Holding, Not - Measuring (fourth cycle)
Performance for two 16mm projectors, voices, and an overhead slide projector
In this film performance, the viewer is invited to contemplate the perspectives of walking, swinging, holding, pausing, cradling, measuring - but without looking through the viewfinder. Created collaboratively with the audience, the performance expands on codes of cinema, cinematography, and the aesthetics of the “good image”. The image is neither good, nor beautiful - it just is.
The fourth cycle version of Holding, Not - Measuring uses an Overhead Projector to overlay poetic annotation on the image track. The overlaid writings are an attempt to compare the recorded image with its reflection in future time.
The fourth cycle version of Holding, Not - Measuring uses an Overhead Projector to overlay poetic annotation on the image track. The overlaid writings are an attempt to compare the recorded image with its reflection in future time.
"The scholar is measuring, the artist is
holding. So if you're going to take a
work and really measure it and write
about it, then in a certain sense you
destroy it. But if you hold it you can't
measure it. But we each, I feel, have the
capacity to both hold and measure. (…)
To be indeterminate in a brave way. To be
ethical and selfish."
Richard Schechner, 2017
excerpts
a leaf of grass soaked in soda and citric acid
industrially processed matter meets the phenol in the leaf
a satisfying material gesture
exploiting the leaf
this document wants to hold and measure.
i want to speak to process and intention.
you are welcome to skip the annotation
or return again and again.
to re-enter with renewed attention.
