Sight Unseen presents:
Apparitions | 55 minutes (2 X 16mm colour + b&w, 2016)
Where one locates ruptures or denies them is a political choice that determines the construction of the present. Whether one excludes or foregrounds certain events and processes at the expense of others affects the intelligibility of the contemporary functioning of power in which we ourselves are enmeshed.
-Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
EXPANDED CINEMA PERFORMANCE BY ALEX MACKENZIE
Inspired by early stereo imaging and the clash and collusion of socioeconomic forces, this suite of works seeks to dismantle cinematic codes while foregrounding projector and light as sculpture: a conscious corruption and interference of the apparatus to evoke the unexpected, reshaping repre- sentation into the realm of material and space. Using colour gels, masking, lens interference and projector movement in tandem with an exploration of binocular disparity, perspective, pattern- ing and the film surface itself, APPARITIONS explores the transitional space between image and abstraction.
ABOUT
Alex MacKenzie is a Vancouver-based media artist working primarily with 16mm analog film equipment and hand processed imagery. He creates works of expanded cinema, light projection installation, and projector performance. His work has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the EXiS Experimental Film Festival in Seoul, Lightcone in Paris, Kino Arsenal in Berlin and many other festivals and art spaces worldwide. Alex was the founder and curator of the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, the Blinding Light!! Cinema and the Vancouver Underground Film Festival. He was an artist in residence at Atelier MTK in Grenobles France, the Struts Gallery/Faucet Media in New Brunswick, Cineworks’ Analog Film Annex in Vancouver and Daimon in Gatineau. Alex co-edited Damp: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art (Anvil Press 2008), and interviewed David Rimmer for Loop, Print, Fade + Flicker: David Rimmer’s Moving Images (Anvil Press 2009). Commissions include Portal, (Situated Cinema WNDX Winnipeg 2012), Auroratone: Digitalis (FilmPop Montreal 2012), The Film That Buys The Cinema (Cube Bristol 2013) and Hyborian Witch (Wrong Wave/Kensington Gore 2013). Alex is a founding member of the Iris Film Collective in Vancouver.
“Alex MacKenzie is the unequivocal master of contemporary Canadian expanded cinema: using rare and outdated technology with the deft touch of a visual alchemist, MacKenzie spins his stunning and mesmerizing anti-narratives using the detritus of cinematic history to create a completely unforgettable, and undeniably powerful, alternate vision.” -Antimatter Film Festival
Sight Unseen is a nomadic moving image series showcasing avant-garde film, video and expanded cinema. We are based in Baltimore, Maryland and have been inviting artists to perform and project since June 2012.
