Tuesday 14 July at 7pm
Institute of Modern Art

Simmer, Various, 1971-2023, 66m
Container x IMA
Free Screening. Please register here with the IMA as space is limited.

A two-part program of experimental shorts  bound by their distinctive use of patterning around control and release. Nishikawa’s Light, Night, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke re-assembles the climax of a firework show according to an alternative audio pattern that keep the film in a glowering state just below the threshold of boiling over. Conversely, Serra’s Paul Revere attenuates communication down to an on/off binary before gradually expanding options until a language fit for revolution is developed.

Pt1
Seasons/Patterns – James Edmonds (2020, 10m)
The flesh of time, strands of the present, in constant becoming and disappearance. One reel for each season, exposed between 2016 and 2017. Leitmotifs of flora, providing some unity within each season, as a reflection on its atmosphere and passing presence.

Light, Night, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke – Tomonari Nishikawa (2023, 6m)
Fireworks were shot at a summer festival in Japan with a Super 16 format camera in order to obtain images on the optical soundtrack area on the filmstrip. The position of the photocell to read the visual information on the optical soundtrack area in a 16mm film projector is 26 frames in advance of the position of the gate to project the image. Each footage from 2 rolls of 16mm film were cut into shots of 26 frames each, and the shots were alternated from one roll to another, which would further separate the sound and visual, while producing a distinct rhythm throughout the film.

Elizabeth Price – The Woolworths Choir of 1979  (2012, 20m)
Concerned with processes of assembly, Choir brings together disparate bodies of material and archival technologies into dissonant concert. It is a work of several parts. Part one constructs an auditorium in which an action will be staged. Part two assembles the chorus to narrate the action. Part three supplies the action.

Pt2
Paul Revere – Richard Serra with Joan Jonas (1971, 7m)
Using an historical lantern-communication system based on light and sound signals, the film addresses fundamental problems and questions of nonverbal information exchange. Working with Joan Jonas, Serra discusses the phrase “One, if by land, and two, if by sea,” the secret signal used by the freedom fighter Paul Revere and other patriots during the American Civil War (1875–1883) to let people know whether British troops were approaching by land or by sea. Paul Revere is an adaptation from two sources: Kinesics and Context (1970), by Ray L. Birdwhistell and a performance, Choreomania (1971), by Joan Jonas.

Light Signal – Emily Chao (2022, 11m)
A keeper’s log, a score for light, a script for sound. A reconstruction, a slow reclamation. To begin where there is light.

Green Ash – Pablo Mazzolo (2019, 12m)
The Hênia/Kâmîare aboriginals inhabited the current territory of the Sierras de Córdoba (Argentina) for at least 1600 years. In 1575, the resistance led by cacique Onga was cornered and defeated by the conquering Spanish troops.
After resisting the Spanish in the Charalqueta mountain (named after the God of Joy), hundreds of Hênia-Kâmîare women, children and elders jumped off the top of the Colchoquí mountain in order to avoid being enslaved. The Charalqueta mountain was renamed as Colchiqui (after the God of Fate and Sadness). This was the biggest collective suicide in the territory currently known as Argentina.

Unrated 15+ and presented in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art.

With thanks to James Edmonds, Emily Chao, Pablo Mazzolo, Light Cone, LUX, Electronic Arts Intermix, and the Richard Serra Studio.

Paul Revere © Estate of Richard Serra. Richard Serra’s films and videos are in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.