In the context of WAVE – Biennale des arts visuels, the PUI invited Mire to the Maison des Arts de Saint-Herblain for a screening of experimental films in 16mm !
To conclude this day #55 of the PUI titled La Photographie autrement, procédés alternatifs, the Mire team has concocted a program of films exclusively made with human/non-human collaborative processes. Eco-processed, exposed to the glow of fireflies, buried and digged up, these works showcase a tendency of experimental cinema to lean towards ecological practices and delegate to nature a creative role.
a taste of what is to come during PRISME #6…..
PROGRAMME :
Kartoffel by Dagie Brundhert
video / sound / 3′
A sackful of potatoes. Cut them in pieces, carve letters, print, press out the juice.
Add vitamin c powder and washing soda.
Develop a super 8 triX film in it and the result is a very dense crispy black & white negative film!
Rhus Typhina by Georgy Bagdasarov and Alexandra Moralesova
2014 / 16 mm / sound / 2’44
“A film from one of labodoble’s series of experiments with natural (organic) film developers. The structure of the film is based on the chemical formula of a developer based on Rhus typhina. The main protagonist of the film is a species of flowering plant of the family Anacardiaceae whose leaves and berries are mixed with tobacco and other herbs and smoked by Native American tribes. We tried to apply the properties of Rhus typhina in photochemistry. The film captures the research, experiments, harvesting and preparation of the film developer in which the original negative was developed. The nonlinear structure of the chemical formula as well as the nonlinear research of the process are reflected in the order of the frames. No post-production except the sound. All editing work was made in camera before the chemical development.”
La dernière vague by Katherine Bauer and Loïc Verdillon
2020/ 16 mm / sound / 7’00
Film with the infusion of the sea. Developed with seaweed from the ocean where it was filmed in Brittany and ashes from the oven of the pizzeria next to the beach. The forms of marine life aggregate and make rise with the tide a starry and fundamental rouge.
Mothlight by Stan Brakhage
1963 / 16 mm / silent / 4’00
“What a moth might see from its birth to its death if the black turned to white and white to back.”
Photuris by Peter Miller
2013-2014 / 16 mm / silencieux / 6’10
“A 16mm film in three parts. A black tube is threaded with a string, which is then replaced with film. The night arrives in the woods bringing with it various points of light. Fireflies mark their way along the film, leaving behind a flurry of colors and forms.”
The Mulch Spider’s Dream by Karel Doing
2018 / 16mm / sound / 14’01
“What is it like to be a spider? A creature that lives in the same environment as we do and yet has an experience far removed from ours. The film evokes a non-human world through shape, colour and rhythm. The seemingly abstract images are made by using the internal chemistry of plants interacting with photographic emulsion, a type of image that I have called a “phytogram”.”
Parties visible et invisible d’un ensemble sous tension by Emmanuel Lefrant
2009 / 16 mm / sound / 7’00
“Africa, 2003: the mechanisms of memory.
I shot the image of a landscape and buried simultaneously a film strip in the same place where the sequence was shot: the emulsion, the victim of erosion is thus subjected to biochemical degradation. The result of these natural processes of decay are then conserved in the state of their dissolution. Those two images, and their negative versions, are then entangled together thanks to double exposure and bi-packing techniques.
These landscapes in fusion, it’s the logic of a world that reveals itself. A bipolar world, where invisible takes shape with the visible, where the first dissolves itself into the second and vice versa.”