the wooden lightbox: a secret art of seeing is an exploration and reconfiguration of cinematic apparatus and emulsion. Using the early development of cinema as a marker for cultural, technological and economic change, these film cycles draw from turn of the century cinematic prototypes and long forgotten ideas surrrounding the moving image and its early promise. At the core of this approach is the use of a homebuilt hand-cranked projector in an expanded cinema format to present a striking array of handmade and processed emulsion. The vast potential of the film frame is drawn out through imagery both archaic and contemporary in shape and form. Hypnosis, panorama, motion studies, expectation, magic, the dreamworld and sleight of eye conspire in this intimate and immersive framework.
Performance duration approx 50 min.
"...[Mackenzie's] work often has an otherworldly quality, as if we were seeing images for the first time...his process allows for the re-entry of a sense of wonder, what theorist Walter Benjamin once referred to as the promesse de bonheur, or the utopian promise of technology that can only be reproduced through an artistic reinvestment in the hidden possibilities of a medium. Through his rediscoveries, MacKenzie takes us back to the birth of the moving image..."
Chris Kennedy, Strategies of the Medium III: In the Dark, Toronto (LIFT/Pleasuredome).
Alex MacKenzie has been working as a media artist for over 15 years with a focus on various models of expanded cinema and light projection involving the handmade image. He was the founder and curator of the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, the Blinding Light!! Cinema and the Vancouver Underground Film Festival.
His live media works are presented at festivals and underground screening spaces throughout Europe and North America, most recently at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Lightcone in Paris, Anti-Matter in Victoria, and at Cinecycle through LIFT/Pleasuredome in Toronto.
Alex has worked with a variety of independent film organizations over the past 15 years including Mainfilm, Pacific Cinematheque, Cineworks, and Doxa. He recently completed residencies at Atelier MTK in Grenobles, France and at Struts Gallery/Faucet Media in New Brunswick.
Ferries
19.30; 20.00; 20.30; 21.00; 23.00
