SYNTAX ROOT: LOOP

OPENING NIGHT TALK BY MAXA ZOLLER
17TH JUNE 2005

Some thoughts on:
Rick Silva's 'Supercollider' and Mark Amerika's 'Codework' in the light of the historical film avant-garde.

In Rick Silva's Supercollider the quick succession of different shots of an interior create an explosion of perspectives a bit like a filmic version of a cubist painting. His non-linear editing method generates a sculptural quality: it illustrates the motto of this exhibition: from temporal montage to spatial montage. But I mean 'spatial' not in the way Lev Manovich talks about it - the digital combination of things within the image - but I am talking about the three-dimensional impression the moving images are giving us, which recalls the expanded cinema work of the late 60s and early 70s. Especially the work of the London Filmmakers' Coop were concerned with expanding the flat cinematic image into the third dimension. I am especially thinking of William Raban's Angles of Incidence from 1973 where quick shots of an interior create a dynamic sculptural spatial impression.