Excerpt: What Is Nothing (After What Is Nothing) Studio Version
9X16mm Optically Printed to HD Video, HD Video, Sound, 10min 2021
Using found educational films, direct laser-animation, and nine-projectors, I attempt to realize the multifaceted materiality of nothingness through the eyes of those who may be the most vulnerable to the void. Still and moving media have doubled for the human body since its invention. By following through on the logic that media is body/human/person/material: outdated found footage becomes media cadaver to exhume, examine, and reanimate; 9X16mm grid performs a real-time exercise in crafting a personal narrative within the limitations of our physical selves. With both found and original media, I pursue material of resiliency, loss, and control. What Is Nothing (After What Is Nothing) addresses trauma and institutional betrayal. A recorded performance was referenced in constructing the “Studio Version” of the project, which began (and continues) as a nine-projector expanded cinema piece. This version maintains the real-time relationship between body, projector, and film by using the exact timing necessary to change over the loops and cores within the constructed projector grid. The distress of years of film performances, captured by digital optical printing.
Screening History
2023 50th Athens International Film + Video Festival, internationally adjudicated, Athens, OH
2022 Bodies for Power and Strength media performance by Kristin Reeves, invited solo/feature-length program and festival headliner, The Engauge Film Festival, Seattle, WA.
2022 Dresdner Schmalfilmtage 5th INTERNATIONAL FOUND FOOTAGE COMPETITION, Dresden, Germany
2021 Harkat 16mm Film Festival, internationally adjudication, Mumbai, India
2021 Octopus Marquee Independent Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, online event
2021 Engauge Experimental Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Seattle, WA
2021 Antimatter [Media Art], internationally adjudicated, Victoria, BC