In April the program of the Event was changed due to Icelandic ash clouds. On Tuesday 15th of June Reynold Reynolds will visit Utrecht after all and he will offer you the following program:

Apathetic people in a world in decay and the human body dissected through the eyes of science. These are just a few, quite possibly alarming, but, above all, magnificent images you will encounter in the films of artist Reynold Reynolds. With 16 mm film, high resolution photography and stop-motion as his main techniques, Reynolds developed a unique cinematic language which he uses to discuss scientific and philosophical issues concerning perception and time.

From November 2009 through to January 2010, Reynolds was an artist-in-residence at Impakt. During his residency, Reynolds worked on his first feature film, The Ultraviolet Catastrophe. In this Impakt Event, some material from this film will be premiered. In addition, Reynolds will show the results of a workshop given during his stay. Moreover, Reynolds’ new film Six Easy Pieces (2010, work in progress), Secret Life (2008) and two films by Stan Brakhage and The Brothers Quay will be screened at this event.

Reynold Reynolds was born in Alaska in 1966. In 2004, he was invited by The American Academy in Berlin and was given a studio in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien. In 2007, he received a German grant for the development of two projects. Most recently, his work was awarded at the Transmediale (Berlin) and the European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück).

Bart Rutten, conservator Stedelijk Museum will interview Reynold Reynolds during the Event.

The spoken language is English.

Program

Reynold Reynolds -Six easy pieces, 2010 (work in progress), 10 min.

Six easy pieces is the last part of the Perception Trilogy; a three-part cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life and is preceded by Secret Life, 2008 (won the 2008 EMAF Festival Award at the European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck, Germany) and Secret Machine, 2009 (3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art 2009, Russia)

The work is based on the book “Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of physics explained by its most brilliant teacher”by Richard P. Feynman.

Reynold Reynolds – Secret Life, Germany 2008, Two channel video projection, transferred from 16mm and stills, 10 min.

Secret Life is the first from a three-part cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life. It portrays a woman trapped in an apartment with a life of its own, but transcending the narrative horizons of human desire, the film visits upon us a glimpse of a shared and sacred reality. Secret Life is a two-screen installation that defies the ultimate metaphysical taboos of temporality by combining novel technique with intrepid philosophical vision; and daring to present that which is seldom, if ever, portrayed in any artistic medium, impossibilities are made possible t hrough Reynolds’ signature aesthetic, a lens that can fill one with reverence for the mundane. Have you ever wondered what time sees, experiences? Without mortal assumptions about time, the occupant of the apartment is no longer limited even to unique location, but here, seen through the eye of time, space itself is now become alive, active, animated, animas.

Brothers Quay – Anamorphosis, or, De Artificiali Perspectiva, 1991, 13 min 41 sec.

The Quay Brothers explore the technique of Anamorphosis, a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image.

Stan Brakhage – Night Music, 1986, 16mm/35mm, 30 sec.

Part of Three Hand-Painted Films. The other parts are Rage Net (1988) and Glaze of Cathexis (1990).

Stan Brakhage – The garden of earthly delights, 1981, 35 mm film, 1 min 44 sec.

Brakhage took pieces of plants he encountered in his everyday life, arranged the assortments of leaves, seeds, stamens, roots and flowers into patterns between two pieces of 35mm film, and optically printed the results. The one minute and 44 seconds of celluloid that ultimately glides, or more accurately clatters, clicks and stutters its way through the projector’s gate is curiously ephemeral yet timeless. It is a rhythmic work that is as beautiful as a stained-glass window, with the projector’s beam of light passing through delicate petals and leaves, but all the more awesome and therefore intimidating for the simple, painstaking, craft behind its ultimate material and experiential form. For it is a film that makes you realise what the ultimate universal experiences for cinema-goers are: the literal passing of time before your eyes, and the seductive power of representation.

Stan Brakhage – Mothlight, 1963, 16 mm film, 3 min.

Brakhage’s most radical exploration into the inflection of light through his raw materials initially occurred in response to his oppressive economic situation. When he had no money to buy film stock, he conceived the idea of making a film out of natural material through which light could pass… Brakhage collected dead moths, flowers, leaves, and seeds. By placing them between two layers of Mylar editing tape, a transparent, thin strip of 16mm celluloid with sprocket holes and glue on one side, he made Mothlight (1963), ‘as a moth might see from birth to death if black were white.’ The structure of Mothlight is built around three “round-dances” and a coda. Three times the materials of the moths and plants are introduced on the screen, gain speed as if moving into wild flight, and move toward calm and separation; then in the coda a series of bursts of moth wings occurs in diminishing power, interspersed with passages of white.