Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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Inspired by a new video from visually impaired artist Lorne Marin (his first moving-image work in over 30 years), this program envisions the act of film/video-making as an attempt to trace that which can no longer be seen. These artists explore the image’s transformation as it passes from the immediacy of seeing to the cages of memory, manipulating materials in ways that directly or indirectly evoke an array of perceptual aberrations. From common chemical reactions to encroaching blindness, these interferences remind us of the lamentable fragility of our sight. But they also reinforce the mind’s ability to capture fleeting visions that, though long lost, may never be forgotten.

Curated by Samuel La France

Programme:
- Favorite Sounds (Tony Schwartz, USA, 1963, 4 mins, Digitized 7’’ tape)
Sound documentarian and public health advocate Tony Schwartz invites members of the Jewish Guild for the Blind to describe their favorite sounds.

- alexia (Tran T. Kim-Trang, USA, 2000, 10 mins, Video)
alexia is an experimental video about word blindness and metaphor. Divided into five short sections, the tape draws a pattern with the motif of the finger and the moon to ruminate on language and blindness.

- SEE/SAW (Charlie Egleston, Canada, 2010, 5 mins, 16mm)
A film about seeing and having seen. Completely hand-processed and painstakingly edited, SEE/SAW is comprised of a series of iris fades—commonly found in silent films to signal the beginning or end of a scene—re-appropriated as a formal approach that frames the desire to see and to remember.

- Snowblind (Hollis Frampton, USA, 1968, 5 mins, 16mm)
An homage to Michael Snow’s sculpture Blind. “Another comparison, suggested by the title and effected in stages by the panels, is to progressive loss of vision. This might be a biographical reading, related to Snow’s father, but it also reflects the artist’s sensitivity, his awareness of vision in relation to the other senses (other media). And this is not all, for “blind” can mean other things besides the physiological.” – Martha Langford

- Berlin Tiger (Shiloh Cinquemani, USA, 2012, 3 mins, 16mm)
“I can still make out certain colors; I can still see blue and green. And yellow, in particular, has remained faithful to me. I remember when I was young I used to linger in front of certain cages in the Palermo zoo: the cages of the tigers and leopards. I lingered before the tigers’ gold and black. Yellow is still with me, even now.” – Jorge Luis Borges

- Wolkenschatten (Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, 2014, 17 mins, 16mm on Video)
In 1984, for three weeks in May, what appeared to be a giant cloud shrouded the small town of Hüllen-Hüllen in darkness. Before the end of the month the cloud had dispersed and life seemed to return to normal. One month later, however, the town was hastily abandoned and its residents were nowhere to be found. They left most of their belongings behind in such a way as to make one think they would return at any moment…

- Sugar Beach (Mark Loeser, Canada, 2011, 4 mins, 35mm)
Drifting fragments attempt to reconstitute a whole.

- Sight (Thirza Cuthand, Canada, 2012, 3 mins, Video)
Super 8 footage layered with Sharpie marked lines and circles obscuring the image illustrates the story of the filmmaker’s experience with temporary episodes of migraine related blindness and her cousin’s self induced blindness later in life. Paralleling the experience of Blindness with Mental Illness, Cuthand deftly elucidates that any of us could lose any of our abilities at any time.

- David: Then & Now & Again (Lorne Marin, Canada, 2006-2015, 10 mins, Video)
A series of bodies, at a decade’s remove. After the work of Micah Lexier through “Portrait of David” and “David Then & Now”.

Venue: 

Cinecycle - Toronto, Canada

Dates: 

Saturday, November 28, 2015 - 20:00 to Sunday, November 29, 2015 - 19:55

Category: 

Dates: 

Saturday, November 28, 2015 - 20:00 to Sunday, November 29, 2015 - 19:55

Venue: 

  • 129 Spadina Avenue
    M5V 2L3   Toronto, Ontario
    Canada
    43° 38' 50.838" N, 79° 23' 43.3464" W