The Body + Horror Film

As part of the Anthony McCall - Solid Light Films exhibition, this program will be all about the physical presence. With films about light and the body, selected in collaboration with Malcolm Le Grice, filmmaker and theoretician of the avant-garde and experimental film. We will start the evening with a couple of classic Dutch performance films followed by not only Le Grice”s performance Threshold (1971), but also Horror Film (1971-2014), one of his most simple, most legendary and magical pieces.The evening will be introduced by Anna Abrahams, EYE programmer, experimental film director and teacher at KABK.

The Film Program:

Marinus Boezem, Het beademen van de beeldbuis (1971, video, 3”)

Boezem's own face appears on the screen, stares at the viewer, and begins to breathe on the picture tube. After some time passes, the image begins to blur through the moisture deposited and the artist disappears from sight for several moments. While the vapor clears Boezem keeps his gaze directed on the camera, motionless, until his face is again clearly visible.

Jan van Munster, Cirkels (1972, 16mm, 3”) en Dubbel portret (1972, 16mm, 3”)

In both 'Cirkels' (Circles) and “Dubbel portret” (Double Portrait) (1972, 16mm, 3”) Van Munster himself is standing frontally in the middle of the image, gazing stoically into the camera while holding a light bulb.

Ger van Elk, Some Natural Aspects of Painting and Sculpture (1970-1971, video, 12”)

A video of his own body, which alternately perspires and gets goose bumps.

Bas Jan Ader, Nightfall (1971, 16mm, 4”)

Bas Jan Ader manipulates gravity to his own ends in NIGHTFALL. Ader, lit only by two bare light bulbs, simulates the actual fall of night as he lets drop a heavy paving stone onto both lights, plunging the frame into darkness. Ader's calm and the film's silence make the violence of his act much more startling. - Tom Fritsche”.

Malcolm Le Grice, Horror Film (1971, live performance met 3 x 16mm, 20”)

A performance with three film projectors. All are superimposed on each other with the projectors aimed from different angles. The superimpositions create a continually changing colour light mix. Le Grice interrupts the beam with a series of formal actions creating a complex set of coloured shadows. The intention is to build a complex visual experience out of simple and readily available aspects of the projection situation. M.L.G. from 'Real Time/Space', Art and Artists Dec 1972.

Malcolm Le Grice, Anthony Dundee (video, 2”)

Made from still images shot during an exhibition in Dundee, Scotland.

Malcolm Le Grice, Self Portrait After Raban Takes Measure (1999, video, 8”20” )

Three projectors (three screen) video piece Self Portrait looks for an approach to a specific relationship between the duration of a work and material conditions in the projection, as did William Raban in the film performance Take Measure. The main difference is that Raban”s work was made when cinematic media had distinct physical properties linking medium directly to image — this self portrait recognizes that there is no such simple materiality for cinema following the emergence of digital processes. Instead the work takes a conceptual base — the speed of light and the time taken for light to travel from the sun to illuminate objects on earth — thus the duration of 8 minutes 20 seconds.

Malcolm Le Grice, Threshold (1972, live performance with 3 x 16mm, 17”)

Le Grice no longer simply uses the printer as a reflexive mechanism, but utilizes the possibilities of colour-shift and permutation of imagery as the film progresses from simplicity to complexity. The initial use of pure red and green filters gives way to a broad variety of colours and the introduction of strips of coloured/celluloid, which are drawn through the printer, begins to build an image which becomes graphically and spatially complex - if still abstract. - Deke Dusinberre.Hosted by EYE every Tuesday evening, EYE on Art is where film and art meet. Would you like to be kept up to date? If so, why not register for the EYE on Art newsletter?!