Workshop by Bruce McClure

This 12-hour workshop will focus on the cinematic possibilities of the 16mm projector as an instrument of light and sound capable of transforming the spectator´s perception of time and space in a way that can become consciousness-altering.

 

RECKONING THINGS THAT ARE NOT AS THEY WERE

In his book “In Praise of Shadows” Jun'ichiro Tanizaki describes his pleasure of being shown a dimly lit and impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple. He goes on to describe the beauty of the Japanese room and how it depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows – it has nothing else he says. He continues by writing that, Westerners are amazed at the simplicity of Japanese room, perceiving in them no more than ashen walls bereft of ornament. Their reaction is understandable, he says, but it betrays a “failure to comprehend the mystery of shadows.” Dead for many years Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is a mystery to me. With no opportunity to confront him regarding shadow appreciation in western thought and buildings I am proposing this workshop. Its purpose will be to address both clerics and laymen regarding the nuances of shading and coloration of the photographic image and the optical sound system technology that is wedded to it. Every film studio has a library of "sound effects" recorded on film. With a film phonograph it is now possible to control the amplitude and frequency of any one of these sounds and to give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of anyone's imagination. Given four film phonographs, we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat, and landslide. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects, but as musical instruments. Photoelectric film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music and shadow play. The 16 mm film projector is the elephant in the room to be tamed by the projectionist and in turn by the audience softening its footsteps. The behemoth lumbers at the speed of light and sound across a place cleared for boundaries, not those were something stops, but that from which something begins. Beyond the convulsions of over-production a state can be born of calm in which a world takes shape without products or refuse, a zone in which mind is energy and raw material and is also the final product, the only intangible object for consumption. For the distinguishing of the simplest things from those that are complex, and in the arranging of them in order, we require to note, in each and every series of things in which we directly deduce truths from other truths, which thing is simplest, and then to note how all the others stand at greater or lesser or equal distance from it. Only in darkness is thy shadow clear. I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights with multitudes bent toward some flashing scene never disclosed, but hastened to again, foretold to other eyes on the same screen.

OH NO

If you wander far enough you will come to it and when you get there, they will give you a place to sit for yourself only, in a nice chair, and all your friends will be there with smiles on their faces and they will likewise all have places.

Bruce McClure