Bodies in Space: Recent 16mm Works

November 13, 2018 · UT Art + Architecture Room 109 · 7:00 p.m.

Please join us for this rare program of films, presented by the artists, who are visiting from Australia. The exact program for our screenings is still to be determined.

Blending and Blinding

Richard Tuohy, 11 minutes, 16mm, 2018

Screens and partitions; windows and shutters; grids, curves and arches. Three peoples, one country: Malaysia.

Blue Line Chicago

Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, 10 min, 16mm, 2014

Architectural abstractions of the second city.

Pancoran

Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, 9 minutes, 16mm, 2017

Jakarta traffic moves with the harmonious chaos of complex self organising entities everywhere. Through contact printer matteing techniques this mass transport becomes denser and denser until only the fluid futility of motion/motionlessness remains. Jakarta traffic stands as proof of the paradox of motion.

Crossing

Richard Tuohy, 11 minutes, 16mm, 2016

Across the sea. Across the street. Cross processed and grain enlarged images of fraught neighbours Korea and Japan in a pointillist sea of grain.

Last Train

Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy, 12 minutes, 16mm, 2016

Found in the (now possibly lost) film archive at Lab Laba Laba, footage from a trailer for the 1981 Indonesian propaganda film ‘Kereta Api Terakhir’ (The Last Train) melts into a soup of chemigrammed perforations. A film about the silence that follows the unspeakable; about blurred visions, untold histories and inaccessible archives.

China not China

Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, 14 minutes, 16mm, 2018

Hong Kong marked 20 years since its hand over; half way through the planned 40 year ‘one country, two systems’ transition. Taiwan, once imperial China, once Formosa, now ROC on the edge of the PRC. Multiple exposures of street scenes distort space and place creating a fluid sense of impermanence and transition, of two states somewhere between China and not China.

Dot Matrix

Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, 22 minutes, 16mm x 2, 2013

Dot Matrix is dual 16mm projector expanded cinema film involving two almost completely overlapping projected images. The ‘dots’ were produced by laying sheets of half-tone ‘dot’ paper (which are used in manga illustrations) directly onto raw 16mm film stock, exposing the film through the paper with a flash-light and thus photographically transferring the dot images onto the film. These dots were then contacted printed with ‘flicker’ (alternating black frames) creating strobing ‘interuptions’ to the dots. The drama of the film emerges in the overlap of the two projected images of dots. The product they make is greater than the parts. The sounds heard are those that the dots themselves produce as they pass over the sound head.

About the Filmmakers

Richard Tuohy began making works on super 8 in the late-1980s. After a brief hiatus from cinema, he returned to filmmaking in 2004 and the next five years saw an extremely productive period with dozens of experiments and works finished in the small gauge. Dianna Barrie found her way into filmmaking as a middle ground between the pursuit of abstract music and philosophy, both of which she has studied formally at the post graduate level.

In 2006 Richard and Dianna launched nanolab, a super 8 film processing laboratory based at their home in Daylesford Victoria, Australia. The lab afforded the opportunity to set up darkrooms and install 16mm film processing and most importantly printing and sound recording equipment. Since 2009 they have been active and vocal members of the international artist run film lab scene. In 2011 Richard and Dianna started the Artist Film Workshop, which in 2012 became a membership-based, artist-run film lab, itself also part of the international labs network. AFW has become the center of experimental film practice on film in Australia, being the focus for regular experimental film screenings, touring artists programs, workshops and supporting numerous artists in their personal film practice.

An advocate for the possibilities of hand made cinema, Tuohy has devoted much time and effort in sharing his knowledge through workshops and classes both in his native Australia and internationally. His films and film-based performances have screened at venues including the Melbourne IFF, EMAF (Osnabruck), Rotterdam IFF, New York FF, Ann Arbor, and Media City, and he has repeatedly toured Europe, North America, and Asia presenting solo programs of his work and conducting experimental film-making workshops. He is the instigator of the AFW magazine Film Is and, along with Dianna Barrie and Sue K, was also a co-founder of the AIEFF experimental film festival in Melbourne.

Dianna’s film work could perhaps be characterised as ‘direct chemical’ filmmaking.  Works generally begin with some form of camera image capture.  This is followed by interventions during hand processing and exacting editing and/or printing processes;  they are then completed with simple layered sound constructions.