La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE

Films and 16 mm projectors: Cristophe Auger, Xavier Quérel
electro-acoustic devices: Jérôme Noetinger

La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE is a performance trio founded in 1987 by Cristophe Auger, Xavier Quérel and Jérôme Noetinger. The wish to explore the relationship between image and sound is disclosed through their impromptu play performed in direct confrontation in plain spectators' sight. The sound coming from simple electric/acoustic sources, such as mixer, Revox tape recorder and synthesizer, the domain of Jérôme Noetinger, is intertwined with film images made by Cristophe Auger and Xavier Quérel on the spot using several 16mm projectors and manipulating with chemicals, speed, filters, mirror images and shadows on the screen and other visual tricks and effects of transforming the film stock. In such interactive process, with sound simultaneously responding to the image and vice versa, Metamkine challenge the idea that film can be produced, displayed and experienced only in a manner that remained unchanged since the Lumière Brothers till this day.

The unique performances by Metamkine collective perfectly portray the idea that expanded cinema is not a style but a spirit of research leading in unexpected directions, towards all the answers to the question what is expanded cinema in the first place. It entails activating the live context of watching, liberating the image from the screen frame and placing it into new spatial contexts, putting projection and sound machinery in the spotlight and revealing it to the audience, eliminating the viewers' static position and encouraging them to change viewpoints, discovering the filmmaker/performer's physical presence; (s)he is no longer a representation but is seen live on stage. This challenges the very status of "film" – it is no longer product-like consumer object; it becomes an experience whose making and presentation occur before our eyes in real time. It becomes a momentary, unique and inimitable experience.