Film Reader
Mika Taanila FI, 2017, 27 - 30 / 9 / 2018Since 2016, Taanila has been extending his artistic practice into different directions and media, concerning the concept of “Film without a film”. This includes the “treatment” of film books and other written film material. Each book is interpreted by the artist according to his memories of the book itself or of the films/themes described in the books. Mis-remembering and selective daydreaming play active roles in the process. The books are re-edited and structured finally like minimalist collage films. These “re-edited” books can be considered as works of literally moving image: images moved out, erased, cut-out.
The Film Reader series consists of several books related to cinema. Each book is “re-edited” by the artist. Instead of text editing, the books are treated by Taanila with cutting tools such as knives, scissors, scalpels or an office cross-cut paper shredder, creating a process associating with traditional film splicing i.e. editing. The history of moving image is present in these books in concrete ways. They spread over different genres (musicals, horror, exploitation, art house, melodrama...) continents and time periods. The books will be in various languages and they vary from colorful coffee-table celebrity books to academic publications. The project got started when Taanila was in a second-hand bookshop and stumbled into an intriguing title of a book: When The Shooting Stops...Cutting Begins– A Film Editor’s Story by Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen.
The double meaning of the word “shooting” fits very well in the overall mental landscape of male-dominated film history. Associations to military operations, pastime hunting and crime in general are interconnected.
Exhibits: Courtesy of balzer projects
Thu 27/9 Kino SC lobby 17:00