The Wooden Lightbox: A Secret Art of Seeing

Co-Presented with the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art

Sep. 13 - 10:30 pm

Artist in Attendance

The Works at Washington High School
531 SE 14th ave

Work Stills:

About This Screening

For our annual co-presentation with PICA's TBA Festival, we bring Canadian film artist Alex Mackenzie. His ongoing project, The Wooden Lightbox: A Secret Art of Seeing, is an exploration and reconfiguration of cinematic apparatus and emulsion. Using the early development of cinema as a marker for cultural, technological and economic change, these film cycles draw from turn-of-the-century cinematic prototypes and long forgotten ideas surrounding the moving image and its early promise. At the core of this approach is the use of a homebuilt hand-cranked projector in an Expanded Cinema format to present a striking array of handmade and processed emulsion. The vast potential of the film frame is drawn out through imagery both archaic and contemporary in shape and form. Hypnosis, panorama, motion studies, expectation, magic, the dreamworld and sleight of eye conspire in this intimate and immersive framework. http://www.alexmackenzie.ca/