UvA: Performing the Screen

As an art form inscribed and preserved in material form, but perceived by an audience only in its temporal, screened format, film’s ephemerality is therefore twofold. The first ephemerality applies to its material decay, much like that of fine arts like sculpture or painting, and often advanced by the medium’s fact technological developments and thus quick aging. The second ephemerality applies to film’s existence as a projection on a screen rather than an inscription in a material form, be it analogue or digital.

Performing the Screen aims to combine these two ephemeralities. Taking the incomplete and often unidentified short fragments preserved in the Eye's Bits & Pieces collection, splitting them into individual shots and systematically organising them into categories by shot type, theme and style enables a creative reuse of the preserved material. By executing a live edit of the digitised prints, the programme creates a live film-performance on the cinema screen, highlighting the film only comes into existence when projected on a screen. Through that, the programme emphasises both film’s material and temporal ephemerality, as well as the ephemerality of the archive and the cinema space.

This program is organised by students of the University of Amsterdam’s MA programme in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image: Clara Begliardi Ghidini, Elīna Meinerte, Yvonne Nguyen, Lev Slivnik, Sam Yang, Jamie Chih-Yun Yao, and Minna Yong You Li.