Fragile Systems: Films and Videos by Christine Lucy Latimer

The films and videos of Christine Lucy Latimer defy their containers: they reveal the fragile systems underlying media; they press the boundaries of image-making machines; they embrace the faults and frailties of vision. Almost all of Latimer’s work is silent, but nothing is truly silent: Latimer draws out images that recall the hums, tweets, and mechanical moans of the technology with which she made them. Latimer’s work began long after most of the formats she pursues had become obsolescent. Refusing the universal nostalgia of the antique camera and the antique image, her works are undeniably present-facing and playfully disobedient, ethereal, abstract. Supremely self-conscious and yet mystical, they are seances that draw out the ghosts in the machine. In this program, fourteen pieces, almost all of them of a hybrid constitution, chart Latimer’s evolution from 2002 to the present, from films and videos that bear an overt eroticism (the scrambled kickboxing of Mosaic, the glow of a stripping woman filtered through a toy camera in Ghostmeat) to explorations of the patina of resilient media (the damaged digital photos of House Pieces, the foldable hologram imprints of Tender).

PROGRAM:

Mosaic (2002, 16mm/VHS hybrid, 3 mins., b/w, silent), 16mm
Over {Past:Future} Sight (2006-2007, 16mm/VHS hybrid, 7 mins., colour, silent), 16mm
Focus (2009, super 8mm/16mm hybrid, 1.5 mins., colour, silent), 16mm
Fruit Flies (2010, 16mm, 1.5 mins., colour, silent), 16mm
Physics and Metaphysics in Modern Photography (2014, 16mm/digital video hybrid, 6.5 minutes, colour, silent), 16mm
Ghostmeat (2003, 16mm/pixelvision hybrid, 11 mins., b/w, silent), digital file
(Just Beyond the Screen) The Universe - As we Know It - Is Ending (2008, 16mm/digital video hybrid, 3.5 mins., colour/b/w, silent), digital file
The Pool (2011, 16mm/VHS hybrid, 4.5 mins., colour, silent), digital file
Jane’s Birthday (2013, VHS/digital video hybrid, 3.5 mins., b/w, silent), digital file
Nationtime (2013, VHS/digital video hybrid, 1.5 mins., colour, silent), digital file
Lines Postfixal (2013, 16mm/VHS/Betamax hybrid, 4.5 mins., colour, silent), digital file
Still Feeling Blue About Colour Separation (2015, cyanotype emulsion super8mm, 2 mins., colour, silent), digital file
House Pieces (2019, VHS/digital video hybrid, 2.5 mins., colour, silent), digital file
Tender (2021, 16mm, 3 mins., colour, silent), digital

Total Running Time: 55.5 mins

Co-presented by the Cinema Studies Institute at Innis College and AD HOC, a collective dedicated to the presentation and exhibition of underground film and other obscure and unpopular forms of cinema.

AD HOC aims to rethink what an experience of cinema can be. We seek to reposition historical landmarks and buried treasures within the on-going tradition of experimental and other non-commercial modes of filmmaking, drawing on work from Toronto, throughout Canada, and internationally. Within these parameters, we aspire to diversity in programming, as well as to multimedia and interdisciplinary screening events that bring together varied communities.

AD HOC = Stephen Broomer, Madi Piller, Jim Shedden, Tess Takahashi, Bart Testa.

To get on the AD HOC mailing list, please contact jimshedden@gmail.com.