ANIMATED FRAMES - Vol.06: Other Abstractions

ANIMATED FRAMES returns with an eclectic selection of abstract experimental short films by Paul Glabicki, Jennifer Reeves, Yona Friedman, Doris Chase, Len Lye, Sonia Bridge, Alexander Stewart, and Jeff Scher.

With works spanning half a century, this program includes an array of vibrant and vividly textured gems to compliment the culminating centrepiece of the program, Paul Glabicki's staggeringly expansive hand-drawn maximalist minimalist masterpiece, Film-Wipe-Film (1983).

PROGRAM

PARTICLES IN SPACE
Len Lye | 1979 | USA / New Zealand | b&w | 4 minutes

Particles In Space is concerned with the energy of movement - of shaping light in darkness, by scratching on the film surface. In this film, Len Lye focuses on "a smaller, more compact zizz of energy than I'd ever got before on film." — Lightcone

ERRATA
Alexander Stewart | 2005 | USA | colour | 5 minutes

An experimental film that uses a photocopier to generate frames of animation. Each frame of the film is a photocopy of the previous frame. Both black & white and color photocopies were used to make this film, approximately 4,600 copies total. — A.S.

ETCETERA
Yona Friedman | 1964 | France | b&w | 6 minutes

Made in collaboration with American abstract artist Jesse Reichek (1916-2005) utilizing drawings from his publication of the same title.

CIRCLES I
Doris Chase | 1971 | USA | colour | 7 minutes

Computer-generated circles revolve in, around, and through each other, float off like loosened coils, and evolve into whirling spheres. The pale colors of the circles multiply into brilliant hues against a stark musical accompaniment which evokes the sounds of endlessly bouncing springs. — Film-makers' Co-op

COLOR NEUTRAL
Jennifer Reeves | 2014 | USA | colour | 3 minutes

A color explosion sparkles, bubbles and fractures in this hand-crafted 16mm film. Reeves utilized an array of mediums and direct-on-film techniques to create this boisterous, psychedelic morsel of cinema as material. Reeves' soundtrack mixes samples from rusty, dusty old machines, records and electric waves to suggest an aural passage through technological progress. — J.R.

JETSAM
Sonia Bridge | 2002 | UK | b&w | 2 minutes

An exaltation of the everyday, made using the photogram technique of exposing objects directly onto film; Wire mesh, fibrefill, salt, paper, steel wool, cherry blossoms, grease, spit, bubble wrap, tea leaves, washer rings and a drain-stopper chain are transformed in the process. — S.B.

FILM-WIPE-FILM
Paul Glabicki | 1983 | USA | colour | 28 minutes

The film is a journal (drawn by hand over a period of four years), opera, and journey through 100 animated sequences which are joined and transformed by 100 film wipes in continuous successsion. The film is a synthesis of both abstract and figurative imagery, analysis and commentary, writing and multiple languages, multi-layered sounds and music, lyrical and contrapuntal relationships, and elaborate animated compositions. This film is not computer generated or assisted in any way. — P.G.

TURKISH TRAFFIC
Jeff Scher | 1997 | USA | colour | 3 minutes

Hand painted 16mm film. I used the positive and a negative of a test I made of animated wipes. The lab printed them together. I had the opportunity to show it Stan Brakhage once, and he laughed all the way through it. — J.S.

Artist Bios

Len Lye (1901-1980) is arguably New Zealand’s most celebrated expatriate artist. His reputation stands primarily on his achievements as a film-maker and kinetic sculptor. In the 1930s, Lye became well known for his pioneering work in ‘direct’ or camera-less filmmaking. To produce abstract animation Lye painted and scratched the film itself, and experimented with innovative early techniques of colour processing.

Alexander Stewart (b. 1981) received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His short films have have screened internationally and in 2010 he co-founded (and curates) the annual Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. He resides in Los Angeles and is the director of the Experimental Animation program at CalArts.

Yona Friedman (1923-2020) was a Hungarian-born architect and urban planner who developed theoretical housing and utopian infrastructure ideas. In the late 1950's he authored a manifesto about 'Mobile Architecture' & 'The Spatial City', eventually working with The United Nations to offer self-building manuals in underdeveloped nations.

Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) was an American painter, teacher and sculptor but is best remembered for pioneering in the production of key works in the history of video art. She was a member of the Northwest School of artists in Seattle before moving to New York City in 1972 where, at the encouragement of Nam June Paik, she began exploring the possibilities of video technology.

Jennifer Reeves (b. 1971, Sri Lanka) is a New York-based filmmaker who works primarily on 16mm film. Her subjective and personal films push the boundaries of film through optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques including hand-painting film frames. Reeves has explored themes of memory, mental health and recovery, feminism, sexuality, landscape, music, and politics in her films since the early 1990's.

Sonia Bridge is a Canadian artist based in the U.K. She graduated in 2002 with a degree in animation from The Slade School of Fine Art school in London. Previously she had studied film, video and animation in Vancouver.

Paul Glabicki's (b. 1951) career and creative work have been characterized by highly interdisciplinary activity centered in painting, drawing, and filmmaking, and extending into photography, installation art, video art, sound, and electronic media. Much of his work has been involved with issues of time, motion (actual or implied), temporal experience, perception, analytical observation, thresholds of figurative and abstract representation, language systems and semiotics, methods of analysis and interpretation, and transformation of found images or actual sites.

Jeff Scher (b.1954) is a painter who makes experimental films and an experimental filmmaker who paints. In addition to dozens of independently made shorts, his work has been commissioned for The New York Times, HBO, PBS, IFC, The New Yorker, and he has done music videos for Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Paul Simon and others. He teaches graduate courses at the School of Visual Arts and at NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Kanbar Institute of Film & Television's Animation program.

This program is supported in part by the London Arts Council through the City of London’s Community Arts Investment Program.