Your eyes are spectral machines: Luis Macías
’24
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
The eyes empty and the pupils burning of rage and desire © Tomas Terekas
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
‘Your eyes are spectral machines’ is a film program presented by the filmmaker Luis Macías about the exploration, manipulation and variation of an image and its absence. He investigates the concept of what he calls ‘spectral cinema’ through each of the different components of the film spectrum.
Luis Macías (1976, Barcelona) is an artist, filmmaker and image composer. His pieces deal with the formal and spectral properties of the moving image, through the exploration of the cinematographic device itself and the photochemical nature of the medium. His works in Super 8, 16mm, 35mm or video format are composed for projection, performance or installation and have been shown in prestigious film, art and music festivals as well as art centers, museums and alternative spaces around the world. He’s the co-founder and an active member of Crater-Lab, an independent laboratory for analog cinema in Barcelona.
Program & introduction: Luis Macías
Followed by a Q&A between Luis Macías and OFFoff coordinator Ruben Demasure
Luis Macías
Spectral Landscape
Expanded cinema performance, 3 x 35mm modified slide projectors + external shutter
A Landscape. Without color and movement. Only a Landscape.
“At that beautiful moment between reality and dreaming, an incorporeal animal emerges from the darkness and light. Dark, violent and self-assured, it shares its fears of nature’s despair. But don’t be afraid – it’s an animal just like you. Did you see it? Wake up and open your eyes”
Spectral Landscape is an intermittent, subtle and violent performance with several modified slide projectors that explores the image of nature and how it is revealed to us.
Sound by Alfredo Costa Monteiro
Spectral Landscape © Luis Macías
Luis Macías
The Kiss
Based on the film The Kiss (Thomas Edison, 1896) in its original 35mm format, this video-film project is based on a structural re-shooting and re-recording of the original film in all the existing formats – analog, electronic and digital – in an evolutive form. The film is a reiteration of the act of kissing. The emphasis on the kiss, repeated and multiplied, while deteriorated in its own progress. The history of the evolution of formats through a kiss. An intimate and aesthetic relationship between media and audiovisual formats.
The film is (re-)shot in 23 analogic, electronic and digital formats: 35mm, 16mm, 9,5mm, super8, Pulgada C, Betacam Sp, Umatic, Betamax, Betacam Digital, VHS, Video 2000, Video 8, Dv, DvCam, Hdv, HD, Cassette Fisher Price, Movil, Web Cam, GoPro 3D, 2K, 4K, 35mm cinematograph Lumière.
The Kiss © Luis Macías
Luis Macías
The Eyes Empty and the Pupils Burning of Rage and Desire
Without image. Without sound. Without description.
The eyes empty and the pupils burning of rage and desire begins with the absence of an image that is its own destruction and builds a particular organic universe that is slowly emerging from a relation of excitement and love between the emulsion and the projector.
Your eyes empty and the pupils burning of rage and desire © Luis Macías
Luis Macías performing Spectral Landscape
Your eyes empty and the pupils burning of rage and desire © Luis Macías
