PROCESS EXPANDED

Curator: Ieva Balode (Latvia)

The programme consists of the latest experimental films made by authors from the Baltic countries who not only choose to work on photochemical film but also create experimental narratives and engage with film's materiality and structure. This year's programme showcases works by members of Baltic Analog Lab or authors who are somehow connected to the lab.

TICKETS

Friday, 19 May 20:30, Vagonu Hall

Umbráfono. Enrique del Castillo (Spain)

Sound performance using 35mm optical soundtrack, 40'

Umbráfono is a project by Enrique del Castillo (Jaén, 1982) that consists of a performance with an optical reader capable of transforming light stimuli that are projected onto a photosensitive cell into sound. These luminous stimuli are generated by a beam of light passing through celluloid films which are designed from a scheme of relationship between wave frequency of the notes and repetition of geometric shapes, so that harmonic sounds can be achieved, noises, sound textures and atmospheres.

This project is based on the optical-analog reading system used in the cinema since 1919 to interpret the soundtracks that are part of the films.

The read heads have been modified to read multiple voices simultaneously and to function as independent instruments. The pieces that make them up have been damaged and manufactured by the author, as well as the films used, which are original compositions without a copy.

Performer

Enrique del Castillo (Jaén, Spain, 1982) trained in Fine Arts at Granada University, completed a Master’s at Barcelona University and has developed his artistic career both in painting and sound art. Collaboration with the experimental filmmaker, Miguel A. Puertas sparked his interest in celluloid as sound media, and since 2018 his practice has centered on developing and performing with optical readers which transform patterns on film into sound.

Man With Mirror. Guy Sherwin (UK)

16mm film performance with mirror and performer, 1976-2009, 10'

A historical expanded cinema piece with filmmaker's live interaction with his on-screen image which is projected onto a hand-held mirrored screen.

The screen is white one side and mirrored the other, and is used by the performer to either 'catch' the projected image, or reflect it around the cinema space. The image on film is of the same activity happening in a sunlit landscape. Visual echoes are set up between the live event and the recorded one. 

Performer

Guy Sherwin is one of the fundamental expanded cinema authors from Europe who studied painting at Chelsea School of Art in the late 1960s and taught film printing and processing at the London Film-Makers' Co-op (now LUX) during the mid-70s. His films work with fundamental qualities of cinema such as light and time, and often use serial forms and live elements. They are exhibited in a variety of contexts: galleries, film festivals, cinemas. His recent works include installations made for exhibition spaces and performance collaborations with an artist Lynn Loo working with multiple projectors and optical sound.

Patterns. Jan Kulka (Czech Republic)

60mm film performance with Archeoscope, 32'

Patterns is an experimental handmade film created by printing on a 60mm film base. It is intended to be screened as a live film performance using a special projecting apparatus called the Archeoscope created by the artist himself. The film examines the cinematic potential of patterns. What regular, repetitive structures on film can do when being screened in various ways. This film was made to present a unique opportunity to experience the essence of the fundamental nature of patterns directly in live action. It is an audiovisual struggle between chaos, and order. A Logos brought to life, set into an intensive luminous spectacle. An immersive sensorial play in which the eye is constantly trying to catch up and the brain struggling to make sense of it all. The interferences of various spacial and temporal patterns creates numerous visual creations, variations and modulations on the screen and, subsequently, in you mind. Out of all this arises something new nowhere else to be seen. The live projection of this film is technically irreproducible, so the only way to experience it, is to witness it with the naked eyes.

Performer

Jan Kulka (1985) is a Prague-based experimental filmmaker dedicated to analog film who explores the fundamental principles of the film medium, it's phenomenology and physiology of perception in contemporary context. His aim is to dig to the core, reaching to the primary essence, which we all share in common somewhere deep inside and bring it into a live, shared experience. He incorporates the creation of own instruments in the creative process. His primary focus is on inventing of special projection apparatuses for live performances. Rather than telling a story, he tries to target the very senses of each spectator directly with light and sound to reveal some of the foundations of our perception, that makes our being.

Eye Ardentia. Miguel Ángel Puertas (Spain)

3 x 16mm film performance with live optical and analog sound, 2023, 45'

A sum of abstract visual and sound fields creates an aesthetic experience based on the materiality of celluloid and wave oscillations in various media. Diffractions of sunlight in water and the synthesis of color-light, join a hypnotic and enveloping sound to bring this abstract piece of poetic and intriguing passages to a particular way of perceiving cinema.

An immersive experience of live cinema that highlights what are called fleeting defects of vision. A study where sound variations dance alongside light waves in a stream of electrifying and poetic visions.

Performer

Miguel Ángel Puertas was born in Almería in 1980. He develops his cinematographic work in a self-taught way from studies in Artistic Photography and Advertising Graphics, paying main attention to the autonomy of the creative process, both of the discourse and of the material means with which it is created and displayed. His work spreads from working in the lab to the screening room. Initiated in video art, he has worked and collaborated as an editor in production companies such as Neon Rouge, MoonWorld Records or Rtbf and the independent laboratory LABO Bxl. He co-founds the Gui ColleC collective, a nexus of audiovisual experimentation focused on film practices and live music.

TICKETS

Saturday, 20 May 20:00, Vagonu Hall

Paper Landscape. Guy Sherwin (UK)

16mm film performance with frame, paint and a performer, 1975-2008, 10'

Paper Landscape is one of a series of self-portrait performances that see Sherwin as a kind of film magician interacting in the live moment with a pre-recorded version of himself. Here, the artist stands behind a transparent screen onto which he applies white paint. This white surface makes visible an image of the same artist tearing up a paper screen to reveal a landscape behind. The performance progresses until the screen is entirely covered yet simultaneously uncovered, as the live action gives way to a filmed representation. Finally, the filmed figure disappears into the distance and the live performer cuts through the screen to reappear in front of the audience. (Kim Knowles)

Performer

Guy Sherwin is one of the fundamental expanded cinema authors from Europe who studied painting at Chelsea School of Art in the late 1960s and taught film printing and processing at the London Film-Makers' Co-op (now LUX) during the mid-70s. His films work with fundamental qualities of cinema such as light and time, and often use serial forms and live elements. They are exhibited in a variety of contexts: galleries, film festivals, cinemas. His recent works include installations made for exhibition spaces and performance collaborations with an artist Lynn Loo working with multiple projectors and optical sound.

Pulsos Subterráneos. Elena Pardo (Mexico), Platons Buravickis (Latvia)

3 x 16mm projector and live sound performance, 2022, 40'

An expanded cinema performance that observes and listens to visible and underground territories, both physical and intangible, in two regions of Mexico that currently experience or resist mining activities: Zacatecas and Oaxaca.

Performers

Elena Pardo (Mexico) is a visual artist and director of documentary films, experimental cinema, and animated movies. One of her lines of work is exploring the possibilities of photochemical film material— preserving and capturing images, working in a laboratory, and projecting a variety of formats. Since 2005 she has taken part in the expanded cinema collective Trinchera Ensamble. She is also co-founder and current director of Laboratorio Experimental de Cine [Experimental Film Laboratory] (LEC), an art project that surfaced in 2013.

Platons Buravickis (Latvia) is contemporary classical composer, pianist and improviser. Coming from an academic music background, his creative work is dedicated to symphonic and chamber music, also extensively exploring and working with electroacoustic music. He composes musique concrète as well as music based on sound synthesis.

Isentropic. BR Laser (Austria)

Patch improvised modular synthesizer performance, visualized by RGB diode laser, 35'

White noise is a type of acoustic signal that is characterized by having equal amount of energy across all frequencies in a specific spectrum. As such, it contains the most information about this spectrum. If you apply this character to the human hearing spectrum, it is a way of hearing all the frequencies, thus all the information at once. 

For the Isentropic laser sound performance the noise will be the basic material to form the sound sculptures that live within this noise.

Performer

Bernhard Rasinger (Austria) is an engineer, visual sound artist and cofounder of the art association NewJörg Vienna. He is a regular guest at international experimental music festivals, music fairs and soldering workshops. Performances include Ars Electonica in Linz, Superbooth in Berlin, Modular Days Barcelona, Machines in Music in New York, Gigamodular Tokyo and Skanu Mezs Riga.

Collaborations with other artists include Owen Armour, Richard Devine, Vaclav Pelousek, Anna Samsoe, Robert Henke, Anna Sircova, Hrtl, Kikkimore Collective, Denshikaimen, Lukas König, Mopcut, Phillip Haffner, Dorian Concept, Jacqnoise, Coast2c.

Smokeshow. Aurélie Percevault & Pierre Pierre Pierre (France)

16 mm projection, live sound coding, fire, smoke. Performed outdoors, 30'

A collective smoke screen session.  Is this the screen that is burning or the speakers?
A wake around the fire, a cinephile rite in which some 16mm ghosts and remnants of pop culture will emerge from the smoke.... The tangible medium revealed by the dematerialized surface.
Turning around the fire to find the right point of view, where the light lines are organized in furtive images, we observe its perpetual recombinations.
After the spark and before the ashes... The smoke.
With no goggles.

Performers

Aurélie Percevault (France) is a (hard)core member of Mire (Nantes, France) an association dedicated to experimental cinema that runs a shared film laboratory. Project coordinator, workshop facilitator, curator, sometimes filmmaker, she is part of programmation team of PRISME, festival exploring a multifaceted, inventive, engaged contemporary analog cinema and its interaction with other practices.

Pierre, Pierre, Pierre (France) is a self-taught sound artist interested in dysfunctional electronics and situations. Plays with hand-made electronics, common and cheap hi-fi devices, audio synthesis coding software.(Ex)-Member of Cable#, experimental music festival, and Mire, experimental cinema collective and organisation, in Nantes, France. PPP is now running 50hz, setting up events for experimental arts in various places.

TICKETS

Saturday, 20 May 16:00, Vagonu Hall

Retrospective. Lynn Loo & Guy Sherwin

In this expanded cinema night  we will meet two authors from the UK – Lynn Loo and Guy Sherwin – who will present five expanded cinema performances interacting with several film projectors, live sound, space and screen.

Lynn Loo is originally from Singapore and currently living in London. She taught music before making her first film in 1997. Her works include single-screen films, multiple projection performances and installations, using Super8, 16mm and video, and often involving a direct manipulation of film stock and printing processes.

Guy Sherwin began making films and performance pieces at the London Filmmakers Co-op in the 1970s. His Short Film Series (1975–2014) and live performance pieces such as Man with Mirror (1976–ongoing) involve human, animal, and natural phenomena transcribed as filmic subjects, or explore a variety of abstract audiovisual ideas.

Loo and Sherwin have been collaborating since 2005. In this program they will present several multi-channel live cinema performances and one single-channel work exploring the possibilities of optical sound and its connection to image. 

End Rolls. Lynn Loo 

3x 16mm projectors,  photo-resistor sound, 10'

Colour negative is exposed intermittently to various light sources: candle, stove, table lamp. The resulting film appears as a dance of colours, like the start of film before the picture appears. Additional copies form this multi-projection work. Continuing the exploration of light, sound is created using light-sensitive microphones attached to the projection lenses.

Vowels & Consonants. Lynn Loo & Guy Sherwin

4-6x 16mm projectors, optical sound, 12

From an original work 'Vowels' by Lynn Loo which was expanded to include consonants. Columns of letters printed from computer onto acetate, and reprinted in the darkroom onto 16mm film. The letters are also printed into the soundtrack area where we hear sounds, the warm sounds of ‘O', the sharper sounds of 'E '.

Railings. Guy Sherwin

1x 16mm projector (vertical frame), optical sound, 9'

One of a number of films that explore the translation of photographed images into sounds, by running them across the optical sound head of the projector.

WASHI  MM. Lynn Loo

3x 16mm projectors, optical sound, 15'

Part of a series that explore shapes, shadows, depth and rhythm through use of 

patterned Washi tape cut into the picture and soundtrack area of clear 16mm film.

Cycles #3. Guy Sherwin

2x 16mm projectors, optical sound, 8'

Hand-made film using adhesive dots and punched holes, subsequently printed. One print is projected on top of the other, but out of phase, causing unpredictable rhythms in image and sound.