Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection:

by Joachim Jager, Christopher Eamon, Anette Husch (Editor)

Wherever we go, we are surrounded by moving images. In art as in daily life, they have long since developed a life "beyond the cinema," scuttling the conventions of dark auditoriums for images projected onto walls, staged in specially-designed environments, and aggregated in multiples. Beyond Cinema centers around approximately 25 important film and video works, primarily the major installations of the 1990s, including the ravishing projections of Pipilotti Rist, the existentialist image of the body put forward by Bruce Nauman, the psychologically charged filmic spaces of Eija-Liisa Ahtila and the highly conceptual installations of Rodney Graham. Each elaborates on notions of the projected image that were developed in the 1960s, and groundbreaking works from Marcel Broodthaers, Dan Graham and Valie Export are presented to contextualize investigations of identity and body image, film cooperatives, representations of time and other topics.

152 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2007

Reviews

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's an astounding amount of 16mm projection in this super-large scale exhibit of film and video art curated by Chris Eamon and Stan Douglas for the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin. Needless to say these two really know their stuff. But I think the catalogue could have benefited from some more extensive writing and MUCH better design. Not nearly as good of a resource as Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art, 1964-1977.

I was lucky enough to land in Berlin during the time of this show, so I did get to see it in person. The big excitement was the amount of 16mm projection in the show; always exciting. The letdown was that all but a couple of the 16mm projections looked like garbage compared to the treatment the video pieces were getting. Of course one of those pieces was Stan Douglas'. I tried to confront Chris Eamon about this when he was in Toronto this spring to which he replied, "Yeah, everyone notices that...." Sigh.