as a sprite, as a fire image; as a fire image because of the costume we selected together for his portrayal. None of these, however, valid as they may seem from the film spectator’s viewpoint, hold as much truth as the filmmaker’s own interpretation: that Taylor Mead is the opposite of the Muse in the film, a Demon; a Demon in the full sense of the Greek word. One has only to think of the film in order to agree to the interpretation. For always, the Demon and the Muse, so deftly portrayed by a true-to-life Muse herself, Mrs Peggy Myrray, are kept apart; apart, that is, they are never seen or superimposed in the same scene or composition together.
(Gregory Markopoulos)
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Date: 18 April 2004 | Season: Gregory Markopoulos 2004 | Tags: Gregory Markopoulos, Markopoulos
PORTRAITURE
Sunday 18 April 2004, at 6.20pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
Galaxie consists of thirty-three portraits of important figures from the art world, including painters, poets, critics, filmmakers, and choreographers. Each is shot with a single roll of 16mm film and though edited entirely in-camera, often comprises of many layers of dense superimposition. The subjects were invited to pose in their home, together with objects chosen by them as symbolic extensions of their personality. Saint Actaeon is a rhythmic portrait of historian and aesthete Sir Harold Acton, shot in the gardens of his family villa.
Gregory Markopoulos, Galaxie, USA, 1966, 92 min
Gregory Markopoulos, Saint Actaeon, Italy, 1971, 12 min
The programme will be introduced by Robert Beavers, filmmaker and director of Temenos Inc.
Also Screening: Wednesday 21 April 2004, at 6.20pm, NFT2
PROGRAMME NOTES
PORTRAITURE
Sunday 18 April 2004, at 6.20pm
London National Film Theatre NFT2
GALAXIE
Gregory Markopoulos, USA, 1966, 16mm, colour, sound, 92 min
SAINT ACTAEON
Gregory Markopoulos, Italy, 1971, colour, silent, 12 min
The work of Gregory Markopoulos occupies a unique position in the history of film. He is widely regarded as one of the masters of the cinematic art, yet since he departed the United States in 1967 his films were almost impossible to see. As a result of his need for total control over the presentation of his vision, he increasingly withdrew himself and his films from the film community he had been so actively involved in up to that point.
In 1964, he began work on the film which would eventually become The Illiac Passion (1967). During the period in which he was editing and securing funding for that film, he made three films edited entirely in-camera. Ming Green (1966) is an immaculately constructed portrait of his apartment that was shot in a single afternoon. Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill (1967) is a biographical portrait of the dancer and poet. A veritable who’s who of the art world in the mid-1960s, Galaxie includes portraits of 33 painters, poets, critics, filmmakers, and choreographers. Shooting with his Bolex camera and utilising an intricate system he developed that allowed for multiple images and for editing the entire work in-camera, Markopoulos created elaborate portraits of such seminal figures as W.H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Erick Hawkins, and Susan Sontag.
‘The filmmaker resurrected the discipline of making films without post-editing in 1966 when he shot his collection of portraits, Galaxie. In making the portraits his method had been to select an object or an activity with personal significance to the subject. Carefully watching the frame-counter on his camera, he would expose a number of takes of one image interspersed with blackness. He would then rewind the film and expose the units of the next view, detail, or object. Each image has its own metrical pace, which alternates with or is superimposed upon the others.’ (P. Adams Sitney)
Throughout the 1980s, Markopoulos also worked on the Eniaios (1948-91), a series of 22 silent film cycles containing material from his 40 years as a filmmaker. The series was fully edited, but not printed, before his death in 1992. It consists of over 80 hours of film and will cost an estimated $800,000 to complete. Robert Beavers is continuing to pursue the construction of the Temenos, and intends to build an archive for Markopoulos’ journals, letters, script, articles and reviews which the filmmaker had linen-bound in handmade cases and are currently stored in a Swiss vault, together with a film theatre for presentation of the complete Eniaios. To date, four of the cycles, thirteen hours in total, have been preserved and printed.
In recent years the films of Markopoulos have been gradually reintroduced to the viewing public and have been honoured at major museums and festivals, including retrospectives at the American Centre (Paris 1995), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York 1996), Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco 1997) The Film Society of Lincoln Centre (New York 2003) and Harvard Film Archive (2003). In May 2003, Robert Beavers and Simon Field presented a screening of Markopoulos films at the Goethe Institute, Athens, to an audience exceeding 350 people, and in June 2004, Temenos Inc. will resume the summer screening programme at the outdoor site in Lyssaraia.
This National Film Theatre season is the first time that so many of the films of Markopoulos have been shown in England on such a scale. Since he withdrew his films from exhibition in the early 1970s, they have been virtually impossible to see in the UK. This high-profile event will also act as a precursor to the resumption of outdoor Temenos projections at a remote site near Arcadia in the Peloponnese in June 2004, where restored films from the epic Eniaios cycle will be presented in public the first time. For three consecutive nights, screenings will take place from 10pm to 4am in the place chosen by Markopoulos as the ideal site for a spectator’s quest, in which his films may elevate the spectators’ sense of time while emotionally and physically connecting them to the mythic themes and locations.
(Mark Webber)
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Date: 23 June 2004 | Season: LUX Salon
LUX SALON: STATE OF THE UNION: BRUCE BAILLIE & LENKA CLAYTON
Wednesday 23 June 2004, at 7:30pm
London LUX
A US election year special. LUX is pleased to present a new print of Bruce Baillie’s legendary American travelogue Quixote, made coast-to-coast over a four year period. Baillie’s film is a lyrical, patchwork portrait of the margins of 60s America, from the supermarket aisles to the circus big top.
“Baillie’s trip is wedged between two generations of youthful nomads; the Beats (contemporaneous with Hollywood’s heydey of Western expansion) on one side, the hippy transhumances (and Easy Rider) on the other. That Quixote could be claimed, at different times, by each is a sign of its hinged position to two vastly different projects.” —Paul Arthur.
Lenka Clayton’s concept in Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet was a simple one – take the 4,100 words from George W.Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, and splice them together in alphabetical order. The result is powerful: a mesmerising snapshot of the posturing, rhetoric and obsessions dominating American politics in the aftermath of 11 September.
Bruce Baillie, Quixote, USA, 1964-67, 16mm, b/w & colour, sound,
Lenka Clayton, Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet, Germany, 2003, video, colour, sound, 18 min
Date: 10 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: FILM ALS SPEKTAKEL, EREIGNIS UND PERFORMANCE
10 – 26 September 2004
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
From the 10th to the 26th of September hartware medien kunst verein in conjunction with medien_kunst_netz dortmund present the festival Expanded Cinema: Film als Spektakel, Ereignis und Performance (Expanded Cinema: Film as Spectacle, Event and Performance). The programme has been conceived by Mark Webber and is a survey of Expanded Cinema encompassing historical works from the 1960s to the present day. Many of the artist-filmmakers will appear in person and will be available for discussion with the audience after the performances.
»Expanded Cinema« is the term used to describe works that do not conform to the traditional single-screen cinema format. Expanded cinema is not a movement; it is a style of presentation that can be used for films or performances made for a wide variety of aesthetic, personal and political reasons. The only common link between them is that they do not adhere to the »standard« mode of presentation of a single, continuous film projected onto a screen in front of an audience. Projectors are often placed in the room with the audience (not hidden away in a booth at the back) and become part of the overall, participatory event.
The programme stresses the unique, ephemeral and temporal qualities of a finite film or performance that has a beginning, middle and end, and is, by its nature, a shared experience for the assembled audience. There will be no secondary documentation, re-interpretations, installations or static loops, each piece happens once only at a designated time. It presents only film-based, »living works« in their original formats, including multi-screen projections, film performances and expanded cinema events. There will be no use of video or digital technology, but the influence these works have had on the development of new media and gallery installations will be clearly evident.
10-12 September 2004
Participating Artists: Valie Export (Austria), Christian Lebrat (France), Werner Nekes, Jurgen Reble & Thomas Köner (Germany) Malcolm Le Grice, Guy Sherwin (UK), Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder, Bruce McClure (USA). Plus Films By: Joost Rekveld (Netherlands), Gill Eatherley (UK), Morgan Fisher, Paul Sharits (USA).
17-19 September 2004
Participating Artists: Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki (Greece/France). Plus Films By: Fred Drummond, Gill Eatherley, Sally Potter, William Raban, James Scott, Chris Welsby (UK), Storm de Hirsch, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rubin, Carolee Schneemann, Paul Sharits, Andy Warhol (USA).
24-26 September 2004
Participating Artists: Giovanni Martedi (Italy/France), Anthony McCall (UK), Wilhelm Hein (Germany), William Raban (UK), Tony Conrad (USA). Plus Films By: Birgit Hein (Germany), Lis Rhodes (UK), Beverly Conrad (USA).
Presented by harware medien kunst verein & medien_kunst_netz dortmund
Curator: Mark Webber
Coordination & Press: Katrin Mundt
Technican: Uwe Gorski
Venue: Phoenixhalle, Hichofenstraße / Ecke Rombergstraße, Dortmund-Hörder, Germany.
In cooperation with dortmund-projet, LEG – landesentwicklungsgesellschaft NRW, Kulturbüro Stadt Dortmund.
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Expanded Cinema: Film as Spectacle, Event and Performance presents an international survey of works that transcend the traditional modes of projection.
Film as Spectacle: Expanded Cinema can fill our field our vision as an environment of light-beams or with large, integrated multi-panel projections.
Film as Event: Expanded Cinema works are unique temporal experiences, different every time they are projected and distinct from film installations.
Film as Performance: Expanded Cinema often incorporates live performative actions of the artist-filmmaker, either behind the projector or in front of the screen.
DEFINING ‘EXPANDED CINEMA’
‘Expanded Cinema’ is the term used to describe works that do not conform to the traditional single-screen cinema format. Expanded cinema is not a movement; it is a format of presentation that can be used for films or performances made for a wide variety of aesthetic, personal and political reasons. The only common link between them is that they do not adhere to the ‘standard’ mode of presentation of a single, continuous film projected onto a screen in front of an audience. Projectors are often placed in the room with the audience (not hidden away in a booth at the back) and become part of the overall, participatory event.
Expanded cinema can widen our field of vision. With two (or more) projections side-by-side or vertically aligned, individually images may act in harmony, dialogue or counterpoint with each other. Real time may be measured against itself, exaggerated or contracted; abstraction can be further abstracted. Expanded cinema also explores the transience of the medium – with these works, no two projections are ever the same.
The work often questions the role of the spectator and sometimes what happens across the room is more important than what is on the screen. Expanded cinema can take place in the traditional theatre environment, but a flat, open room with no fixed seating offers filmmakers wider freedom to experiment with projection. Expanded cinema includes films that incorporate live performances, and even light pieces that do not use any film at all.
In his epochal book Expanded Cinema (Studio Vista, 1970), American media theorist Gene Youngblood defines the term in a different way, stating that “When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness”. His hypothesis concerns the moving image in a general utopian sense, is not limited to film technology, and discusses the expansion of cinematic possibilities that was made possible by the invention and integration of the then new technologies of video, computers and holograms at the end of the 1960s. Youngblood covers inter-media events and environments that present an ‘expanded field’ of visual or sensory stimulation.
The range of work that may be called ‘expanded cinema’ is extremely broad, encompassing the multi-media spectacles seen at expos and world fairs, along with the use of film in happenings, light shows, intermedia performances, gallery installations, public actions (which may reference cinema but use none of its technology) and absurdist events that attack the theatrical situation.
Expanded cinema and the projected image has recently been the focus of three major international exhibitions – Into the Light (Whitney Museum, New York, 2001), Future Cinema (ZKM Karlsruhe, 2002), X-Screen (MuMoK, Vienna, 2003) – which have taken significant steps to embrace expanded cinema within the historical framework of contemporary art. Each has importantly included the work of filmmakers from the avant-garde (film co-op) tradition with established visual artists from the art world. But as gallery-based exhibitions presenting continuous installations, or photo and text documentation, they have limited in their ability to demonstrate the vitality of expanded cinema as a performative and variable live event.
Expanded Cinema: Film as Spectacle, Event and Performance is an attempt to redress this imbalance, particularly concentrating on works which developed, more of less, within the tradition of avant-garde and formal filmmaking.
In that context, Expanded Cinema was in many ways an elaboration of the concept of ‘film as film’ pursued by the structural/materialist filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s. It extends their inquiry into the unique properties of the film strip, and the raw physicality of the medium, into the moment of projection.
This hands-on presentation of the work also takes the film avant-garde’s idea of a ‘personal cinema’ back to the home movie that is projected by the family member that shot the film. Performances of expanded cinema often require the presence of the artist-filmmaker, who must physically manipulate the projector in order to present the work completely. The machinery is not hidden away in a projection booth, as is usually the case at a public screening, but is located in the room alongside, or behind, the audience, where it can easily be seen.
Here, the projector, and very moment of projection, becomes analogous to the camera as a mechanism by which the work is physically created and reproduced. With such fundamental forms of cinema, not only the camera, but also the initial impulse or concept, the exposure of the film stock, the methods of printing and processing the film strip, the moment and style of projection, and also the discourse that is built up around the work, contributes to the overall construction of each piece.
With all these aspects vital to a total work, the act of filmmaking becomes extremely artisan. The filmmaker is usually involved with all stages of production and presentation, if not directly executing every phase themselves. Given these conditions it becomes essential to consider these works as having developed from a visual art tradition rather than the more industrialised cinematic approach, and as such there are more direct and visible links between these works and advances in fine art (from abstraction through minimalism and conceptual art), than in the most auteur or independent strains of commercial cinema.
Expanded cinema, like traditional painting and sculpture, is precarious and unstable. Projectors may be turned on at the wrong time to be immediately abandoned and restarted. They may drift out of sync, lamps can blow and films may break. These are rare occurrences, but they keep it real and act as a reminder of the medium and its transient conditions.
Just as old-fashioned, acoustic musical instruments sound warmer and more pleasurable than their digital equivalents, so film retains its unique qualities that make it a richer and more sensual medium than video or new technologies in the moving image. The reassuring clatter and whirr of a mechanical projector and the nerve-wracking moment of projection is a life affirming moment.
In the film underground of the 1960s, many artist-filmmakers began to experiment with different formats of projection, using multiple film projectors, or combining film projectors with other media, sometimes making cinematic shadow plays with only a simple light source. Such activity continues today, with many artists still making the aesthetic choice to use film instead of cheaper, more easily accessible video technology. One day (some believe this is coming soon) it will not be possible to see these works in their original form, with the guiding hands of their creators. Not only are the pioneering filmmakers getting old, but the technology of projectors and also film itself is in danger of becoming obsolete.
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Date: 10 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: FILM ALS SPEKTAKEL, EREIGNIS UND PERFORMANCE
10 – 12 September 2004 (First Weekend)
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
The opening weekend is characterised by a diverse range of works that investigate the properties and use of colour in film and projected light, often using abstract imagery. The season will commence with an early two-screen film by Werner Nekes projected outside the gallery into the surrounding environment. Filmmaker and theorist Malcolm Le Grice will show a selection of his colour field films for up to eight projectors and Jurgen Reble will perform Alchemie (1992), using a mixture of chemical substances to irreversibly transform the composition of a film loop in real time.
Saturday features three young New York artists that recently participated in the Whitney Biennial. The afternoon begins with collaborative works for Super-8 and 16mm by Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson present and later Bruce McClure performs with four specially adapted projectors. There will also be multi-screen films by Gill Eatherley, Joost Rekveld and Paul Sharits, and a performance by Christian Lebrat.
On Sunday afternoon, Werner Nekes will give a lecture/demonstration that illustrates pre-cinematic precedents of expanded cinema, followed by a special programme in which the screen is not only illuminated, but activated. Valie Export, Malcolm Le Grice, Werner Nekes and Guy Sherwin will present live performances of seminal film actions from the 60s & 70s in a programme that also features Morgan Fisher’s Projection Instructions (1976), which invites the projectionist to get in on the act.
Participating Artists: Valie Export (Austria), Christian Lebrat (France), Werner Nekes, Jurgen Reble & Thomas Köner (Germany) Malcolm Le Grice, Guy Sherwin (UK), Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder, Bruce McClure (USA).
Plus Films By: Joost Rekveld (Netherlands), Gill Eatherley (UK), Morgan Fisher, Paul Sharits (USA).
Date: 10 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: OPENING NIGHT
Friday 10 September 2004, at 8pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
Werner Nekes, Schnitte für ABABA, 1967, 11 min, mobile projection
A metrically edited film which animates nature and buildings through rapid changes in light. According to its original instructions, the film will projected outdoors onto the surrounding environment.
Malcolm Le Grice, Matrix, 1973, 18 min, 6 projector performance
Malcolm Le Grice, Blue Field Duration, 1972, 8 min, 2 screen film
Malcolm Le Grice, Threshold, 1972, 17 min, 3 projector performance
Malcolm Le Grice, Horror Film I, 1971, c.15 min, 3 projectors & live performance
As one of the core members of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, Le Grice established the idea that printing processing and projection were essential creative elements of filmmaking. His colour field films of the early 70s use rich, dynamic hues, which complement and contrast each other as the projectors are moved in predetermined sequences, creating constantly varied, durational ‘screen structures’.
Jürgen Reble & Thomas Köner, Alchemie, 1992, c.60 min, alchemical sound & film performance
By directly applying chemicals to the emulsion of a prepared film loop, Reble progressively decomposes and modifies the image, whilst Köner creates an electronic, aural counterpart using ambient sound. As the performance progresses, the elements are transformed into an abstract, iridescent unity.
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EXPANDED CINEMA: OPENING NIGHT
Friday 10 September 2004, at 8pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
SCHNITTE FÜR ABABA
Werner Nekes, Germany, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 11 min, mobile projection
MATRIX
Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1973, 16mm, colour, sound-on-tape, 18 min, 6 projector performance
BLUE FIELD DURATION
Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1972, 16mm, colour, sound, 8 min, 2 screen film
THRESHOLD
Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1972, 16mm, colour, sound, 17 min, 3 projector performance
HORROR FILM
Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1971, 16mm, colour, sound-on-tape, c.15 min, 3 projectors & live performance
ALCHEMIE
Jürgen Reble & Thomas Köner, Germany, 1992, 16mm, colour, sound, c.60 min, alchemical sound & film performance
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Date: 11 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: RIDE THE LIGHT
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 3pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
Recoder & Gibson, Ride the Light, 2004, c.60 min, multi-projection performance
Working individually and in collaboration as presstapes, Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson explore the canvas of the filmstrip with the medium of light, manipulating both exposure and projection. For part of this performance, a regular power switch will be used to manually flicker, strobe, and flash forth a unique cinematic phenomenon.
Recoder & Gibson, Fourfold, 2001-04, c.7 min, 4 projector performance
Recoder & Gibson, Color Test, 2003, 5 min, 3 projector performance
Recoder & Gibson, Override, 2004, c.9 min, 2 projector performance
Recoder & Gibson, Ribbon, 2003, 6 min, 4 projector performance
Recoder & Gibson, Alignments for Linea, 2002-04, c.19 min, 2 projector performance
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EXPANDED CINEMA: RIDE THE LIGHT
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 3pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
RIDE THE LIGHT
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2004, 16mm, colour, sound, c.60 min, multi-projection performance
ride the light is a program of live events for the multiplicity of film projection. the doubling, tripling, and sometimes quadrupling up of screens – in short, the dispersal of cinema – fragments the always already fragmented and in essence, redistributes the temporal distribution of temporality,
the doubling-up of the mechanical-spectacular releases our time machine from the bond of a manufactured ‘ticking away’. the sequential beat of the frame-work (of frame-upon-frame) is followed by the doppelganger to be reproduced not as reproduction of the same thing but as re-production of the dissimilar in simulation.
when twos, threes and fours converge there emerges a ricochet, a shimmer, a ghost. it is this ghosting that cinema pursues with its ‘persistence of vision’ only to erase it from vision – by thickening the still succession, the frame-work in what is called eidetics. ride the light broadens the network of streaks, raises the erasures, re-visions for cinema its indigenous persist-stance.
FOURFOLD
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2001-04, 16mm, colour, sound, c.7 min, 4 projector performance
COLOR TEST
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 5 min, 3 projector performance
OVERRIDE
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2004, 16mm, colour, sound, c.9 min, 2 projector performance
RIBBON
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min, 4 projector performance
ALIGNMENTS FOR LINEA
Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson, USA, 2002-04, 16mm, colour, sound, c.19 min, 2 projector performance
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Date: 11 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: MULTI-SCREEN FILMS
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 5pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
Abstract colour films for 2 or 3 adjacent projectors. Liminal Minimal is a performance for mobile projectors using red, green and blue colour signals. #5 and Hand Grenade are both 3-screen action paintings produced by trails of light. In Dream Displacement, Sharits manipulates strips of single-frame colour fields, creating a soporific, cinematic meditation.
Christian Lebrat, Liminal Minimal, 1977, c.19 min, 2 screen performance
Joost Rekveld, #5 (Variation 1), 1994, 6 min, 3 screen film
Gill Eatherley, Hand Grenade, 1971, 6 min, 3 screen film
Paul Sharits, Dream Displacement, 1976, 24 min, 2 screen film
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EXPANDED CINEMA: MULTI-SCREEN FILMS
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 5pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
LIMINAL MINIMAL
Christian Lebrat, France, 1977, 16mm, colour, silent, c.19 min, 2 screen performance
#5 (VARIATION 1)
Joost Rekveld, Netherlands, 1994, 16mm, colour, silent, 6 min, 3 screen film
HAND GRENADE
Gill Eatherley, UK, 1971, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min, 3 screen film
DREAM DISPLACEMENT
Paul Sharits, USA, 1976, 16mm, colour, sound-on-tape, 24 min, 2 screen film
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Date: 11 September 2004 | Season: Expanded Cinema 2004 | Tags: Dortmund, Expanded Cinema
EXPANDED CINEMA: CRIB & SIFT
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 8pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
Bruce McClure, Crib & Sift, 2001-04, c.90 min, projection performance with adapted projectors
Bruce McClure’s light performances are constructed on the screen using 2 or 4 specially modified projectors. His work “activates cinematic potential, omitting the artistic error of the camera eye, favouring the fugitive chiaroscuro in the automatic theatre of the brain’s emulsion. The programme will manifest the projector as the primary utensil in an enfilade of scotopic visions requisitioned and apportioned according to its rotary on-off swing.”
Bruce McClure, Crossfades, 2003, 13 min, 3 projector performance
Bruce McClure, Circle Jerks, 2002, 16 min, 4 projector performance
Bruce McClure, Presepio, 2003, 16 min, 4 projector performance
Bruce McClure, You Know My Methods, 2003, 15 min, 2 projector performance
Bruce McClure, Double Incident, 2004. 15 min, 4 projector performance
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EXPANDED CINEMA: CRIB & SIFT
Saturday 11 September 2004, at 8pm
Dortmund PhoenixHalle
CRIB & SIFT
Bruce McClure, USA, 2001-04, 16mm, colour, sound & silent, c.90 min, projection performance with adapted projectors
Bruce McClure’s light performances are constructed on the screen using 2 or 4 specially modified projectors. His work “activates cinematic potential, omitting the artistic error of the camera eye, favouring the fugitive chiaroscuro in the automatic theatre of the brain’s emulsion. The programme will manifest the projector as the primary utensil in an enfilade of scotopic visions requisitioned and apportioned according to it’s rotary on-off swing.
CROSSFADES
Bruce McClure, USA, 2003, 16mm, colour, silent, 13 min, 3 projector performance
CIRCLE JERKS
Bruce McClure, USA, 2002, 16mm, colour, sound, 16 min, 4 projector performance
PRESEPIO
Bruce McClure, USA, 2003, 16mm, colour, silent, 16 min, 4 projector performance
YOU KNOW MY METHODS
Bruce McClure, USA, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 15 min, 2 projector performance
DOUBLE INCIDENT
Bruce McClure, USA, 2004, 16mm, colour, sound, 15 min, 4 projector performance
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