From its humble beginnings six years ago, Mono No Aware has grown into a major annual expanded cinema event, as well as a wonderful organization promoting a deep appreciation for the art of filmmaking.
The 7th annual edition of Mono No Aware’s signature event will screen for two nights at Lightspace Studios in Brooklyn, New York on December 6 and 7. Both nights feature one-time-only cinematic performances utilizing 16mm, 8mm and 35mm film projection, as well as “alternative light” projections, performed live by filmmaking artists.
The one performance that the Underground Film Journal highly recommends is Jodie Mack‘s “Let Your Light Shine,” featuring an abstract animated film watched through special prismatic glasses worn by audience members. The Journal experienced a screening of “Let Your Light Shine” in Los Angeles that we considered might be the future of cinema.
Other performances include, also on the 6th, a return by Mono No Aware regular Joel Schlemowitz, who will present his 16mm and lightbox “Camera Paintings;” Jae Song’s dual 16mm loop projection “Skinner #3;” Bruce McClure’s multiple projection “Tastefully Taught Against Germanium Satin;” and more. On the 7th, there will be Mike Fleming’s alternative projection “RGB Fan;” Eliseo Ortiz’s recreated documentary “52 Died;” and much more.
The full Mono No Aware performance lineup is below. Please visit the event’s official website for more info.
December 6
8:00 p.m.:
LASER / WATER INSTALLATION
ALTERNATIVE LIGHT PROJECTION / RUNNING WATER
JULIETTE DUMAS (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
This is an alternative film projector in which the lens and the film are replaced by a drop of water.
a company in China assembled an RGB white light laser module
R + G + B = W for White
white light laser
a drop of water falls through the laser beam and diffracts the light
W = R + G + B : a rainbow is projected on the wall
(Installed Friday & Saturday)
INFINITAS VIA
ALTERNATIVE LIGHT PROJECTION / MOTORIZED INSTALLATION
CHARLOTTE BECKET (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
INFINITAS VIA is an organized mass of braces and pulleys spooling dozens of colored elastic bands. The exploded diagram becomes cohesive as a lens bends the light reflected from the structure to create a mirage-like image on the wall. While the structure itself is a closed looping cell, the projected image depicts an illusion of travelling down an endless night road, suggesting a hallucination of escape. The animated projection is essentially a type of self-surveillance or monitoring, the piece collapses the image of a cage and escape. The machine becomes figurative, an analogue mechanism whose only function is to project a looping image of progress or liberation. A discourse between actual and perceived agency emerges, in this instance a hallucination or fantasy of escape satisfies the need.
SKINNER #3
DUAL 16MM PROJECTION / FILM LOOP INSTALLATION WITH OPTICAL SOUND
JAE SONG (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
SKINNER #3, is part of a three-part series of entities that come to life when turned on and eventually wear down and die. A single 16mm loop goes through two projectors to create a conversation with the past and the future in the present. They are made from concepts of biology (brain), physics (time space movement), and philosophy (Skinner #3 using Lacan, Heidegger). They are existential experiments, they are portraits of a person’s frustration. The physical person becomes a projection of the thoughts, the thoughts are physical looming over and around looping through the projectors. They are also explorations into the medium. Using the unravelled film to show time in its physical form and sculpting time to create meaning in the present.
(Installed Friday & Saturday)
LIGHT BOX COLLAGES
35MM, 16MM, & MEDIUM FORMAT PHOTOGRAPHY / LIGHT BOX INSTALLATION
MARK STREET (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
This series of LIGHT BOX COLLAGES (Gravity’s Veil and Guilty) are made by gluing transparent images to 16×20 inch boxes that emit light. Images are culled from my original 16mm and 35mm film outtakes, as well as photographs I recorded on the street, old film strips, and hand painted slides bought on the street in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Each piece combines new and old, found and created images juxtaposed in unexpected and inventive ways so that an unfamiliar, yet eerily resonant world is stitched together in each work. These lightboxes reference photographic images, proto-cinematic investigations (zoetropes, sequential slides etc), cultural detritus and the collage aesthetic and become more than the sum of their parts in challenging viewers to participate in a fresh artistic experience.
(Installed Friday & Saturday)
CAMERA PAINTINGS
16MM FILM / LIGHT BOX INSTALLATION
JOEL SCHLEMOWITZ (BROOKLYN, NY)
The CAMERA PAINTINGS (Kaoru and Bushwick & Myrtle) are filmic still images, using the camera lens as paintbrush, moving across the landscape outside the darkened chamber of the machine, to render a mosaic, a whole that is formed from the passing of time, the brief moments of sequential frames of the motion picture.
(Installed Friday & Saturday)
LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE
16MM SINGLE PROJECTION / PRISMATIC EYEWEAR
JODIE MACK (LEBANON, NEW HAMPSHIRE)
A stroboscopic spectacle for the spectacles. This black and white film is designed for viewers to wear prismatic glasses to fill the room with colorful light. The optical sound was created in Photoshop.
SECOND HERMENEUTIC
16MM DUAL PROJECTION / VIDEO CAMERA READING LIGHT-AS-SOUND
MIKE MORRIS (DALLAS, TEXAS)
SECOND HERMENEUTIC is the second work in a series that explores the nature of interpretation. In this case, a pair of 16mm projections are overlapped while being captured by an HD video camera. The analog component signal is fed into an audio mixer without any further filtering. All audio in the piece is produced by the camera’s output. The video waveform is manipulated by the film projection to produce a real-time, synaesthetic-cinematic experience using the artifacts of one medium interpreting another as raw material.
THE TELEPATHY SESSIONS
16MM DUAL PROJECTION / LIVE SOUND, GUIDED MEDITATION, & HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION
BRITTANY GRAVELY (BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS) & KENNETH LINEHAN (PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND) AS MAGICAL APPROACH
Generated from co-meditation, telepathic transference and remote viewing practices, Magical Approach will ceremonially project visually and sonically stages of a cinematic rite of passage created for this particular time and space. The performance will include guided meditation, hypnotic suggestion, spectral techno-mediated visions, cinematic tarot card portraits and color-saturated intimate realms of ritual, ceremony, art and play – where the natural and supernatural tangle. Each audience member will receive a Zener-like card containing a personal divination for this night and the coming days.
TASTEFULLY TAUT AGAINST GERMANIUM SATIN
16MM MULTI-PROJECTION / LIVE OPTICAL SOUND PERFORMANCE
BRUCE McCLURE (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
Having ceremonial power they vote themselves, town, port, and garrison. A barefaced palpitating pulpit, a spinning society, and fortunately sirens are enthusiastically attached. Lavishing lagan of a lighthouse ladders up the old time turner, earning and gets his wick on a piece of railing. In the heliotropical noontime following a fade, transformed and pending versions revised, a metallurgic re-glow of beaming is at bat swinging at the bared board bombardment screen, tastefully taut against germanium satin tending to tele-frame. Step up to the charge of a light barricade. Down the photo-slope in synchopanck pulses, the autonomic thropic mussles glitter-a-glatter-a-glutt, borne by carrier valves. Spray gun rakes split them in a double focus and the fire spot of a sun gunner traverses an illustration rutilant in sunk and sundered lines. Shlossh! He lifts the life wand and the dumb speak; let us leave theories there and return to here’s here.
DJ SETS
DJ JAN WOO / VIBES – (AFTER PARTY) & DJ DEGLUXE / DANA GLUCK (INTER-PROGRAM)
Jan Woo is a vibe facilitator based primarily out of Brooklyn, NY. Co-founder of Body Actualized — a D.I.Y. “New-Edge” space — in Bushwick, Vibes Management (events and promotion group), Intuitive Catering (pop-up catering using only the vibemost local ingredients), member of the evolving weird-Pop group formerly known as Splash, as well as co-founder of up-and-coming hypnagogic pop and trance/dance label Z1S Records. DJ Jan Woo knits a seamless tapestry of obscure/not-so-obscure beat-oriented hypnagogic/experimental/psychedelic music, creating a soundtrack for transcendental journeying.
December 7
8:00 p.m.:
TAPE MEASURE FILM
LOOPED 16MM PROJECTION / INSTALLATION WITH OPTICAL SOUND
MARY STARK (MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM)
TAPE MEASURE FILM is a 16mm black and white film loop with optical sound, hand made through a camera-less process in the dark room. The filmstrip functions as a tape measure of 60 inches/152 cm, but becomes a moving image when projected, with the inch marks creating optical sound. Tape Measure Film rejects the durational measurement of the frame line, instead emphasising film as spatial material.
RGB FAN
ALTERED LIGHT PROJECTION INSTALLATION
MIKE FLEMING (ALFRED, NEW YORK)
A theater spotlight shines on an industrial fan that has been altered to have three highly reflective fan blades- one red, one green, and one blue. The blades spin so fast that they blur together and produce a hypnotic ring of white light projected on the adjacent wall. The somewhat choppy light is reminiscent of a cinematic frame rate, and induces strange optical phenomena and sensations. Photographing the piece with a high shutter speed produces a frozen rainbow of colors, illustrating what is known as the additive color process, in which red, green, and blue are added together to create a broad array of new colors.
SXO
SUPER 8MM & 35MM SLIDE PROJECTION / LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
CHRIS BERNTSEN & NICK KLEIN (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
SXO is a two person audio-visual project using analog still and motion picture projections scored to a live soundtrack. The projection collage is an exploration of intimacy and adventure while living in New York City for some of the year and traveling the rest of it. Lovers, friends, landscapes taken from a car or freight train, the images mesh together with the audio as spontaneously as they are experienced.
52 DIED
16MM SINGLE PROJECTION / LIVE READING
ELISEO ORTIZ (MONTERREY, MEXICO)
In August 25, 2011 a criminal gang set a casino in fire in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. Fifty-two people were trapped inside and died; asphyxiated. News was broadcasted intensively for months and a thorough investigation followed. The only evidence presented was the video footage captured by a surveillance camera. Televisa – which is the biggest television network in Mexico – produced a text based on the video (read live in this performance) that aimed to reconstruct the events. Televisa, pretending to act as an official authority, provided a verdict of what “really” happened. The event was quickly dismissed by the media and became less important in a context of everyday violence. In 2013, the site remains the same, the tragedy is still alive, and the burned building is a reminder of the many deaths related to the absurdity of the Mexican drug war and the cynical pretension of burying history underneath the enunciation of legality. 52 DIED is a portrait of the forgotten site where the event happened.
REDISCOVERING GERMAN FUTURISM 1920-1929
16MM SINGLE PROJECTION / LECTURE AND LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
KURT RALSKE, MIRIAM ATKIN & DANIEL CARTER (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
The Futurist movement, established by Marinetti in 1909, advocated a passion for technology and for fascism. Its direct influence was slight, but its twin obsessions defined the cultural life of pre-WWII Europe. The newly rediscovered films of Eugen Schüfftan, created in the 1920s, reveal the lingering Futurist currents in Weimar Germany. Schüfftan, the cinematographer and special effects artist for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927), developed a complex technique of optical printing. His radically experimental films envision a curious world of machine-time and machine-space.
“REDISCOVERING GERMAN FUTURISM 1920-1929?, a lecture-performance-screening by Kurt Ralske and Miriam Atkin, boldly rewrites history. By presenting new and creative interpretations of the cultural flows of the past, it inquires into our present-day perspectives on technology and power. Schüfftan’s “Der Tod des Faust” (1927) will be accompanied by a live musical score by Daniel Carter (saxophone) and Kurt Ralske (cornet).
MESHES
SUPER 8MM DUAL PROJECTION / LIVE SOUND WITH DANCE PERFORMANCE
LAURA BARTCZAK, PAIGE FREDLUND, & MARK DEMOLAR (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
MESHES explores the functionality of the Super 8mm camera. Through the use of the film speed, light and a body in motion, mundane actions become surreal. Deepening the exploration of the film equipment as well as the chance relationship of a body moving in space, we are attempting to create an environment that saturates the space with a visceral understanding of the medium.
PULL/DRIFT
16MM SINGLE PROJECTION / LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
MARGARET RORISON (BALTIMORE, MARYLAND) & JOSH MILLROD (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
PULL/DRIFT is a live collaboration between filmmaker, Margaret Rorison and musician, Josh Millrod. Rorison has documented a special dance performance choreographed by Clarissa Gregory and performed by The Effervescent Collective on September 8, 2013 in Patapsco State Park, in Baltimore, Maryland. The 16mm footage has been hand edited by Rorison to create a new imaginary narrative. Millrod has created a live soundtrack to accompany the film. This performance is the fourth collaboration between the two artists.
ZEPHYR
16MM MULTI-PROJECTION / LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
SYLVAIN CHAUSSÉE & ADRIAN COOK (TORONTO, CANADA)
ZEPHYR is a Toronto-based performance art duo consisting of filmmaker Sylvain Chaussée and composer Adrian Cook. Through this collaboration they have been exploring the relationship between their mediums. Sound and image, rhythm and movement, colour and tone, cause and effect, are all combined seamlessly within the live performance. Chaussée’s imagery is created through extensive manipulation of 16mm film, involving processing, printing, and projecting. Through composition and ample improvisation, Cook builds sonic atmospheres by carefully layering loops consisting of varying harmonic and rhythmic patterns. Initially a dialogue is created between the two mediums, in which repetition becomes a crucial element contributing to the alteration of the senses. Loops provide the basis for their performances, upon which they develop a synchronous relationship between building and deconstructing the cinematic experience.
DJ SETS
SAL PRINCIPATO / LIQUID LIQUID – (AFTER PARTY) & ALEX MALLIS / DJ STEWEY DECIMAL (INTER-PROGRAM)
Sal Principato is the vocalist for Liquid Liquid, the New York City post-punk, post-disco band, originally active from 1980 to 1983. Since reforming in 2008, the band has played a select number of shows including opening for the LCD Soundsystem farewell show at Madison Square Garden. Sal produces remixes and often tours as a DJ.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker, Alex Mallis, has screened work at IFF Boston, Hot Docs, DOCNYC, and the New Orleans Film Festival. His short SPOILS, a documentary about dumpster diving, won the audience award at the 2013 Northside Film Festival. Saturday night, he will spin vinyl as DJ Stewey Decimal. Do you like red, sparkly shoes? Of course you do. Stewey Decimal is the yellow brick road of deejays.