presented by San Francisco Cinematheque in association with Gray Area
Admissions: Early Bird $10; Presales $15; Door $20 / Cinematheque members $8 (DOOR ONLY)
Advance tickets here.
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SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE and GRAY AREA present PERPETUAL MOTION, the largest convergence of international, multi-generational performance cinema practitioners ever assembled in the San Francisco Bay Area. The series is presented September 16–December 7, 2016. All performances at Gray Area.
Performance Cinema: an exciting and emergent genre of avant-garde moving-image art which represents a crucial attack on the sterility of the contemporary, digitally-located media environment, arguing for the embodied, collective consideration of real-time, site-specific media experiences. Through mis-used or modified analog film projectors, live video synthesis and physical interaction with the media interface, performance cinema practitioners variously burn, etch, mutilate and destroy projected film, machinery and the image itself. Performance Cinema practitioners create immersive spectacles of sight and sound, opening a space for questioning and contemplating visual culture through direct activation of the senses. As a dynamic, regenerating and resurrecting media experience, Performance Cinema exists only in the moment of perception and is truly an art of its time. Full series information available here.
Scott Arford (Oakland) / Michael A. Morris (Dallas) / Le Révélateur (Montréal)
Perpetual Motion—a series devoted almost exclusively to live experiential artworks exploring the analog basics of cinema—“goes electric” for one night only with works exploring the attractive/repulsive allure of the electronic signal, the contrasts between performance space and virtual space, as well as intermedia collision and fusion. As a follow-up to his 2015 CROSSROADS film festival appearance, Michael A. Morris (Dallas) presents his series of Hermeneutics (1–3)—using 16mm multi-projection, live video processing, custom software and light-sensitive electronics—in the production of real-time cinematic synesthesia. Morris’ graceful fusions are followed by Scott Arford’s (Oakland) TV–IV, an exceedingly aggressive and purgative collision of semi-compatible technologies. Audio as abstracted video image and video as audio oscillator form a dense, flickering and haunted electronic dialog. Program concludes with Hyper by Montréal’s Le Révélateur (Sabrina Ratté & Roger Tellier-Craig), an immersive and architectural audio/visual hybrid located at the liminal edges between virtual and concrete space.
 | Scott Arford is one of the leading figures of new media arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica. Arford has appeared at venues worldwide including SFMOMA; Dissonanze 7, Rome; LUFF Festival, Lausanne; Observatori Festival, Valencia; the Sounding Festivals in Guangzhou and Taipei; LEM, Barcelona; Liquid Architecture, Melbourne; Festival de Video/Arte/Eolectronica, Lima; and Sonic Light, Amsterdam. Arford received a Bachelor of Architecture from the College of Architecture and Design at Kansas State University in 1991. He is currently an instructor at the California College of Arts. In 1995 Arford founded 7hz, a warehouse/performance space. From 1995 to 2002, 7hz was San Francisco's leading venue for noise and experimental music. |
 | Michael A. Morris is an artist and educator based in Dallas, Texas. He works primarily with film, video and expanded cinematic forms. Much of his recent work responds to the rapid changes in how moving images are created and experienced in the 21st century. He has performed and screened his films and videos at museums, galleries, microcinemas and film festivals internationally, including recent events at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The International Symposium of Electronic Art in Vancouver, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Texas Biennial. He is a Visiting Lecturer of Hybrid Media at Southern Methodist University and curates film/video/new media programs around the region regularly, most recently as part of the first Dallas Medianale and a founding member of roaming microcinema collective Spectacle Society. |
 | Inspired by the performative tradition that combines electronic sound and video art, Le Révélateur's live performance is the result of an intermedial dialogue between video artist Sabrina Ratté and electronic musician Roger Tellier-Craig. For the past six years, they have investigated the complex relationship that exists between individuals and various states of synthetic realities. By sculpting electronic signals into audio and visual architectures, they create environments that recall the existing one while expressing a personal perspective through formal choices. Le Révélateur examine the real and the illusory, and the hierarchy that exists between them by creating immersive virtual spaces steeped in synthetic audio phenomena. Together they explore a common fascination for the combination of electronic image and sound, using a varying array of digital and analogue technologies. They have performed performed extensively in Europe and North America, presenting their work at Museu Serralves, Porto; RIXC Festival, Riga; the Lampo series in Chicago; Resonate Festival, Belgrade; the Ann Arbor Film Festival; Digital Quebec (Mutek/Elektra), London; Sonic Acts, Amsterdam, Send+Receive, Winnipeg; Micro Mutek, Barcelona, Mutek.Mx. Le Révélateur has released recordings on Gneiss Things, NNA Tapes and Root Strata. |
Perpetual Motion is a presentation of San Francisco Cinematheque in partnership with Gray Area and is supported by generous funding from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund/Grants for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and by generous donations from Cinematheque’s individual donors and members.
pictured above: image from Le Révélateur