Since the 1960s, “expanded cinema” has described a wide range of film and projection events, performances and environments, yet it remains an ambiguous term, embracing contradictory dimensions of film and video art. This seminar seeks to understand, revise and shape its ontology: its mode of being, status, and conditions of existence as an art form and practice, with a particular emphasis on analog-film-based work, both historically and in its surprisingly persistent contemporary forms.
The key idea is not only to move beyond the limits of the frame, screen or projection space, but also to explore expanded cinema as an experience that manifests itself as cinematic in non-filmic media: text/language, radio/sound, body/performance/presence, object/installation, choreography, etc.
We will look into a variety of analog and experimental techniques, concepts, solutions, expressions, as well as the basic constitutive elements of cinema that are being questioned and whose preconceptions are being ruptured. For example, we will think of the image as an independent, ambivalent ‘creature’ between representation and object, one that can also appear in verbal, mental, and perceptual entities.
We will trace expanded cinema from the 1960s to the contemporary underground, examining how its medial configuration is formulated in relation to experimental film, video art, performance, media art, installation. We will test and undo existing definitions, critically revising key terms and eventually attempting to let go of rigid categories in order to find our own approaches and vocabularies.
The intention of this seminar is to familiarize students with what analog film (mostly 16mm and 8mm) can do – its specific character and potential within time-based media and performance – and how it relates to contemporary realms and tendencies. Another aim is to understand the students’ needs and wishes, as this seminar will serve as an opening towards possible future seminars/workshops with a hands-on approach to analog techniques and equipment.
Topics we will touch on and possible directions for future:
- Apparatus and dispositif - Exploring how different projectors, lenses, screens, and surfaces change what “a film” is: 16mm, Super 8, slide projectors, multiple projectors, non-standard projection surfaces, mirrors, prisms.
- Projection as performance, projector as instrument - Live projector manipulation, switching between machines, masking the beam, moving the projector through space, bodies in the light cone, projectionist and audience as co-performers.
- Repetition, loop, rhythm - Working with limitations. Loop as rhythm. Time and rhythm of performance. Creating rhythm through unconventional means. Exploring connections to ritual, the sacred, and folklore.
- Sound and expanded listening - Analog sound, sound from machines (projector noise), optical sound, contact mics on projectors, feedback, found sound, tape recorders, spatialized speaker setups, live mixing with projection.
- Screen, space, architecture, nature - Site-responsive setups, corner or floor/ceiling projections, immersive environments, public spaces, found nature, objects as screens, testing how cinema “exists” when it’s no longer bound to the frontal screen.
- Body extended - Performer’s body, the body of audience, mechanical body of projector. Body as instrument. Body as archive. Presence/absence. Action/reaction.
- Light, time, materiality - Working with clear, hand-painted or scratched film, variable speeds, shutter interventions, to ask when light/time alone already constitute “cinema”.
- Audience and participation - Audience as active participant and co-creator: choreographing movement in the space, intervention in the projection, testing how spectatorship becomes a material of expanded cinema.
The key idea is not only to move beyond the limits of the frame, screen or projection space, but also to explore expanded cinema as an experience that manifests itself as cinematic in non-filmic media: text/language, radio/sound, body/performance/presence, object/installation, choreography, etc.
We will look into a variety of analog and experimental techniques, concepts, solutions, expressions, as well as the basic constitutive elements of cinema that are being questioned and whose preconceptions are being ruptured. For example, we will think of the image as an independent, ambivalent ‘creature’ between representation and object, one that can also appear in verbal, mental, and perceptual entities.
We will trace expanded cinema from the 1960s to the contemporary underground, examining how its medial configuration is formulated in relation to experimental film, video art, performance, media art, installation. We will test and undo existing definitions, critically revising key terms and eventually attempting to let go of rigid categories in order to find our own approaches and vocabularies.
The intention of this seminar is to familiarize students with what analog film (mostly 16mm and 8mm) can do – its specific character and potential within time-based media and performance – and how it relates to contemporary realms and tendencies. Another aim is to understand the students’ needs and wishes, as this seminar will serve as an opening towards possible future seminars/workshops with a hands-on approach to analog techniques and equipment.
Topics we will touch on and possible directions for future:
- Apparatus and dispositif - Exploring how different projectors, lenses, screens, and surfaces change what “a film” is: 16mm, Super 8, slide projectors, multiple projectors, non-standard projection surfaces, mirrors, prisms.
- Projection as performance, projector as instrument - Live projector manipulation, switching between machines, masking the beam, moving the projector through space, bodies in the light cone, projectionist and audience as co-performers.
- Repetition, loop, rhythm - Working with limitations. Loop as rhythm. Time and rhythm of performance. Creating rhythm through unconventional means. Exploring connections to ritual, the sacred, and folklore.
- Sound and expanded listening - Analog sound, sound from machines (projector noise), optical sound, contact mics on projectors, feedback, found sound, tape recorders, spatialized speaker setups, live mixing with projection.
- Screen, space, architecture, nature - Site-responsive setups, corner or floor/ceiling projections, immersive environments, public spaces, found nature, objects as screens, testing how cinema “exists” when it’s no longer bound to the frontal screen.
- Body extended - Performer’s body, the body of audience, mechanical body of projector. Body as instrument. Body as archive. Presence/absence. Action/reaction.
- Light, time, materiality - Working with clear, hand-painted or scratched film, variable speeds, shutter interventions, to ask when light/time alone already constitute “cinema”.
- Audience and participation - Audience as active participant and co-creator: choreographing movement in the space, intervention in the projection, testing how spectatorship becomes a material of expanded cinema.