Reaching Through to the Object: Reenacting Malcolm Le Grice’s Horror Film 1

Authors

  • Lucas Michael Ihlein University of Wollongong
  • Louise Curham University of Canberra

Abstract

In July 2014 Teaching and Learning Cinema, an Australian artist group coordinated by Louise Curham and Lucas Ihlein, presented a reenactment of Malcolm Le Grice’s Horror Film 1 (1971) at Canberra Contemporary Art Space. A key work of Expanded Cinema, Horror Film 1 involves a live performer playing with shadows, interacting with the overlapping beams of three 16mm film projectors. Our reenactment was the first time in the work’s 40 year lifespan that it had been performed by anyone other than Le Grice himself. In this paper we offer some reflections on the process of making our reenactment, which we regard as ontologically double: simultaneously “the original object” and an entirely new entity. We discuss our methodology of tending the archive--an activist strategy for operating at the borders of archival and artistic practice. And we suggest that reenactment, as a creative practice, can be a way of “reaching through to the object” which sheds new light on the artwork and its cultural-technological context.

Author Biographies

Lucas Michael Ihlein, University of Wollongong

Lucas Ihlein is a Lecturer in Media Arts, Visual Arts and Design at the University of Wollongong. He is also an artist who often works collaboratively with groups such as Big Fag Press, SquatSpace, Teaching and Learning Cinema. His interdisciplinary practice can take the form of performances, expanded cinema events, re-enactments, lithographic prints, writing, public lectures and blogs. In recent years, Ihlein has been working on a series of ‘blogging as art’ projects which formed the basis for his PhD, completed in 2009 at Deakin University.

Louise Curham, University of Canberra

Louise Curham is an experimental filmmaker and archivist. She is employed at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra. A member of the Teaching and Learning Cinema collective, she is also completing her PhD in Arts and Design at the University of Canberra.
VestAndPagnes (Vera Stenke and Andrea Pagnes)

Downloads

Published

2015-05-04

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1-2 (2015): Archiving Performance

Section

Articles

License

Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.

Manuscripts submitted to Performance Matters should be original works that have not been published elsewhere. Note that authors are responsible for obtaining permission to include copyrighted material in any article or review published in Performance Matters.