about the art
This month we’re exploring themes of erasure and preservation using 16mm film as a raw material with a sound film by composer-performer Zachary James Watkins and filmmaker Alix Blevins, partnered with Sabrina Gschwandtner’s mail art.
Zachary and Alix’s film, Trace Layer, features 16mm projection of film loops with improvised guitar and electronics. The looping film segments reveal subtle details in the image’s film grain and exposure that Alix degrades by scraping away the image with sandpaper. In duet with the film, Zachary responds to the film loop’s imagery and to the resonance of the space. In his words, "vibration is at the core of my experience of Resonance. I am moved by natural resonances that exist all around us."
Sabrina’s mail art, Camouflage II, is made from 16 mm films that were de-accessioned from the Fashion Institute of Technology. The movies’ subject matter — mostly that of women creating textiles — had been deemed unworthy of archiving. In an act meant to recast the undervalued histories of women’s handcraft work and celebrate the film medium, Sabrina cut and sewed lengths of these films together into a quilt.