Coming soon to a theatre…

     A fortunate misstep many years ago brought me deep into the belly of the world’s motion picture film archives where I became interested in the beauty of decayed film. Much of the old nitrate film had some level of “vinegar syndrome”, mold, and even a little crystallization, creating beautiful aberrations in the images. It made me think about the strangeness of what was once a fleeting moment of illusory life, of an actor on a set acting and simulating a moment that was so far from reality, yet the mechanism of the moving frames--the shutter, the projector, created the illusion of a dream unfolding before us on the cinema screen. And now I hold that dream, broken, discarded, decaying in my hand. The material medium is all that survives. I felt an urge to capture the fantastical allure of that illusion and bring it further into material form. To make it tangible and alive again. To be able to investigate it from all angles, not just the singular simulation we have on the cinema screen.

     We think of recording an image onto film, a picture or moving picture, as a true document that is now static, fixed. Looking at aged film made me realize that nothing is static or devoid of life, not even a reproduction—it will eventually decay and grow into something new with the natural process of degeneration. This project Is how I am exploring this idea and accelerating and participating in what nature and time want to do anyway. I added to the found films by growing new crystals on the surface to intermingle with the existing bifurcated organic decay. I then molded them into shapes to create objects that bring the illusion of Hollywood and cinema in on itself inverted into a luminous fetishistic object. Hollywood tossed away the reels of film when they were finished being lived through an audience, and yet these are cultural artifacts to be cherished, and re-examined.