Alex Mackenzie's Intertidal
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Sun 3 February 2013 // 20:00
(Sun 3rd Feb / 8pm / £5)
We are delighted to host Vancouver based film artist Alex MacKenzie back to the Cube. Alex experiments with film stock and equipment, hand processing film and altering projectors to expand the definition of cinema and have a more physical connection with the materials. His rayogram workshop and hand-cranked wooden light-box show from a few years back was a mesmerising and unforgettable experience for the audience.
His new work 'Intertidal' is inspired both by the work of 1940s marine scientist Ed Ricketts, and the technical approach of french filmmaker Jean Painleve in the same era. It presents a submersive exploration of the tidal zones and marine life off the shores of Western Canada. Using both camera and non-camera approaches, this performance-based work presented on two analytic 16mm projectors speaks to the fragility of both the film medium and the marine environment explored. Travelling as far West as Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and North to the tip of Naikoon on Haida Gwaii, this route emulates that which Ricketts and author John Steinbeck intended to revisit prior to Ricketts' untimely death in 1948. The scope and materiality of both emulsion and environment are explored using elements as wide ranging as photograms, alternative film chemistry, live manipulation, and the very movement of the tides themselves. At once personal, political, visual and ecological, the work gives equal weight to representation and abstraction. A project of process through exploration, Intertidal is a marine ecology for emulsion: teeming and tenuous, fleeting and alive.
http://www.alexmackenzie.ca/
We are delighted to host Vancouver based film artist Alex MacKenzie back to the Cube. Alex experiments with film stock and equipment, hand processing film and altering projectors to expand the definition of cinema and have a more physical connection with the materials. His rayogram workshop and hand-cranked wooden light-box show from a few years back was a mesmerising and unforgettable experience for the audience.
His new work 'Intertidal' is inspired both by the work of 1940s marine scientist Ed Ricketts, and the technical approach of french filmmaker Jean Painleve in the same era. It presents a submersive exploration of the tidal zones and marine life off the shores of Western Canada. Using both camera and non-camera approaches, this performance-based work presented on two analytic 16mm projectors speaks to the fragility of both the film medium and the marine environment explored. Travelling as far West as Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and North to the tip of Naikoon on Haida Gwaii, this route emulates that which Ricketts and author John Steinbeck intended to revisit prior to Ricketts' untimely death in 1948. The scope and materiality of both emulsion and environment are explored using elements as wide ranging as photograms, alternative film chemistry, live manipulation, and the very movement of the tides themselves. At once personal, political, visual and ecological, the work gives equal weight to representation and abstraction. A project of process through exploration, Intertidal is a marine ecology for emulsion: teeming and tenuous, fleeting and alive.
http://www.alexmackenzie.ca/