Rotations
16mm black and white film, silent, 3 minutes
2014
Rotations
Lorna Bauer & Jon Knowles
Dazibao, Montréal
May 29–July 12, 2014
Lorna Bauer & Jon Knowles
Dazibao, Montréal
May 29–July 12, 2014
⤹ Ciel Variable Review
by Charles Guilbert (No. 98, "Abstraction" 2014), for
⇋ Rotations
at Dazibao (Montréal)
by Charles Guilbert (No. 98, "Abstraction" 2014), for
⇋ Rotations
at Dazibao (Montréal)
As individual artists with distinct but complementary approaches, we have produced a collaborative exhibition that investigates the institutions of lens based practices and their depictive qualities as carriers of visual information about other media.
The project—a highly staged film with a counterpart series of photographs and slides—is an object study through a mise-en-scene that observes the gestures and topologies involved in two clearly delineated practices: film-making and pottery.
This materialist investigation occurs through deploying various visual languages and filmic conventions: high resolution art video (understood more precisely here as a meditation on the "persistence of vision"), 1970's era structural filmmaking and mid-century cinema vérité. Ultimately the intention behind this refractory collision of strategies and methods is for the distinction between the subject and object to be re-shuffled and obscured.
The tenor of the exhibition is a 16mm film made according to the structural school of experimental cinema. The practitioners of structural film removed expressive content and used predetermined devices and techniques to demystify the film process. This film consists of a recording in real time of the movement of a potter's wheel and the rhythmic throwing of a vessel on the pottery wheel. The film slowly zooms out while revealing the modeling process of a large bowl. This emphasizes the relationship between the two co-existing circular movements present upon the presentation/exhibition of the film, one from the spinning of the potters wheel (at a horizontal axes but captured on film from the vantage point of a "bird's eye view") and the second from the spinning of the film through the film camera and in-tern, the projector (both at a vertical axes) in its current presentation form. Incidentally, the amount of time it takes for an experienced ceramicist to throw a modest vessel nearly equals the amount of time allocated for a single film reel of 100 feet. The looping swirl motif relate also to other pre-structural films, such as Duchamp's "anemic" movies also known as the 1935 rotoreliefs—produced by his alter ego Rrose Selavy—which were made to be sold as graphic inventions at a tradefair, and as the story goes, resulted at the time as a complete financial failure.
In the HD video, for observational clarity, we have utilized the filmic convention of cinema-vérité, or its Quebec cousin, the cinema-direct method for capturing several hours of raw footage. This method traditionally involves a high shooting ratio (80:1) to then be sculpted into a series of small video capsules, and used to convey a hightened sense of reality and so-called "truth content". From the HD footage, we have elected to drop everything save for a brief scan of the De Gaspe building (captured during a break on the day of the 16mm film shoot) and a close up of a hunk of wet clay.
Though clay and its craft variants seem at the moment to be partaking in a renaissance within the contemporary art field—as well as the frequently rehearsed dichotomy of skilling vs de-skilling—we firmly situate their exhibit as a refusal to make the false choice between skill and de-skill. Here, we are asserting the necessity of both an oblique and close up view of the world.
Bio
Jon Knowles and Lorna Bauer are artists.
The project—a highly staged film with a counterpart series of photographs and slides—is an object study through a mise-en-scene that observes the gestures and topologies involved in two clearly delineated practices: film-making and pottery.
This materialist investigation occurs through deploying various visual languages and filmic conventions: high resolution art video (understood more precisely here as a meditation on the "persistence of vision"), 1970's era structural filmmaking and mid-century cinema vérité. Ultimately the intention behind this refractory collision of strategies and methods is for the distinction between the subject and object to be re-shuffled and obscured.
The tenor of the exhibition is a 16mm film made according to the structural school of experimental cinema. The practitioners of structural film removed expressive content and used predetermined devices and techniques to demystify the film process. This film consists of a recording in real time of the movement of a potter's wheel and the rhythmic throwing of a vessel on the pottery wheel. The film slowly zooms out while revealing the modeling process of a large bowl. This emphasizes the relationship between the two co-existing circular movements present upon the presentation/exhibition of the film, one from the spinning of the potters wheel (at a horizontal axes but captured on film from the vantage point of a "bird's eye view") and the second from the spinning of the film through the film camera and in-tern, the projector (both at a vertical axes) in its current presentation form. Incidentally, the amount of time it takes for an experienced ceramicist to throw a modest vessel nearly equals the amount of time allocated for a single film reel of 100 feet. The looping swirl motif relate also to other pre-structural films, such as Duchamp's "anemic" movies also known as the 1935 rotoreliefs—produced by his alter ego Rrose Selavy—which were made to be sold as graphic inventions at a tradefair, and as the story goes, resulted at the time as a complete financial failure.
In the HD video, for observational clarity, we have utilized the filmic convention of cinema-vérité, or its Quebec cousin, the cinema-direct method for capturing several hours of raw footage. This method traditionally involves a high shooting ratio (80:1) to then be sculpted into a series of small video capsules, and used to convey a hightened sense of reality and so-called "truth content". From the HD footage, we have elected to drop everything save for a brief scan of the De Gaspe building (captured during a break on the day of the 16mm film shoot) and a close up of a hunk of wet clay.
Though clay and its craft variants seem at the moment to be partaking in a renaissance within the contemporary art field—as well as the frequently rehearsed dichotomy of skilling vs de-skilling—we firmly situate their exhibit as a refusal to make the false choice between skill and de-skill. Here, we are asserting the necessity of both an oblique and close up view of the world.
Bio
Jon Knowles and Lorna Bauer are artists.
Image Captions
Rotations
16mm black and white film, silent, 3 minutes
2014
Rotations (film still)
16mm black and white film, silent, 3 minutes
2014
Learning #1
Black and white digital inkjet print
16" x 20", 2014
Learning #2
Black and white digital inkjet print
16" x 20", 2014
Professional Development
4 vinyl digital inkjet prints on copper pipe
1" x 1" x 64" each
2014
Professional Development (detail)
4 vinyl digital inkjet prints on copper pipe
1" x 1" x 64" each
2014
Professional Development
4 vinyl digital inkjet prints on copper pipe
1" x 1" x 64" each
2014
Professional Development (detail)
4 vinyl digital inkjet prints on copper pipe
1" x 1" x 64" each
2014
Continuing Education #1
Digital inkjet print
30" x 40"
2014
Continuing Education #2
Digital inkjet print
30" x 40"
2014
Installation View
Film/Unfilm
Eighty 35mm colour slide projections & Eighty 35mm negative colour slide projections
2014
Film/Unfilm
Eighty 35mm colour slide projections & Eighty 35mm negative colour slide projections
2014
Film/Unfilm
Eighty 35mm colour slide projections & Eighty 35mm negative colour slide projections
2014
Clay #1
Black and white digital inkjet print
16" x 20"
2014
Clay #2
Black and white digital inkjet print
16" x 20"
2014
RENT(Installation View)
Digital inkjet print
2" x 96"
2014
RENT(installation View)
Digital inkjet print
2" x 96"
2014
RENT
Digital inkjet print
2" x 96"
2014
⤹ Information
As individual artists with distinct but complementary approaches, we have produced a collaborative exhibition that investigates the institutions of lens based practices and their depictive qualities as carriers of visual information about other media.
The project—a highly staged film with a counterpart series of photographs and slides—is an object study through a mise-en-scene that observes the gestures and topologies involved in two clearly delineated practices: film-making and pottery.
This materialist investigation occurs through deploying various visual languages and filmic conventions: high resolution art video (understood more precisely here as a meditation on the "persistence of vision"), 1970's era structural filmmaking and mid-century cinema vérité. Ultimately the intention behind this refractory collision of strategies and methods is for the distinction between the subject and object to be re-shuffled and obscured.
The tenor of the exhibition is a 16mm film made according to the structural school of experimental cinema. The practitioners of structural film removed expressive content and used predetermined devices and techniques to demystify the film process. This film consists of a recording in real time of the movement of a potter's wheel and the rhythmic throwing of a vessel on the pottery wheel. The film slowly zooms out while revealing the modeling process of a large bowl. This emphasizes the relationship between the two co-existing circular movements present upon the presentation/exhibition of the film, one from the spinning of the potters wheel (at a horizontal axes but captured on film from the vantage point of a "bird's eye view") and the second from the spinning of the film through the film camera and in-tern, the projector (both at a vertical axes) in its current presentation form. Incidentally, the amount of time it takes for an experienced ceramicist to throw a modest vessel nearly equals the amount of time allocated for a single film reel of 100 feet.
The looping swirl motif relate also to other pre-structural films, such as Duchamp's "anemic" movies also known as the 1935 rotoreliefs—produced by his alter ego Rrose Selavy—which were made to be sold as graphic inventions at a tradefair, and as the story goes, resulted at the time as a complete financial failure.
In the HD video, for observational clarity, we have utilized the filmic convention of cinema-vérité, or its Quebec cousin, the cinema-direct method for capturing several hours of raw footage. This method traditionally involves a high shooting ratio (80:1) to then be sculpted into a series of small video capsules, and used to convey a hightened sense of reality and so-called "truth content". From the HD footage, we have elected to drop everything save for a brief scan of the De Gaspe building (captured during a break on the day of the 16mm film shoot) and a close up of a hunk of wet clay.
Though clay and its craft variants seem at the moment to be partaking in a renaissance within the contemporary art field—as well as the frequently rehearsed dichotomy of skilling vs de-skilling—we firmly situate their exhibit as a refusal to make the false choice between skill and de-skill. Here, we are asserting the necessity of both an oblique and close up view of the world.
Bio
Jon Knowles and Lorna Bauer are artists.