The 1981 performance “Circle and Square” by Takahiko Iimura, New York-based Japanese film and video pioneer, evolved from the artist’s interest in exposing the apparatus of projection and the materiality of image and light begun in the mid-60s. The work commences with the projection of a long loop of black 16mm film leader suspended from the ceiling. The artist punches a hole on the film’s surface and as it loops through the projector’s gate, a single white circle of light pierces the darkness. With each subsequent punch the film builds before the viewer’s eyes into a cascade of white circles before reaching its abrupt and revelatory conclusion.

Microscope Gallery is pleased to announce Dreamlands: Expanded, a series of expanded cinema events organized in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the exhibition "Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016”. The ten event, two-and-a-half month long series complements and extends the scope of the exhibit, from the installation works on the museum’s fifth-floor and the film screening program in its third-floor theater, across the East River to include historical and contemporary performance works that collectively propose alternative ways to perceive, conceive, and consider the image in motion.

Using a single hundred-foot roll of 16mm film to create an unedited camera-roll film -- fresh from the lab and onto the screen -- has a certain appeal to me. Partly it’s the practical aspect of DIY efficacy that comes with circumventing the costly steps of post-production. With editing there is something diluted from this raw power of the pure, unadulterated footage, no matter how masterfully the material is pruned and refashioned. Perhaps the phrase of Allen Ginsberg, Chogyam Trungpa, and others, “First thought, best thought” expresses this energy present in the camera-roll film?