Situated Cinema

By Andrew Frost

What do we even call it now? The movies? Cinema? Certainly the term ‘film’ is defunct with every commercial cinema in Australia now converted to digital presentation, the projectionists long gone and the entire apparatus of presentation controlled by a ‘play’ button located on a touchscreen operated by teenage candy bar staff. In contemporary theatrical presentations only the broad format remains, a format as old as the medium: a group of people sitting together in a darkened space enjoying a communal viewing experience.

Canadian duo Solomon Nagler and Alexandre Larose seek to revisit the analogue format of film presentation in its most basic form for their installation Situated Cinema at Artspace. The duo have previously worked with found footage gleaned from archives and represented them in experimental formats. For Situated Cinema the duo use 16mm and Super 8 film and projectors to illuminate the space with suitably spooky found materials which they claim will deconstruct “…traditional modes of cinematic experience by introducing new forms of spectatorship formed through the intermingling of the experience of the gallery and the relative intimacy of film.” As to whether they will also reveal “…that which is so frequently obscured and often fetishized” or enjoy a nostalgic revisiting of old world cinema remains to be seen.

Until March 8

Artspace, Woolloomooloo

Pic: Solomon Nagler and Alexandre Larose, Situated Cinema, 2013, artists’ original source material, courtesy of the artists.