From: Nicholas Hamlyn (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Jun 11 2006 - 11:19:28 PDT
That was Reel Time by Annabel Nicolson, 1973. Another piece was made by
Lis Rhodes and Ian Kerr in 1976, which consisted of two 100 foot loops,
one clear, the other black, which ran through projectors and were
allowed to drag on the floor, so that clear got dirty and black got
scratched. Each loop was photocopied at regular intervals. A lot of
British filmmakers, such as Steve Farrer, Bob Fearns, Rob Gawthrop and
others made work along these lines.
Similar but different could be Christian Marclay's (vinyl) Record
without a Cover, which is what it says, and which acquires scratches
and rubbings that become part of the work,
Nicky Hamlyn.
On 11 Jun 2006, at 18:14, Tom B Whiteside wrote:
>
> David's idea below brings to mind an older one, forgive me for not
> having the correct information on this but I'm sure someone can come
> up with the title and artist. At the London Filmmakers Coop many years
> ago a woman ran a long 16mm loop from the projector through a sewing
> machine and back through the projector. (Was it clear leader? I think
> so. That would have made it delightfully inclusive.) Of course the
> sewing machine punched holes in the film, which got caught in the
> gate, which ripped the film, which brought the whole thing to a halt.
> The event could not have lasted very long, but the idea lingers. This
> has recently been a major theme in experimental film and has shown up
> in any number of films and programs the last decade, the degradation
> of emulsion and base, the fragility of film stock over time, etc. The
> ephemeral nature of the medium has long been worked by artists, even
> decades ago when it seemed that it might last forever.
>
> This is only going to last a while . . . (longer) . . . We are living
> in the era of "a while . . . (longer) . . . " That's the pathology of
> film.
>
> The choice of sewing maching was deliberate, as the connection has
> been there since the late 19th century when Louis Lumiere borrowed a
> mechanical movement from a sewing machine to make the Cinematographe.
> I realize that David's idea - to let distribution and exhibition do
> the (destructive) work - is different, but it is interesting how these
> ideas keep surfacing.
>
> -Whiteside
>
> >Now there's a conceptual art /experimental film project: create a
> work in
> >16mm designed to be destroyed over time by bad projection and inept
> >splicing. The work would not be 'finished' until a certain extreme
> degree
> >of random deterioration had occured over a number of years -- also
>
> __________________________________________________________________ For
> info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.