Rosa Barba, Printed Cinema. Irregular periodical issues, first published October 2004. 22.5 x 27cm, English. Sequence composed by the artist for More Milk Yvette, October 2008.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The publication project Printed Cinema - ten irregular periodical issues - continues my audiovisual work as a personal reflection on the essence of the cinematographic: images are merely articulated in the space in-between images. Gaps, ellipses, dialectics between images - essentially modernist notions - are essential in that respect. In Printed cinema this is expressed in the editing principle, as well as the oppositions between film and printing, between text and image. Apart from the specific distribution method, of course, which extends the project into a wide range of cultural and social contexts. In this way Printed Cinema challenges the outer edges of the artist's book. Mechanisms proper to the film medium find their translation in a different context.
Printed Cinema #1 - Broadcasting from Home, with night shots taken from a high building over a city, appeared as a free supplement to the first season issue of the Austrian art magazine Springerin (October 2004).
Printed Cinema #2 - Parachutable Obstacles was distributed by the Australian Center of Contemporary Art (ACCA), on the occasion of the exhibition A Molecular History of Everything, and tells a story about a quest by an unspecified protagonist for his inner being, but mainly a quest for the essence of a medium.
Printed Cinema #3 - Accidental Suspension was distributed by the art gallery of York University Toronto in May and June 2005 at the occasion of the exhibition Horror, Science Fiction and Porn. It contains the story that emerges from a landscape by introducing both visible and invisible architecture, with the underlying thoughts of what are the best ways to disappear in order to create a second level of existence.
Printed Cinema #4 - Who can tell I'm inventing? is talking about a village that lives in instability, towards a possibility of vanishing. The village is located around a sleeping volcano, whose awaking is not precisely dated yet. The people are always ready to leave their home although they expand their architecture into the unforeseen landscape. Printed Cinema#4 was spread by the 9th Istanbul Biennal.
Printed Cinema #5 - Outwardly from Earth's Center is based on the idea of a story which exceeds the frame by superimposing the environment with the projection image, adjusting and failing until the layers finally get synchronized when two people enter the double-scene and become clearly visible in front of the white screen. The screen becomes part of the image and dissolves with it - there's no hierarchy between the inside and outside space. Printed Cinema #5 is distributed with the Ein + Alle Magazin of the Fridericianium, Kunstverein and Kunsthalle Kassel.
Printed Cinema #6 - Wrong Edit was distributed as a special edition by JUNI KunstZeitSchrift and Badischer Kunstverein. The magazine consists of textpages of a filmscript printed on canvas that has been torn apart and reedited. The text tells the story of a man who loses his carpet, while carrying it through the streets, and the consequent search. The printed Carpet exists as a "piece" in the exhibition in the Kunstverein in Karlsruhe.
Printed Cinema #7 - documents a three part film installation by Rosa Barba placed in an old bath house in the Dutch city Gouda. The installation uses three 16mm film loop projectors which give different points of view on a story of a young boy witnessing a crime in an airport waiting hall. His observation is intercut with scenes of two prisoners discussing the political background of their confinement. The linear logic of the story is disrupted by shifting the plot into unexpected territories. Printed cinema #7 is not only a document of the installation but adds an open end to the story which makes the plot extend into the streets of the city. By leaving the mediating formats behind, the story infects the spectator's mind in a nearly paranoid way.
Printed Cinema #8 - Waiting Grounds is distributed on occasion of the exhibition They Shine by Rosa Barba at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam (17.11.07 - 08.01.08). The magazine shows film stills and a narrating text, OFF-Site landscapes in the Californian Mojave desert which are used as test- fields from different formations as for example Nuclear Test locations, Gas-Pipelines, a Solar Electric Generating Station, Military Test-Fields, Tehachapi Windmills etc.. "An exploration of the internal fringes of the desert in order to understand the nature and the extent of human interaction with the earth's surface to establish future concepts in a timeless environment."
Printed Cinema #9, Save the drifting of Gotska Sandön, distributed by Index Foundation in Stockholm, Bildmuseet Umea and the Baltic Art Center in Visby, Sweden. Text by Jan-Erik Lundström. The magazine in form of a newspaper is leaned on her movie "Outwardly from Earth's Center", a fiction about the attempts of experts and inhabitants to bind the island onto the baltic sea. The island becomes a metaphor for an idea.
Printed Cinema #10, Vertiginous Mapping,on occasion of the webproject commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation, New York distributed by DIA Beacon.
End of October 2008 the ten parts will be compiled and brought out as a limited edition by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.
