 Lynn Cazabon at Schroeder Romero, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This very painterly looking image is actually a photograph, and the subject of the photo is a film. What you are looking at is a long strip of film that has been unspooled from its canister and arranged in looping, floral patterns, then photographed edge-on. The large digital photoprint is mounted as if it were a projector screen. Other works in the show are done similarly; all are (16mm?) films recently discarded or de-accessioned from a public collection (the Pratt Library in Baltimore). I kind of hate Cazabon's implication that "pretty, formal work" is what you do with a dead or rapidly-becoming-obsolete medium--in other words, make intricate filigrees for what she calls film's "casket" or "memento mori." Pretty patterns can also be vital, as we shall see in the next post. Another thing this work perversely brought to mind was the old Echoplex analog tape delay, which had a similar (if not as baroque) looping of tape inside its guts, to make cool spaced-out sounds back in the 60s and 70s. That's obsolete, too, but fondly remembered, as this google search page shows. [hat tip to bloggy for reminding me to see the Cazabon show]
|
Lynn Cazabon at Schroeder Romero, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This very painterly looking image is actually a photograph, and the subject of the photo is a film. What you are looking at is a long strip of film that has been unspooled from its canister and arranged in looping, floral patterns, then photographed edge-on. The large digital photoprint is mounted as if it were a projector screen. Other works in the show are done similarly; all are (16mm?) films recently discarded or de-accessioned from a public collection (the Pratt Library in Baltimore). I kind of hate Cazabon's implication that "pretty, formal work" is what you do with a dead or rapidly-becoming-obsolete medium--in other words, make intricate filigrees for what she calls film's "casket" or "memento mori." Pretty patterns can also be vital, as we shall see in the next post. Another thing this work perversely brought to mind was the old Echoplex analog tape delay, which had a similar (if not as baroque) looping of tape inside its guts, to make cool spaced-out sounds back in the 60s and 70s. That's obsolete, too, but fondly remembered, as this google search page shows. [hat tip to bloggy for reminding me to see the Cazabon show]
- tom moody 5-30-2004 5:46 am