Shadow Trap
Greg Pope, UK/Norway, 2007, 6min, 35mm.

Shards of emulsion produced during an auto-destructive film performance have been layered and structured onto clear 35mm. Extending across the soundtrack area, the synaesthetic image creates an intense volley of sound and light. (Mark Webber)

Observando el Cielo
Jeanne Liotta, USA, 2007, 19min, 16mm, sound by Peggy Ahwesh

Seven years of celestial field recordings gathered from the chaos of the cosmos and inscribed onto 16mm film from various locations upon this turning tripod Earth. This work is neither a metaphor nor a symbol, but is feeling towards a fact in the midst of perception, which time flows through. Natural VLF radio recordings of the magnetosphere in action allow the universe to speak for itself. The Sublime is Now. Amor Fati! (Jeanne Liotta)

My Name is Oona
Gunvor Nelson, USA/Sweden, 1969, 10min, 16mm, sound by Steve Reich, Patrick Gleeson

"My Name is Oona captures in haunting, intensely lyrical images fragments of the coming to consciousness of a child girl. A series of extremely brief flashes of her moving through night-lit space or woods in sensuous negative, separated by rapid fades into blackness, burst upon us like a fairy-tale princess, with a late sun only partially outlining her and the animal in silvery filigree against the encroaching darkness; one of the most perfect recent examples of poetic cinema." (Amos Vogel)

Regarding the Pain of Susan Sontag (Notes on Camp)
Steve Reinke, Canada, 2006, 4 min, video

A journey from schoolyard to graveyard, with author Susan Sontag as philosophical guide.

Berlin Horse
Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1970, 8min, 16mm, sound by Brian Eno

Berlin Horse is based on two sequences – one shot by Le Grice originally in 8mm and refilmed in 16mm – the other a piece of found early newsreel. The common subject is of horses the first a horse being exercised and the second horses being led from a burning stable. Both sequences were visually transformed and recoloured through various film printing techniques at the London Film Makers’ Cooperative.

Runaway
Standish Lawder, USA, 1969, 6min, 16mm

In Runaway Standish Lawder entraps a pack of Walt Disney's cartoon dogs in a seemingly endless four second mobius strip. Made using a homemade optical printer fashioned from a coffee can, the benign original is elevated into its own filmic reality through various degenerative processes and manipulations. An equally repetitive wurlitzeresque soundtrack affirms the perpetual urgency of the image. (William Rose)

Anything Else &/Or Nothing At All (Drawing Circles for Jackson Mac Low)
Steve Roden, USA, 2006, 16min, video

This film is part of a joint project between LACE and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Artists were given access to the Joan Brown Fluxus collection and archives. I used a score by Jackson Mac Low that originally appeared in a book of scores and concrete poetry called An Anthology, edited by Mac Low and Lamonte Young. Mac Low's score states: “The text on the opposite page may be used in any way as a score for solo or group readings, musical or dramatic performances, looking, smelling, anything else &/or nothing at all.’ I created a simple instruction for each of the 93 different characters that appear in the score (letters, numbers, punctuation marks and symbols) and used the score to generate a film work, a sound composition, and a group voice piece - all compressed into a film and its soundtrack. (Steve Roden)

Ja/Nein (Vorhangfilm) (Yes/No (Curtain Film))
Ernst Schmidt jr., Austria, 1968, 3min, 16mm

Expanded cinema with a real and a projected curtain. (This film is part of the 20 Action and Destruction Films.)

When Worlds Collude
Fred Worden, USA, 2008, 10min, video

An experimental film structured as a kind of specialized playground in which highly representational images are freed from their duties to refer to things outside of themselves. The images run free in their new lightness making unforeseeable, promiscuous connections with each other and developing an inexplicable, non-parsable plot line that runs along with all the urgency of any good thriller. When worlds collude, something outside of description is always just about to happen. (Fred Worden)

Attack on Silence
Mark Fell, UK, 2008, 10min, video

Attack on Silence is a series of works by British artist Mark Fell exploring the relationships between geometry, color, and waveform. These works have been shown around the world as performances, installations, and in print. Sacred geometries, and their sonic equivalents, are said to mirror the micro and macroscopic structures of the physical world; the complex harmonies of the Tibetan singing bowl, like the patterns of the Mandala, allow access to the deepest levels of the consciousness inducing meditative states that transform the very being of their participants. In the modern reciprocals of these technologies the shift is one of teleology. The sacred metals and antique art of the singing bowls give way to the magic of digital synthesis as sacred geometry gives proxy to psychophysiology and the cognitive neuroscience of brainwave entrainment.

Drawn from these sources—with mutual ambivalence—and realized through a distinct aesthetic minimalism, intricate combinations of form, color and sound are projected through a series of transitions, sometimes gradual, sometimes abrupt, sometimes giving way to sustained tones and repetitions. In a process of ever-emerging horizon—an attack on silence and a space for silence—the potential arises to be ensconced or alienated, a space for enchantment, for anxiety, for profound boredom or for reverie. Are these phenomena affirmations or reconfigurations of the subject—routes to an authentic, spiritual or otherwise—or are they essentially physiological? Are they aesthetic distractions or intrusive technological interventions—pointers to dystopian possibilities?

Scotch Hop
Christopher Maclaine, USA, 1959, 6min, 16mm

Maclaine did not accomplish the exquisite sense of Scotch Hop by sitting down and figuring dry tables of numbers and rhythms or studying the formalities of composition and rhythm… Chris Maclaine was able to accomplish what he did with this film because he loved what he was filming… He had a camera with him and he had worked with it for years, and he knew how to operate it so that it did not interfere with him. He danced with it. (Stan Brakhage)

O Come All Ye Faithful
Stephen Sutcliffe, UK, 2007, 47secs, video

Short video pairing/collaging footage of Christopher Logue reading his poem O come all ye faithful with an additional soundtrack, which acts as a contradictory undercurrent.

Notes After a Long Silence
Saul Levine, USA, 1989, 12min, video

Bringing it all back home. B.B. King Blitzkrieg bop. Civic construction, military demolition, drilling for destruction and for love. A cacophonous clusterfuck cloudburst of movie. Theory with a beat.