Baltic Analog Lab invites for an expanded cinema evening with our special guest from Canada – Alex MacKenzie who will present expaned cinema program “Experiments For a Single Projector” using 16mm film projector for six expanded cinema performances.

“Experiments For A Single Projector” explores the potential of the 16mm film projection apparatus. Amplifying the possibilities of this refined and precise tool, this suite of expanded and performed works uses the mechanism to its fullest potential; manipulating, modifying and enhancing various aspects of its functionality. Found footage, painted filmstrips and light are transformed with beam interference, bipacked looping, focus, lens and shutter alterations to create radically transformed and dreamlike spaces—epic, immersive, and abstracted. The results shimmer across the screen, uniting “the cosmic with the microscopic...in an ecstatic splendour of light” (Marilyn Brakhage).

Alex MacKenzie is a Canadian west-coast based media artist, designer, teacher, curator and writer, primarily focused on analog film and the hand-processed image. He creates works of expanded cinema, light projection installation, and projector performance. His films and performances have been presented at festivals, art galleries and underground spaces worldwide including Rotterdam, Oberhausen, EXiS (Seoul), Lightcone (Paris), Kino Arsenal (Berlin), LA Film Forum, San Francisco Exploratorium, Shapeshifters (Oakland),

Microscope Gallery (New York), Centro de Cultura CDMX, Western Front Vancouver, Winnipeg Cinematheque, Pleasuredome Toronto, Cinematheque Quebecois, and many others.

Our days are numbered (6 mins )
Black and white leader pulses inside and outside of the projector, snaking across the screen and counting down to its own reappearance.

Phosphene (12 mins)
A single painted film loop in tandem with carefully orchestrated lens interference induces a variation on closed-eye vision and non-light hallucination: a subtly immersive and sublime sculpting of light.

Mall Emotions (13 mins)
Two magenta loops from a vintage french film promoting early shopping mall culture are bi-packed and manipulated beyond the lens, creating a dreamlike dimensional space whose shadowed figure tries to find a way out of the delusion of capital. Audio by Clare Kenny (Eyelickers, Giantess, Skiimask, What’s Hot, Electrosonics).

Inogon Light (6 mins)
Inogon lights are shoreside beacons, wherein a moiré effect creates arrows that point towards an imaginary line marking a hazard or line of safe passage; as navigators pass over the line, the arrows on the beacon appear to become vertical bands before changing back to arrows pointing in the reverse direction.

One in Five (10 mins)
A repurposing of the opening moments of an NFB classic addressing poverty in Canada: faces explode, melt, blur and flash; dreams and nightmares unravel, eyes look but can’t see, lives are ruptured.

Granular Flight (15 mins)
A short 16mm found film is radically transformed live using an analog variation on pixel stretching to build washes of colour and depth in tandem with a kindred technique (granular synthesis) supplying the soundtrack to this new way of seeing. An epic, immersive, and abstracted colourfield film performance. Audio by Stephen Wood (Multiplex Grand, Kensington Gore, The Battles, Destroyer)

Free Entry

Bring your own drinks and snacks for sharing