Tickets: $10 Presale / $15 Day of Show / $20 at the Door
Cinema is the art of destroying moving images. — Paolo Cherchi Usai
Tonight’s assertive works explore states of being, nothingness and points in between: destruction, loss, rebirth and resurrection of time, films and ephemeral media lost for ever yet always haunting our dreams. Oakland-based duo Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill enact Towards the Death of Cinema, a 16mm projector/synthesizer duet documenting cycles of destruction, resilience and transformation in the Bay Area through prepared film that warps, smokes and bursts before your eyes. From Australia (via the UK) world-renowned curator and Performance Cinema historian Sally Golding performs a medley of works—Ghosts—Loud + Strong, Light at the End of the Tunnel and Spirit Intercourse—based on unearthed analog media, hand-processed audio waveforms and improvised electronics exploring past-life regression, near-death experiences and the limits of perception. Program concludes with the first-ever West Coast appearance of Hangjun Lee (Seoul), performing with acclaimed electroacoustic musician/composer Jérôme Noetinger (Grenoble) his 16mm multi-projector After Psycho Shower, a tour-de-force deconstruction of Hitchcock’s infamous shower scene.
Performance Cinema: an exciting and emergent genre of avant-garde moving-image art which represents a crucial attack on the sterility of the contemporary, digitally-located media environment, arguing for the embodied, collective consideration of real-time, site-specific media experiences. Through mis-used or modified analog film projectors, live video synthesis and physical interaction with the media interface, performance cinema practitioners variously burn, etch, mutilate and destroy projected film, machinery and the image itself. Performance Cinema practitioners create immersive spectacles of sight and sound, opening a space for questioning and contemplating visual culture through direct activation of the senses. As a dynamic, regenerating and resurrecting media experience, Performance Cinema exists only in the moment of perception and is truly an art of its time.