SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Saturday, May 20, 2017, 8:00 pm

CROSSROADS program 5:
Apparent Motion: Live Cinema works by Rose Kallal, Andrew Puls and Clipson/Churchill/Davis

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

151 Third Street (between Mission & Howard Streets)

San Francisco, CA 94103





Paul Clipson, John Davis, Joshua Churchill, Rose Kallal and Andrew Puls in person


presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
in association with the Canyon Cinema Foundation


Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code
Advance tickets available here.
Join our Facebook event.


SPECIAL NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond our control, Britt Al-Busultan is unable to appear with us this evening. We are pleased to present instead the Bay Area premiere of Paul Clipson's 3-projector work Spectrum States, to be screened with live soundtrack by John Davis and Joshua Churchill.


As classical frame-by-frame filmmaking—the art of plastic images, mechanical media interface and live projected light—becomes increasingly anachronistic in mainstream festivals and movie halls, Performance Cinema, an ever-renewing, always present-tense live art practice born of the ashes of twentieth century industrial cinema, roars raging once again to center-stage! Apparent Motion, CROSSROADS’ centerpiece event since 2011, celebrates this international phenomenon of sight and sound with live, spatialized, multi-projector film/sound performances by Rose Kallal (New York NY), local master of live analog video abstraction, Andrew Puls and—JUST ADDED—Spectrum States by Paul Clipson, John Davis and Joshua Churchill.


Andrew Puls is a video artist, analog electronics designer and composer/musician. He runs Whistlehut, an experimental media production studio in Richmond CA, where he produces his own and others' audio and visual recordings, and designs electronic audio and video devices.


Puls’ video work centers around live, intuitive, "no source" visualizations. Using video hardware processing, camera feedback loops and video synthesis, he uncovers the inner-world landscapes existing behind the scan-lines. His focus on live connection to the viewers and direct interaction with sound makes each performance entirely unique to circumstance.


For CROSSROADS 2017 Andrew Puls will present a segment of his ongoing “no source” video visualization project Sourceless. My live work, to me, is most of all about the connection with the audience and mutual submersion into a audiovisual sensory experience that moves us beyond sensation of just light and sound in a room. A group "trance" for lack of a better word. "Sourceless" describes the process of creating the images, and to some degree is a metaphor for the mystery and ephemerality of sensory experiences in general. "Sourceless" imagery like feedback is a great medium for that type of spontaneous, connected live performance, because like time and our surroundings in life, it is very malleable and exists exactly as it is only in the moment that it is produced or seen, unlike a recording, which can be viewed in an more repeatable fashion indefinitely. By channeling feedback, I harness a current of space time as it is flowing by at the time, and shape, with my hands and mind, the time-flow experience for those willing to come along. I will be continuing along those same lines but I am working on building some new audio hardware which will probably get its first use there. I think it should be done with that by the show but it probably will not be a major shift in my work, just some new tools to steer it in another direction. (Andrew Puls)


Rose Kallal is a New York-based visual and sound artist. Her performances include immersive multiple 16mm film loop projections accompanied by her own electronic sound work using modular synthesis. Incorporating a wide range of technical processes, such as traditional animation techniques, video synthesis/feedback and computer animation, her 16mm film loops cycle at varying speeds to create a hypnotic nonlinear flow of repeating patterns and motifs. The heavy use of repetition both visually and sonically, as well as the merging of both antiquated and modern technologies serve to dissolve sense of time and place.


She has presented her work internationally at venues worldwide, including MoMA PS1; the Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; the Bologna of Museum of Modern Art; Participant Inc.; Ramiken Crucible Gallery; Issue Project Room; Berlin Atonal; Sonic Acts; Microscope Gallery; Unconscious Archives and more. Kallal’s sound work has been released on UK electronics label We Can Elude Control, with a full length LP—Perseus due in Summer 2017.


Rose Kallal’s work is animated by nostalgia for a time when the expansion of consciousness by predigital cinematic means promised truly revolutionary possibilities. She revisits the past to modify the present and chart a new future.— Ken Johnson, The New York Times


For CROSSROADS 2017 Rose Kallal will present Rubix II, a performance including three 16mm projectors accompanied by live sound.

Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians on films, live performances, and installations. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring to light visual preoccupations that reveal themselves while working in a stream of consciousness manner, combining densely layered, in-camera edited studies of figurative and abstract environments, in a process that encourages unplanned-for results, responding to and conversing with the temporal qualities of musical composition and live performance.  www.withinmirrors.org


Joshua Churchill is a San Francisco-based cross-disciplinary artist whose immersive site-specific sound and light work takes the form of both installation and performance, often blurring the line between the two. In performance, Churchill utilizes guitar, various wind and percussive instruments, field recordings, and a myriad of electronics to create waves of resonant drones and pulsing feedback that rise and fall like a dark tide.   www.vimeo.com/joshuachurchill


John Davis: Expanding the relationship between moving image and sound with live performance and studio-based projects, John's work elicits sensory response through familiar and unexpected uses of traditional media. Through live performance and collaboration with other media artists, John alternates as both musician and filmmaker. Improvisation generally defines these exchanges, allowing spontaneity and chance over formal rehearsal to guide the work. www.noiseforlight.com

Joshua Churchill/John Davis/Paul Clipson—Spectrum States: Drawing from the musical orbits of metal, minimalism and improvisation, cross-disciplinary artists Joshua Churchill and John Davis combine their music with filmmaker Paul Clipson's 16mm multi-projector anamorphic explorations. Relying on a range of sound sources such as magnetic tape loops, processed guitars, oscillators and feedback, their music serves as a sequence of layers merging with Clipson's widescreen adventures in movement and light. Utilizing both color and black and white imagery, Clipson juxtaposes in-camera compositional manipulations, including lens distortions and fluctuations, with the performance lingering between hallucinatory realms of super-imposed cinemascope images and densely layered sonic revelry.


 

 


 


Pictured above: Andrew Puls, video visualization


 


CROSSROADS 2017 is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, George Lucas Family Foundation, Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation and the Willow Foundation.


With thanks to our festival sponsors:


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