arc & VITREOUS CHAMBER:
EXPANDED CINEMA PERFORMANCES
Friday, May 31 | 10:00 PM | Sudanese Canadian Community Centre
Please join WUFF at the Sudanese Canadian Community Centre (129 Dagmar St) for two expanded cinema performance works by artists from the Bay Area, each under special circumstances. First, no outside (NO BORDERS ON STOLEN LAND), a new work by arc commissioned for WUFF 11, drawing inspiration from a 1968 land art work by Dennis Oppenheim and shared experiences of refused entry at the US/Canadian border, to be performed via set of instructions by festival co-director Scott Fitzpatrick. Then, Vitreous Chamber will present Towards the Death of Cinema, an audiovisual performance engaging material intervention and cycles of destruction, on the 10th anniversary of its first performance in 2014. In both works, the artists deploy 16mm film, sound and minimal gesture to evoke trance-like spaces for historical and political consideration.
This program is presented in tandem with a reception for Elian Mikkola's expanded cinema exhibition at C'Cap Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practices.
*Please note that this program may feature flashing light.
*The venue is wheelchair accessible
no outside
(NO BORDERS ON STOLEN LAND)
expanded cinema performance by arc
2024 | USA | 10 | 2 x 16mm | World premiere
denied corporeal passage across a fictional demarcation between two imperialist entities occupying stolen land, photochemical agents are smuggled in absentia as autonomous elements of outside agitation. there is no outside.
- arc
arc is an ongoing project by the artworker and anarchist known as tooth (USA), an important figure in contemporary underground cinema and a mainstay of the Bay Area experimental scene. tooth is the driving force behind the Oakland, CA microcinema Black Hole Cinematheque, and a founder of both Black Hole Collective Film Lab and the celluloid-only film festival Light Field. Exclusively favouring analogue practices, tooth's work as arc encourages trance-like meditative spectatorship in which the perceptual is political, prioritizing the solitary authorship of objects and materials.
Towards the Death of Cinema
Accompanied by a live synthesizer score, projected 16mm film melt and burn from the heat of a film projector. Cutting off the sprocket holes located on the edge of the film frames, the projector’s forward momentum is bypassed. In the path of the bulb for longer than 1/24th of a second, the film warps, smokes, and bursts. Individual film frames document cycles of destruction, resilience, and transformation within the Bay Area. Shots include the abandoned Parkway Theater in Oakland, closed in 2009; filmmaker Mary Helena Clark in her Berkeley studio; the Black Hole Cinematheque in Oakland, founded by tooth; historical images of the 1906 San Francisco fire; pool tides in the remaining structure of the Sutro Baths, first built in 1896 and knocked down by arson in 1966; and the dormant Woodminster amphitheater, built in the late 1930’s under Roosevelt’s New Deal project. If, as Paulo Cherchi Usai argues, “cinema is the art of destroying moving images,” Towards the Death of Cinema expedites this inherent process of destruction for the viewing audience to witness in real time.
- Malic Amalya
Vitreous Chamber is the artist duo Malic Amalya & Nathan Hill (USA), who have collaborated on 16mm films, digital and analogue videos, and performances with electronic musical scores since 2014. Visceral and cacophonous, their work traverses gritty landscapes of abandoned buildings, blast zones, and back rooms. They burn 16mm film, smear Vaseline on camera filters, and circuit bend electronics. Malic and Nathan live and work together in Oakland, CA.
expanded cinema performance by Vitreous Chamber
2014 | USA | 30 | 16mm / Live Sound | Canadian premiere