Film, video & performance
Schaulager
Fri, 23.10. – Sun, 25.10.2009
The Film, Video & Performance Programme at Shift 09 showcases eight contributions on the theme of "Magic. Tech Evocations and Assumptions of Paranormal Realities". Live performances generally take place once only but screenings will be repeated and/or be available for viewing throughout the Festival on video stations. The contributions will leave guests enchanted, horrified, amused and definitely enriched by additional dimensions of reality. The guest curators this year are Erik Bünger, Stephan Hauser, Felix Kubin, Verena Kuni, Mobileskino, Rachel O’Moore, Valérie Perrin, Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter.
SCREENING 1
CURATED BY VALÉRIE PERRIN
Fri, 23.10.2009, 20.30 h introduced by Valérie Perrin
Sa, 24.10.2009, 11.30 h
INCANTATIONS CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUES
The emergence of new technology is often associated with mysterious powers that may open the door to a parallel universe. The examples are never-ending, from ghosts rendered visible thanks to photographic techniques through to voices of the dead, recorded and rendered suddenly audible by various means. Certain films even turn out to be outright wizardry, capable of wresting the viewer from his existence and embedding him in a new reality – at times, without the filmmakers ever knowing.
The programme presents three films made with different techniques in different eras, including one representative respectively of the early days of computer art, of (16mm) cinema, and of 3D-animation. Each film offers the viewer an opportunity to experience the outer limits of reality. (Valérie Perrin)
LAPIS
DIR. JAMES WHITNEY
1963–1966 / 16 mm, colour, sound, 10'
James Whitney’s 'Lapis' (1966) is a classic work of abstract cinema, a 10-minute animation created with primitive computer equipment over a three-year period. In this piece, the smaller circles oscillating in and out in an array of colors resemble a kaleidoscope and are accompanied by Indian sitar music. The patterns gradually have a hypnotic, trance-inducing effect. The auditory and visual senses clearly correlate in this work and deliver a wonderful example of the phenomenon of synaesthesia.
THE FLICKER
DIR. TONY CONRAD
1966 / 16mm, S/W, sound, 30'
In this notorious film the viewer is transposed to a space and time in which he may look around and see the movie happening in the room there with him. Much has been written about 'The Flicker'. It is a library of peculiar visual materials, referenced to the frame-pulse at 24 frames per second. All flickering light is potentially hazardous for light-sensitive epileptics or migraine sufferers.
EROTOS
DIR. JOACHIM MONTESSUIS
2002 / DVD, S/W, 13'
This video work combines the world of mathematics with the organic world of bodies' erotic dance and describes their interaction: an invitation to calm meditation.
Valérie Perrin
is director of the Espace multimédia Gantner in Bourogne (F). In spring 2009, Espace multimadia Gantner showed an exhibition entitled “Ghost Machinery”, in which the field of tension or coincidence of new technical achievements and paranormal phenomena was presented.
LECTURE PERFORMANCE (ON VIDEO)
HARALD THYS & JOS DE GRUYTER
Fri, 23.10.2009, 11.30 h
Sat, 24.10.2009, 18.00 h
Artistic duo Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter talk in their video-taped lecture performance about the existence of parallel worlds and different forms of being –about the palpable, the imperceptible and the interplay of the undreamt-of forces present in both. The duo investigate how, with the aid of certain techniques (ritual, ecstasy or trance) these other worlds might convene and merge and illustrate it all with clips from well-known films and obscure documentary fragments garnished with a portion of tongue of cheek.
Jos De Gruyter,
*1965 Geel (B); Studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
Harald Thys,
*1966 Wilrijk (B); Studied at Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht.
The artistic duo lives and works in Brussels. Their scenarios draw primarily on a mix of the genres performance, video and installation.
THE MAGIC SHOW
CURATED AND PRESENTED BY VERENA KUNI
Sat, 24.10.2009, 15.30 h
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Arthur C. Clarke). Conversely, any sufficiently advanced magic renders the techniques and technologies on which it is based invisible – before our very eyes. That's the power of magic. And it's art. Whoever knows how to use it is able to enchant us – and, at the same time, to open our eyes. This is the basis not only of the close relations that have continued to exist to this day between magic, media, and art, but also of their mutually induced metamorphoses, which have been – still are – influenced in turn by developments in the history of technologies, popular media and the arts, and by their current social status. And, in the leading role on stage or on screen, we behold... the magician. "The Magic Show" raises the curtain on some of the most talented (dis)illusionists and masters of their art. (Verena Kuni)
Verena Kuni
is a scholar and writer in art and media theory, and professor of visual culture at the Goethe University of Frankfurt Main. From 1995–1999 she worked as a programme curator for the Kassel Documentary & Video Festival and has been director of the interfiction conference on art, media and network cultures (a section of the same festival) since 1999. She has published widely on the relationship between occult traditions and the arts as well as on media histories.
SCREENING 2
CURATED BY STEPHAN E. HAUSER
Fri, 23.10.2009, 19.00 h with Talk
Sun, 25.10.2009, 15.30 h
THE MAGIC OF DECAY … DECAY OF THE MAGIC
Compilation of excerpts from silent films 1898–1926, Stephan E. Hauser 2009 / 50’ silent
"The Magic of Decay … Decay of the Magic" is a compilation of "restored" and digitally remastered footage of irrevocably deteriorated nitrate silent film material from the early days of cinema. Cellulose nitrate supports, used by the motion picture industry until 1948, were highly inflammable and hence liable to self-destruct. Thus only a small percentage of the total output of nitrate film has survived and much of what remains shows signs of irreparable damage. Inspired by such films as Ken Jacob's 'Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son' (USA 1969–70), Peter Delpeut's 'Lyrical Nitrate' (NL 1991) or Bill Morrison's 'Decasia' (USA 2002), Hauser's film compilation invites you to experience the visual magic created by cinematic entropy. The magic of decay is at its most convincing when the nitrate support deteriorates to the extent where it appears to intervene in the film plot... Cinema is "the art of destroying moving images" (Cherchi Usai). Accordingly, an aesthetic evaluation of decaying nitrate critically addresses reactionary notions of magic in cinematography – because it interrupts the viewer's desire to believe in the illusions of cinematic ritual, thus preventing its fulfilment. (Stephan E. Hauser)
Stephan E. Hauser
studied art history in Basel and is now a member of the Schaulager research team and editor of the art history journal "Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte".
LECTURE & SCREENING
RACHEL O. MOORE
Sat, 24.10.2009, 20.30 h with Talk
Almost There: caught between the random and the double
Like religion, technology has the capacity to create a double of the real world, one that is far more elastic and malleable than the real world that we can manipulate so as to affect that world. Once confined between book and bed covers, places like Hardy’s 'Wessex', or the visions of closed eyes featured more fleetingly than virtual spaces do daily today. 'Almost There' will look at the worlds conjured by artists that significantly re-orient our relationship to physical space and time past, conjuring that which is hidden within the mysterious world of computers on the one hand, and history on the other.
'Almost There' will look to two extremes: the use of randomness in the "Listening Post" by Ben Rubin and Marc Hanson (2003) at London’s Science Museum, and the trademark doubling in the work of Lindsay Seers with particular attention to her interest in alchemy. Magic follows technology around like a shadow throughout its history. 'Almost There' is less concerned with their affinity than with the particular alchemy today by which science becomes art. (Rachel O. Moore)
Rachel O. Moore
is a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, a John Simon Guggenheim fellow, and the author of "Savage Theory, Cinema as Modern Magic", Duke, 2000; "(nostalgia)", Afterall/MIT, 2005.
Lecture Performance
FELIX KUBIN
Fri, 23.10.2009, 18.00 h
Paralektronoia
“Paralektronoia” explores the relationship between electricity and paranormality – for the electro-paranoia phenomenon has left its traces on the biographies of numerous pioneers of electronics. Russian Lev Sergeiewitch Termen, for example, invented not only the theremin but also a notorious wiretap for the KGB. Eccentric British music producer Joe Meek at times locked himself in his studio, armed, so the production of his sound effects might remain a secret. And German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen announced: “I was educated on Sirius, to where I also wish to return, although I presently still live in Kürten near Cologne”. Kubin's “Paralektroniker” is an active, mental radio with over-sensitive antennae. Felix Kubin has assembled inventors and musicians in order to track down “Paralektronoia”. By means of systematic field research and radio-phonic experiments they investigate the impact of invisible vibrations on the human mind. “Paralektronoia” dissolves the border between receiver and receptor. Listen to your inner voices. Your radio, too, has ears.
See concert by Felix Kubin: Sat, 23.00 Uhr, Concert Hall
LECTURE PERFORMANCE
ERIK BÜNGER
Sat, 24.10.2009, 19.30 h
A lecture on schizophonia (2007–2009)
Coined in the 1960s by Canadian composer R. Murray Schaefer, the term “schizophonia” describes the act of detaching a sound from its original context – thanks to technical media, now an everyday procedure. In his lecture performance Erik Bünger examines elements of pop culture in the light of “schizophonia”, thereby drawing parallels between (film) dubbing and demonic possession or exorcism, for example, or describing the wave of posthumous duets in music videos as necromancy.
Erik Bünger
*1976 Växjö/SE, lives in Berlin/D and Stockholm/SE
See "Gospels“ by Erik Bünger: Exhibition Hall
MOBILES KINO BASEL
GEORGEs MÉLIÈS' HEAD
Fri + Sat, 23. and 24.10.2009, this 'mobile cinema' will flit about the Festival site, between the Schaulager and the footbridge, from the twilight hour on.
With a live band and spicy programme – total film-length: 350 metres!
As a cooperative devoted (among other things) to 8mm film productions, Mobileskino Basel combines mechanical projection technology with electronic circuits and, so to speak, lets digital media take material form: computer environments are reconstructed, lo-tech browsers developed, interactive displays created. Short films, loops and screenings pay homage to all scratches and burned holes and to the fleeting nature of a world without copy/paste. At the Shift Festival, Mobileskino Basel will exhibit the head of film pioneer George Méliès and flit about the Festival site with an electrical cinematograph.
