The Loop Collective

Stills from Le Bombardement le Port des Perles and Collage d'Hollywood

film screening and discussion with the filmmaker
(Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 pm)

film workshop and artist talk
(Friday, March 10 at 12:30 pm)

at the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University,
122 Bond Street
(just west of Church Street and south of Gould Street)

both events are Free!

Workshop and Artist Talk:
Film Techniques and Post Analysis of Kerr's Industry (Expanded Cinema Exhibition)
Friday, March 10 at 12:30 - 5 pm (The School of Image Arts, room 109)

*Please note, spaces are limited to 30 people and will be made available on the first come first serve basis.

In this workshop Richard Kerr will primarily concentrate on demonstrating the "emulsion lift" technique which he applied extensively in the film and photographic works that comprised the Industry exhibition. Workshop participants will be provided with all the necessary film materials and will be encouraged to create their own emulsion lift collages and decollages during this workshop.

The artist talk will focus on the practical aspects of putting together an expanded cinema exhibition at a gallery. Kerr will also discuss the interplay of the different technologies (slides, film, digital video, light-boxes) in his Industry exhibition and ideas surrounding the reuse of the same "source material" in different media. He will also elaborate on the copyright issue in artworks that use appropriated source materials.
About the Filmmaker Richard Kerr

“One of the central figures of the Canadian avant-garde to emerge in the late 1970s, Richard Kerr has produced a large body of work in multiple media, working in film and video and as a visual artist. As a student at Sheridan College in the mid-to-late 1970s, Kerr was influenced by avant-garde filmmaker Rick Hancox and begun making a series of films that bridged the gap between documentary and avant-garde cinema. Some works, such as Vesta Lunch, evinced a style echoing cinema verite, while others, such as Hawkesville to Wallenstein and Canal, maintained a documentarist eye, albeit one infused with a poetic quality. Kerr’s later work focused on the Canadian landscape, seeking to explore the metaphysical nature of a Canadian identity with films such as Plein Air and Plein air Etude (both 1991), which document a trip driving through the Canadian Shield. In the late 1980s Kerr turned his interest to the American landscape with works such as Last Days of Contrition. In 1984, Kerr signaled his further interest in combining the personal-diaristic forms of expression with which he had been working with the question of narrative cinema. The result was one of his early great works, On Land over Water (Six Stories). In the 1990s he extended this interest in the fusion of avant-garde with narrative to a feature-length film, The Willing Voyeur.” – Dave Douglas, Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada

Notes on Films

Collage d'Hollywood (8.30 min. 2003) Kashmere, Brett (montage); Rollo, Michael (image); Horlor, Tim (sound design)
“Assembled from a shoebox of movie trailers found at a dilapidated Saskatchewan drive-in... ‘Collage d’Hollywood’ unravels and reorganizes the tight grammar of Hollywood cinema into a multi-formed pastiche that fuses film and visual art sensibilities.” - Brett Kashmere
“ A mesmerizing film that demands to be watched again and again.” - Matthew Hays, Montreal Mirror
“...histrionic horror and action movie trailers distilled into pure panic.” - Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly
Le Bombardement le Port des Perles (8 min. 2004)
A reworking of the trailer for the movie “Pearl Harbor,” using both handmade and digital techniques. Formally, “Le bombardement le port des perles” explores collage and found sound as voice-over. - Richard Kerr
Plain Air (20 min. 1991)
This abstract travelogue flies just over the surface of the Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario. “Plein Air” is an engrossing sonic and visual trip and a continuation of Kerr’s fascination with landscape cinema. - Richard Kerr
Plain Air Etude (5min. 1991)
An ecstatic, kinetic formal study of light, colour, and movement shot in the region of the Montreal River which so inspired members of the Group of Seven. - Richard Kerr
never confuse movement with action (self-fictionalization of Patrick Hemingway) (50 min. 1999) Toronto Premiere!
In September 1998, Kerr released “never confuse movement with action,” a post-modern biography of Patrick Hemingway (a grandson of Ernest Hemingway). July 1999 was the centenary of Ernest Hemingway. There would be the publication of yet another posthumous novel. The Hemingway family hired a merchandising agent - Ernest Hemingway was now a brand name. The trust fund was secured for future generations.1999 was Ernest Hemingway's year. But when Patrick Hemingway saw “never confuse movement with action,” he was less than pleased. Worried about his father's reaction, a lawyer was hired and injunction threatened against the work. In negotiations with the Hemingway lawyer, director Richard Kerr agreed to produce an alternative version, with no promises to cut the objectionable material. Out of the experience of “never confuse movement with action,” comes “human tragedy on a grand scale.” About working with the Hemingways, Kerr says: "because of a deteriorating relationship with Patrick, which went from a breakdown of communication to threats of a lawsuit, the central dilemma of the project became Hemingwayesque themes of fact vs. fiction/self-fictionalization, and biography vs. autobiography. The more you know about your subject, the harder it is to make definitive statements, let alone judgements, and it became questionable whether moral judgements have any place at all in biography."NOT TO BE MISSED!

DAVID GATTEN'S SECRET HISTORY OF THE DIVIDING LINE:
A TRUE ACCOUNT IN NINE PARTS
Presented collaboratively by the Loop Collective (Toronto)
and the Double Negative Collective (Montreal)
in association with the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University

David Gatten, The Great Art of Knowing, 2004 (film still)
SCREENING:
Thursday February 16TH
5pm - 9pm
Cinema Parallele @ Ex-Centris, 3536 St. Laurent Blvd. Montreal
Artist will be present.
Info: http://www.ex-centris.com

David Gatten, whose work has been presented at the Whitney Biennale, San Francisco and Ontario cinematheques and several international experimental film festivals, is presently at work on a nine-film cycle exploring the Byrd family of Virginia during the 18th century. Created largely using cameraless techniques such as direct animation and contact printing, this cycle of films explores the intersection of the printed word and the moving image, tracing the contours of private lives and public histories. FILMS INCLUDE:

Secret History of the Dividing Line(1996-2002, 20 min, silent, b&w 16mm);
The Great Art of Knowing (2004, 37 min, silent, b&w 16mm);
Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing(1999, 26 min, silent - 18 fps, b&w 16mm);
The Enjoyment of Reading, Lost & Found(2001, 16 min, silent - 18 fps, color and b&w 16mm).

ARTIST TALK
Friday, February 17th, 2006
10:00am -12:00pm
David Gatten will be presenting and discussing his early films, Hardwood
Process (1996, 16mm, color/si, 14m) and What the Water Said, Nos. 1-3
(1997-98, 16mm, b&w/so, 16m). Seating is limited.
Concordia UniversityConcordia University
Faubourg Building FB-250
1250, rue Guy
Faubourg Building FB-250
1250, rue Guy
Montreal (Quebec)

David Gatten will be presenting and discussing his early films, hardwood
process (1996, 16mm, color/si, 14m) and What the Water Said, Nos. 1-3
(1997-98, 16mm, b&w/so, 16m). Seating is limited.Over the last five years David Gatten's films have explored the intersection
of the printed word and the moving image, while investigating the shifting
vocabularies of experience and representation within intimate spaces and
historical documents. Through traditional research methods and
non-traditional film processes, the films trace the contours of both private
lives and public histories, combining elements of philosophy, biography and
poetry with experiments in cinematic forms and narrative structures.
Currently Gatten is at work on a series of nine films about the letters,
lovers, books, and ghosts of the Byrd family of Virginia during the early
18th century.Gatten‚s work has been exhibited at museums and cinémathèques including the 2002 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Pacific Film Archive, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, San Francisco Cinémathèque, Art Gallery of Ontario, Cinémathèque Française, Helsinki Film Co-Op, Museum of Contemporary Cinema in Lisbon, Millennium Film Workshop, Anthology Film Archives, and Chicago Filmmakers. His films have been screened at festivals around the world including Rotterdam, New York, London, Ann Arbor, Toronto, Onion City, Ottawa, Athens, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Impakt, Media City, Cinematexas, THAW, Chicago Underground, PDX, Black Maria and others.Gatten's work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as in private collections in the United States, Canada and Japan. In 2005 he was awarded Fellowship from Guggenheim Foundation to continue his work on the Byrd project. Gatten was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1971. Shortly thereafter his family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he lived for 20 years.
Gatten received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in
1998.

DeLeon White Gallery,
( 416.597.9466)
1096 Queen St. West (just west of Dovercourt).
Wednesday April 27 until Sunday May 1
(opening on Thursday April 28 at 6pm).

Featuring Installations by Chris Welsby, Michael Snow
and Alex Geddie.

The Loop Collective presents Elemental Processes, a programme of video and sound installations concerned with issues of the environment and landscape. Featuring an audio installation by Alex Geddie and Toronto premieres of video installation works by Michael Snow and Chris Welsby.

Elemental Processes features installation works that are directly connected with the landscape and environment in which they were made. Each was created in a manner that allowed nature to play an active role in shaping the outcome of the work, suggesting a closer relationship between technology and the environment. These installations go beyond the traditional notion of landscape as simply a metaphor in art, moving towards a more integral involvement with nature. This event is part of a larger exhibition of films and installations by Chris Welsby in partnership with Cinematheque Ontario. For more information on Cinematheque Ontario's film programme portion of this event, entitled Cinema of Light, Wind & Sea please visit the Cinemateque Program

Works in the Elemental Processes exhibition include:

METAR, audio installation by Alex Geddie
Solar Breath (Northern Caryatids), video installation by Michael Snow
Lost Lake #2, video installation by Chris Welsby
Waterfall, video installation by Chris Welsby

Welsby's Lost Lake #2 depicts the surface of a small alpine lake recorded over a period of several hours, as the breeze rises and falls. In the gallery, the surrounding landscape is gone and only its reflection remains. The lake does not reflect the gallery walls or the people who come to see it. It seems that, through the process of representation, the lake has lost its ability to reflect the world around it.

Waterfall is a continuous take of a large and "scenic" waterfall presented on a large translucent projection screen suspend from floor to ceiling of the gallery. This screen is placed in the centre of the space inviting the viewer to examine the image from all angles and to pass behind the waterfall. The thin, stretched, membrane of the screen draws attention to the surface of the image. Thus the fragile and transitory nature of the digital image is seen in sharp contrast to the vastness of the mountainside and the thunderous roar of falling water depicted in the video.

Solar Breath (Northern Caryatids) by Michael Snow shows the view through the window of a cabin in Nothern Canada, presenting 62 minutes of the most beautiful, eloquent movements and pliages that the sun, wind, windows and curtain have yet composed. Chance and choice co-exist.

Alex Geddie's METAR uses real-time weather reports from airports in Ontario to create musical material for an on-going audio installation.

The Loop Collective would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council, York Fine Arts, VTape, and Cinematheque Ontario for their assistance with this event.

In connection with Elemental Processes, Cinemateque Ontario will present a selection of films by Chris Welsby on Wednesday, April 27th at 6:30 pm, entitled Cinema of Light, Wind & Sea. The artist will be present to discuss these films and his recent DVD installations.

The films include:
Seven Days, United Kingdom 1974 20 minutes 16mm
Colour Separation, United Kingdom 1974 2.5 minutes silent 16mm
Windmill II, United Kingdom 1973 8 minutes silent 16mm
Stream Line, United Kingdom 1976 8 minutes 16mm
Sky Light, United Kingdom 1988 26 minutes 16mm

About Alex Geddie
(b. 1976)
Attended Ryerson and OCAD in Toronto, and Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, France. Audio artist, has produced several audio installations (METAR [2002] and Le Doux, Le Vent, Le Penetrant [2003], online experiments (PING [2002]) and frequently collaborates with other artists, producing sound for experimental film and audio for performances and other installation works. Lives and works in Toronto.
About Chris Welsby
Chris Welsby has lived in Vancouver, where he teaches at Simon Fraser University, since the late eighties. He was born in England, where he grew up mostly in rural areas, and later taught at the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1976-89. Welsby’s work, often thought of as structural-materialist, is a striking example of cinema’s power to transform the natural world. In recent years, he has turned his attention to making film/video/DVD installations which represent a significant part of his artistic output since the late seventies.
About Michael Snow
Michael Snow was born in 1929 in Toronto. A multidisciplinary artist, Snow is a painter, photographer, filmmaker and musician. He is considered among Canada's most important artists living today. Snow produced his first film in 1956. His 1967 film Wavelength proved him to be among the key filmmakers of the North American avant-garde. In the late sixties, he collaborated with a Canadian engineer on developing a mechanical arm that enabled the camera to turn in every direction and at rotary speeds controlled by the artist. This mechanical arm was used in his film La Région centrale (1971). In the past decade, Snow has participated in every major exhibition exploring images in the modern world. These include Passages de l'image (organized by the Centre Pompidou), Projections, les transports de l'image (first presented at the Studio national des arts contemporains Le Fresnoy) and the Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon (which in 1995 celebrated the hundred years of cinema). The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Power Plant teamed up for a major retrospective, Michael Snow Project, incorporating all the media Snow has worked in. Recently, in Europe, his films and photographs were the object of the exhibition Panoramique: oeuvres photographiques et films=Photographic Works and Films: 1962-1999, and in 2001, the Arnolfini Gallery presented the exhibition Michael Snow: Almost Cover to Cover. Michael Snow is a member of the Order of Canada and a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. In March 2000, he won the Governor General's Award in visual and media arts for his film work.
(Jean Gagnon © 2002 Fondation Daniel Langlois)

LIQUID BODIES

KINESTHETIC GESTURES IN EXPERIMENTAL FILM,
PHOTOGRAPHY & INSTALLATION
in collaboration with
The Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film

at The Gooderham & Worts Distillery, 55 Mill Street, Fermentation Room, Building #5
www.thedistillerydistrict.com (for map info)
Saturday, October 25, 2003 @ 8:00 PM

Liquid Bodies, in its second year with Moving Pictures Festival, is an interdisciplinary film event exploring representations of the moving body. Views of the kinesthetic body that emerge present the rhythmic body as a spirit-infused vessel of energy, as both positive and negative space, and as a series of unique gestures rendered through light. Premieres of new works by filmmakers Jeanne Liotta, Abraham Rivett, Alla Kovgan & Jeff Silva, Meredith Carruthers, Eve-Lucie Bourque, Stephanie Loveless and a Canadian premiere of a rare archival print of a Maya Deren film shot in Toronto in 1951. The film screening will be in the context of an exhibition of installations / performances by Maya Ciarrocchi, John Price and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof with dance photography by Natalie Galazka.

PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN THE WATER

MEREDITH CARRUTHERS
VIDEO, 5 MIN, COLOR, 2003
Loosely based on the NFB classic, "Paddle to the Sea", the film charts the course of a figure in a boatdress on a journey through the urban landscape.

IMMATERIAL

STEPHANIE LOVELESS
16MM, 5 MIN, COLOR, 2003
A meditation on the ephemeral, the disintegration of the present, and nostalgia for what never was, created through manipulation of the
celluloid material. (S.Loveless)

LORETTA

JEANNE LIOTTA
16MM, 4 MIN, COLOR, 2003
"I love that which dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me." Rene Char.
"A handmade photogram opera of laborious incarnations and corporeal dissolutions, this film started out as a series of abstract miniatures that were rendered into life by a million flashlit moments. Loretta insists upon herself, and the evidence is an absolute aria, dissolving into the infinite. Living in time as high drama. Yellow conceived of as light materialized; a pure value emitting a particular frequency of energy, applied by hand. A dialectical manifestation of phenomena in flux, like any other movie." (J.Liotta)

SCINTILLATING FLESH
IZABELLA PRUSKA-OLDENHOF
16MM, 5 MIN, B&W, 2003
"Scintillating Flesh represents an approach to inscribing one's body in the artwork itself and thus fusing with its material being through the act of creation. The film is a self-portrait which push and stretches the tradition of self-portraiture out of its usual representational realm, either of the artist's body or story, to using the body itself as a tool and a means to inscribe itself in the artwork, thus becoming not so much its subject but its form." (I.Pruska-Oldenhof)

CHRONIC
JOE KELLY
16MM, 3 MIN, B&W, 2003
Chronic is inspired by the work of Etienne-Jules Maray and Eadweard Muybridge and other photographic pioneers who studied motion
with photography before the advent of motion picture cameras. (J.Kelly)

X
JOHN PRICE
FILM PERFORMANCE, 2002
"x explores the force and impact of a collision course. Streaming traffic in projected film and live movement convey patterns of attraction and repulsion, flow and disruption that occur when two paths cross. Percussive rhythms along with high energy contact dance dissolve into textured images of stillness and nostalgia." (J.Price)

VERTICAL TANGO

KINODANCE 2003
VIDEO, 2 MIN, B&W, 2003
Geometric shapes of stairs, windows, tango steps and their silhouettes weave together to evoke glimpses of tango... (Kinodance)

GARDEN
ABRAHAM RIVETT
VIDEO, 10 MIN, COLOR, 1999
"A collaboration with dancer/choreographer, Bill T. Jones ,the piece was part of Bill's solo performance, "The Breathing Show." 'Garden' served as one of two interludes within the ninety minute performance. Mr. Jones describes the evening long work as " an opportunity to go back into himself, to discover the source of his own inspiration." (A.Rivett)

ENSEMBLE FOR SOMNAMBULISTS
MAYA DEREN
VIDEO, 20 MIN, B&W, 1951
"The blackness of night erases the horizontal plane of the earth's surface." (M.Deren) Created as part of the Toronto Film Society Workshop in 1951, this archival print was generously loaned to us from Anthology Film Archives in New York.

ARCUS

ALLA KORVAN & JEFF SILVA
VIDEO, 4 MIN, B&W, 2003
"arcus is an exploration of ephemeral nature of movement - a black and white collage of dance and motion frames. The title arcus is derived from Latin meaning a bow or arch-like shape. Its name was inspired by the manner in which the frames of the video image move and emerge from within each other while the dancers bodies bend and twist inside the frame." (A.Kovgan)

LA SOURCE

EVE-LUCIE BOURQUE
VIDEO, 9 MIN, COLOR, 2003
Cette vidéo explore une forme de relation mythique entre le corps et lepaysage. Le vent, les outardes et les arbres tatouent le corps de cette femme qui apprend à voler. Certains arbres ont 1000 ans. Ils apparaissent tantôt complets, tantôt en filigrane, devenant le vent. Symboliquement, cette oeuvre représente le voyage de l'âme à travers la vie et le temps. (E.M.Bourque)

THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY

VENUS SOBERANES
16MM, 6 MIN, COLOR, 2001
The Spirit of Humanity is an experimental study of the soul and the body, vulnerability, movement and consciousness. Who can tell the dancer from the dance?

PHOTO INSTALLATION, 2003
LES DETAILS OR WHAT LIES IN THE INBETWEEN
NATALIE GALAZKA
A lifesized flip book. 4-5 panels hang in a row (one behind the other). Each panel is an image of a dancer/body at a different point in a sequence of movement. The images are printed on a translucent paper so that you can see the entire movement separated. (N.Galazka)

FILM INSTALLATION, 2003
BODIES OF WATER / BODIES OF LIGHT
IZABELLA PRUSKA-OLDENHOF
Body of Water/Body of Light is a self-inscription in which my entire body is photogrammed onto the surface of 16mm film by lying directly on top of its light sensitive surface. The footage was recorded in October on the stormiest day of 2002. I tried to follow the movement of waves with my body, thus aiming at mimicking the fluidity of the wave's movements. Although the initial idea behind this work was that of a container, a body and a film container, this work in fact is more about breaking out of the container and spilling outside of its confinement while intertwining and fusing with the outside space, just as the body can never be contained but is always fusing and adopting to other people and its environment. (I.Pruska-Oldenhof)

VIDEO INSTALLATION, 2001

BLACK ON WHITE
MAYA CIARROCCHI
'Black on White' is a three-channel video installation comprised of three wall-sized projections. Each projection is "choreographed" to form a direct relationship to the others through rhythmical and pictorial contrast or symmetry. The immersive nature of this installation directs the viewer to a sensibility of alternate consciousness and architecture so that they experience a corporal response to the work. (M.Ciarrocchi)

THE ILLUMINATED SKEIN
An evening of alchemy, illusion and cinema

The Vatikan, 1032 Queen St. West (just west of Ossington).
Tuesday September 23 and Wednesday September 24 at 7:30 pm.

The Loop Collective presents The Illuminated Skein, two film screenings that explore the links between cinema, alchemy, and illusion.

The medieval alchemist sought far more than simply the transmutation of lead into gold. In order to access the prima materia, the alchemist necessarily underwent a transformation of the self. Similarly, the modern experimental filmmaker aims to fuse the right combination of elements to create cinema, and "magically" enable the spectator to view the processes of light and form as it undergoes change. The transformation does not end with the artist, but extends to the spectator who is in turn affected by the projection. Spend two evenings with us as we examine the common threads of modern experimental cinema and the skein linking alchemy, illusion and cinema.

This event features a live presentation of Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic, performed by the Loop Collective using masking slides and color filters which are used to transform the shape of the screen. The cutout animation used in the film produce a mysterious world of alchemy in which objects suggest a multitude of possibilities. Harry Smith is one of the most important alchemical filmmakers of the 20th century.

During Tuesday's intermission, CircularFusion will stage a live
interpretative dance, incorporating an homage to Norman McLaren's
seminal film "Pas de Deux". This blacklight, illusory performance will
incorporate elements of poi dance, staff and contact juggling.
.

When:
Program 1: Tuesday, September 23 at 7:30 pm
Program 2: Wednesday, September 24 at 7:30 pm
Location:
The Vatikan
1032 Queen St. West, Toronto (just west of Ossington)
416-533-9166

Firehead Dream
Vicky Chainey Gagnon

2001
2 minutes
video, colour, sound
Living flame:
The gleaming element
In lightening flash
In glittering star
(excerpt from Legacy by Robert Hamerling)
Firehead Dream arises out of dream images a reoccurring series of visuals that have punctuated the night-imagination since childhood. The body is awoken in a darkened scene where fire and light are married in a transformative field of abstraction.

Light Magic
Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof

2001
3 minutes
16mm, colour, silent
"Movies arise out of magic." Stanley Cavell
Light Magic utilizes and examines one of the earliest photographic processes discovered at the birth of the photographic medium, the photogram. This technique combines science and art in order to record the process of transformation. Images created through this technique are traces of light that passes through each object leaving its mark on the film surface. Photograms bring both the maker and the viewer closer to the object, thus revealing its essence - that neither the naked eye could see nor the camera lens could capture.
Light magic was one of the fifteen films commissioned by the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto on the occassion of its 20th anniversary. The subject and the aesthetic of this film are a response to the statement “Self & Celluloid: The Future”.

First Dispatch from Atlantis
Gehman, Chris
1993
5 minutes
16mm colour, sound
An animated journey through the lands of the dead. Using collage and multiple exposure, "First Dispatch ..." creates a dryly humorous but subtly menacing environment, with references to ancient civilizations, religion, and war. Related to the work of Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, and Larry Jordan.

Allures
Jordan Belson

1970.
8 min
16 mm, color, sound
Accompanied by electronic music. An experimental film in which computer produced patterns portray a hallucinogenic voyage into outer space.

The Visible Compendium
Larry Jordan

1990
17 minutes
colour, sound
The Visible Compendium constructs bits of unnamed meanings, fragments of light. Photography is, to me, not about things, but about light. Light is our primary reality when we are at the movies -- light which suggests things, the secondary reality, a construct by the mind. The Visible Compendium attempts to engage athe mind, and particularly what is unknown in the mind, rather than what has been seen and known a thousand times over. The Visible Compendium reaches farther than any of my other animations. It goes off in many directions, held together, hopefully, by the sountrack, which itself goes off in a number of direction” strange sounds, some recognizable, other not. Some music. No voice, no silence. This is intentional. The film is compendium, as indicated in the title - a catalog of visible possible experiences, some at normal time, some speeded up or slowed down, some continuous, others broken up. Why ? Tough question. Why not? Why not experiment with different modes of visible motion? (And, I might add, totally maufactured bits of motion elucidated by the light from the projector.) For instance, when the nude woman with the twoel walks across the screen, the image breaks up with flashes, close-ups, erratic zooms, etc. - this is partly to find out what such a construct looks like, partly to express the soundtrack (which was in place before the animation ), and partly to express those unspoken “menaings” i mentioned above (Larry Jordan) “ Your images in the new film (The Visible Compendiium) are just as stunningly beautiful as ever.” (Gunvor nelson) “Your compendium is a perfect counter-part, it seems to me of the chores and diversion of the human world-lacerated by two mediations oon War: the first an almost endless rain of missiles on an ancient chaiot, the second your wondrous clown dancing on battleship cannons - Bravo! Nothing could be cleaner on the subject (especially welcome at this time): and in between (as suggested slightly before and slightly after) a feelsome balance spectrum of dreamed daliness finally exposed as - if one can but see it as you have - the greatest show on Earth.” (Stan Brackage) Screenings/Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival 1991: Sn Francisco Cinematheque 1991: Museum of Modern Art Cinprobe 1991: Anthology Film Archives 1991: Annecy International Animation Festival 1991: Big Muddy Festival: Buck’s County Festival: Black maria Festival; Atlanta Festival.

Moon
Scott Bartlet
1969
16mm, color, sound
"The interrelated convolutions and spasms of image, color, and sound that filmmaker Bartlett creates is the cumulative effect of his pioneer work using negative images, polarization, television techniques, computer-film, and electronic patterns all compressed into a visual punch that directs one where he normally would not go with a film - on a trip in search of the human soul." - Paul Brawley, The Booklist, American Library Association

Merkaba
David Sky
1973
16 mm
Based on a dream and a Jewish word Merkabah, meaning vehicle of light from Jewish literature.

Aleph
Bill Alves

2002
10:40
DVD, color, sound
Inspired by geometric patterns of Islmic art, an art derived from the same proportions and numerical symbolism as the tuning systems of ancient Greeks and Bysantines. Aleph, the first letter of the Arabic language is a single verticle stroke which represents the descent of light, the creative ray which initiates existence. From this division follows the expansion into creation and the connection of all people to the cosmological rythsms of number and patern.

Intermission - Black light performance by Circular Fusion

Sheep
Brown, Carl

1991
7 minutes
16 mmcolour, sound
A man counting sheep as he sleeps. I have never seen sheep as I sleep. The sheep relax the man, he falls into a deep sleep. You are wide awake, moving through the man, maybe sleeping counting sheep. The alchemy, the dream, the scene.

To Lavoisier, Who Died In The Reign Of Terror
Snow, Michael

1991
53 minutes
16mm, colour, sound
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a French chemist who gave the first accurate scientific explanation of the mysteries of fire. He also proved the law of conservation of matter, which states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. His work and this film are situated between modern chemistry and alchemy. The film stages a drama of abstraction and theoretical realism. La vie quotidenne seen photo-chemically and musically. This film is a materialist projected-image conversation of matter.” (Michael Snow)

Program #2: Wednesday September 24

De Artificialia Perspectiva or
ANAMORPHOSIS
Brother’s quay
(1991, 15 mins, Color, DVD)
The Quays' interest in esoteric illusions finds its perfect realization in this fascinating animated lecture on the art of anamorphosis. This artistic technique, often found in 16th and 17th century paintings, utilizes a method of visual distortion which plays mischievously with the realtionship between the eye and what it sees.

Invocation of my demon brother
Kenneth Anger

1969
11 min
16 mm, color, sound
A conjuration of pagan forces comes off the screen in a surge of spiritual and mystical power. "The shadowing forth of Lord Lucifer, as the powers gather at a midnight mass" - Kenneth Anger.

Heaven and Earth Magic
Harry Smith (USA)

1961
1 hour
16mm, b&w, sound
Cutout animation produces a mysterious world of alchemical transformations in which objects suggest a multitude of possibilities. Performed by the Loop Collective using masking slides and color filters which will transform the shape of the screen and it's surroundings, much in the fashion of Harry Smith as he would perform it.

1926
10 min
16mm, b&w
A Dada Film based on rotating circles and spirals interlaced by puns in French.

Spiritual constructions
Oskar Fischinger,
1927.
8 min
16mm, color, sound
Using silhouette animation, the film opens with two male figures drinking together at a table. They change rapidly into different shapes: miscellaneous blobs, snakes, lines, even a house that spits them out. A witty exporation of an interior landscape.

Transformation
Ed Emshwiller.
1959.
5 min
16mm, b&w, sound
“With no preconception except a sense of constant change and continuity and rhythm, I painted and drew a series of visual abstractions, letting each development suggest what followed ... this method of 'finding' a film is more exciting than 'finding' a painting and the result is more effective “- Ed Emshwiller.

Newton and Me (exerpt)
Bruce Elder

1990
20 minutes
16mm, colour, sound
Newton was the greatest of all the natural magicians, learned in matters musical, theological and in Apocalyptic literature. He believed bodies were composed of certain aetheral spirits, or vapours; one...is the ether, the succus nutritius of the earth, or primary substance; the second substance disseminated through the first, is light. (Bruce Elder)

June 4-15
Patching History: The Other Strings of Women's Lap Craft
An exhibition and screening of films, quilts, photographs and mixed media works at Toronto’s Gallery 1313.

The films and artwork here presented present a strange marriage of contemporary art exploration and craft technique. We see films punctured by knitting needles and pressed with fingerprints, photographs cut from 16mm film, and quilts with dazzling colour and pattern.

These are artists not content with digital images and fabrication teams, they are artists who roll up their pants and wade knee-deep in their medium. In so doing they reinterpret and revive what our digital-obsessed culture tends to reject and forget: women’s lap craft.

JUNE 4-15 (gallery hours 1-6 pm Wed.-Sun.)
Exhibition Opening (Thursday, June 4, 7-10 pm)
Film Program 1: History in the Making: Short Experimental Films (Tuesday, June 10 at 7pm)
Film Program 2: The Quilt: Regarding Penelope's Wake (Thursday, June 12 at 7pm)

Location: Gallery 1313
1313 Queen St W.
Toronto, Ontario,
416.536.6778
www.g1313.org

Admission: Free or by donation

Exhibition Opening June 4, 7-10 pm, running till15th, 1-6 pm Wed.-Sun.
Judith Tinkl, Balint Zsako, Chris Curreri, Rosa Maria Rodriguez Mesa, and Wendy Wong

Judith Tinkl’s quilt work uses sophisticated colour plays and geometric patterns all influenced by Canadian historical textiles. Her sources of inspiration are nature, geometry, puzzles, and natural structures and systems.

Wendy Wong takes images of political leaders, cultural icons, and family pictures and alters them to seem like crime scene photographs; scratches, burns, and fingerprints create visual contradictions.

Balint Zsako cuts, pastes, and combines all kinds of different film formats from 16mm film to 35mm slides to produce 4”x5” negatives that are printed as traditional colour photographs. The result is grotesque and melancholic.
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Mesa’s mixed media works create a dialog between body parts, organs, shells and instruments of torture. Deeply feminine, they contrast simultaneously the strength and delicacy of our bodies.

Chris Curreri’s body of work is derived from a single photograph selected from the Glenbow Archives in Calgary, Alberta. The photograph, recording a crowd of spectators watching a bicycle race in Edmonton during the early 1900, has been cropped and enlarged, each distinct section representing the same moment in time. The stitches over the spectators’ eyes act as a kind of blindfold, emphasizing the unawareness of those caught up in watching the race.

Tuesday, June 10 at 7pm
Film Program 1: History in the Making
Short Experimental Films (Total running time 60 minutes)
Joyce Wieland provides a perfect jumping-off point for this program. Her film Handtinting (1968)—literally handtinted with fabric dyes and perforated with knitting needles—is a wonderful and early example of craft-referenced film feminism. Among the other films, you’ll see methods that employ sewing machines, hand painting, collage, and straight photography. Filmmakers include Sheri Wills, Maria Raponi, Nathan Moles, Christina Battle, Elida Schogt, Gariné Torossian, Christina Zeidler, and Joyce Wieland.

Thursday, June 12 at 7pm
Film Program 2: The Quilt
Michele Smith, Regarding Penelope's Wake (2002, 120 min.) Canadian Premiere!
This film consists of heavily edited frame-by-frame collage/montage/hand painted/ripped/cut/etched found footage culled from numerous sources, including Themes from the Odyssey, 8mm stag films, a 1970's public speaking instructional film, Self Protection for Women, The Frog Prince, a biography of Vincent Van Gogh, ethnographic documentaries, science films, home movies, and other assorted educational films. Regarding Penelope's Wake weaves between multiple experimental narratives, structural abstractions, intertwining rhythms of form and light, visual metaphors, and the interactions between the elements. Form becomes amorphous as time is spun within the individual viewer's attentions. -Michele Smith

On Saturday, April 5th, 2003, The Loop Collective presents the second of a two-part series dedicated to John Cage's influence across disciplines.

The Changing Light will feature Cage’s Four6, premieres by Toronto composers Josh Thorpe and Colin Clark, a film premiere by Loop involving six simultaneous projections, and other films related to ideas arising from Cage's work.

Cage's influence is particularly noticeable in the selected works’ use of multiple centres of attention, indeterminate performance and compositional processes, non-traditional conceptions of harmony, the exploration of time as a primary compositional element, and a curious and open approach to experimentalism.

The Draperies (Eric Chenaux, electric guitar; Ryan Driver, analog synthesizer; Doug Tielli, trombone) with guest percussionist Jamie Thompson perform Cage’s Four6, Clark’s In a Changing Light, and Thorpe’s Aroam as a place to dwell.

Also to be premiered is a film collaboration by Loop Collective members entitled In a Changing Light (2003). It is based on a score for camera using flexible time-bracket notation and calls for six simultaneous projections.

The other films to be screened reflect Cage's philosophy both in their construction and presentation: Permutations and Combinations (1976) by R. Bruce Elder, Filmblock I (1962-64) by Marc Adrian, In Light and Motion (2001) by Greg Boa, and cockroach (2002) by Kelly Egan.

8 PM, Saturday April 5, 2003
Location: ARRAYMUSIC Studio 60 Atlantic Avenue, Suite. 218 (Enter through the door located off the adjacent parking lot and come upstairs to Suite. 218)
www.arraymusic.com
tel: 416 532 3019