• Phytography Workshop

  
  Monday, Sept. 30th, 10AM
  University Hall 4420
  UMass-Boston
  
  FREE
  

Whirlwind
1998, 9 minutes, 16mm

A brief, poetic 16mm film on a simple sculptural action. An experimental film in which the simplicity of the image is offset by the sonic implications.

An assemblage of footage shot during performances by Loophole Cinema. The group used light, lenses, projections and bodily interventions to create immersive cinematic experiences. The shooting took place during their residency in ARTIS, an artist run space in Den Bosch, 'Lichten' an event at Duende in Rotterdam and the International Symposium of Shadows, a festival organised by Loophole Cinema that transformed the West India Quay warehouse in London Docklands into a temporary museum of light, sound and shadow.
By means of stop-motion, long shutter speeds, superimposition, layering and slow-motion the images are manipulated and intensified, resulting in a labyrinthian time-space. The literal meaning of the concept cinematography; writing with light, is represented in a hallucinatory way.

Energy Energy
1999, 7 minutes, 16mm

Found-footage film, compiled from industrial, educational and promotional films from the first half of the twentieth century, presenting mechanization and resource extraction. Rotations, transportation, mining; a feast of technological inventions. This modernist idyll is disturbed by the destructive power of the human mind and the greedy nature of the status quo. A collaborative project with sound-artist Pierre Bastien, an elaboration of one of the pieces that is also part of the performance Recollection

A Perfect Storm
16mm, 3 minutes, colour, 2022

A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film's emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve. The film consists of sequences that are intricately composed and parts that are completely 'self-organised'. As such plants appear not merely as inanimate objects but rather as characters who are expressive in their own right. Such otherworldliness is also reflected in a sequence of gargoyles, providing a link to the hidden animist tendencies that prevail in human culture. This primordial expressiveness is underlined by an improvised guitar solo by the inimitable Florian Magnus Maier.

Agapanthus
, 2024, 6 minutes, 16mm

A mosaic of organic forms that tumble on top of each other. Only fragments appear that are rhythmically interspersed by flashing frames and rays of sunlight.

Oxygen
16mm, 6 minutes, colour, 2023

Blades of grass are racing across the screen.

Forest Song
HD, 5 minutes, colour, 2022

After throwing off the yoke of slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Saramaccan Maroons have established a network of independent communities that ignore the border between Suriname and French Guyana. They have combined their African heritage with local knowledge, cleverly adapting to the complex conditions offered by the tropical rainforest. A profound knowledge of plants is a key element within a culture based on mutualism and creative expression. This short film uses a spirited Saramaccan song as a structural principle to briefly explore their rich and powerful way of being in the world.

Liquidator
35 mm and DCP, 8 minutes, colour , 2010

sounddesign: Michal Osowski The project Liquidator started with a research question; where lies the ultimate border of film preservation, and how does it look? In other words I was looking for a filmprint that was on the brink of complete deterioration. My friends at the Dutch film archive (EYE) came up with a newly discovered print of Haarlem; a commercial 'city branding' film made in 1922 by Dutch film pioneer Willy Mullens. This particular print was interesting to me for two reasons: The deterioration of the nitrate had caused stunning visual effects and the original utilitarian nature of the footage was in stark contrast with the drama of this deterioration. I isolated the sequences where transitions took place between well preserved images and, partly or completely, vanished images. I reworked this footage zooming in, slowing down and reframing these sequence. The most dramatic moments I reworked using optical flow and morphing techniques. With the resulting material I composed a new film with the same duration as the original. I then asked composer, software developer and distortion specialist Michal Osowski to make a soundtrack for the film using a direct link between image and sound. Although Liquidator started from pure fascination with the deterioration of film material, it is no coincidence that this film appears in a time of liquidations, radioactive water and Wikileaks. Winner of FOCAL award: best footage in a short production 2012 -KD

Wilderness Series
HD Video and DCP, 13:38 minutes, colour, 2016

By using plants, mud and salt in conjunction with alternative photochemistry, images are 'grown' on motion picture film. What at first glance is perceived as abstract turns out to be a concrete precipitation from phenomena that surround us in everyday life. The 'aliveness' of the images is underlined by Andrea Szigetvári's evocative sound-design. The project is driven by a desire to find new narratives regarding the natural environment. Instead of representing pristine landscapes or photographing wildlife, the images in this film are the result of a natural process and can be described as images made by nature and not of nature. Recuperated (out of date) 35mm black&white film-stock has served as 'blank canvas' to generate images in full daylight. Slow (bio)chemical changes in the emulsion that have occurred over days or weeks are used instead of normal exposure. These processes were partially steered and adapted by trial and error but have been largely independent, rendering surprise results and unexpected colours. This technique is coined the 'organigram' after its predecessor the photogram; an organigram shows the organisation of a natural process. High resolution scans (6K) were used to animate a selection of organigrams; while layering, inverting, rhythmically ordering and zooming in on particular sections. This wilderness is a tiny one, all that had to be done to make this intricate world visible, is to look closely at a smaller scale of activity.

Phytography Workshop


Phytography is a technique developed by me in 2016. This is the practical outcome of my research project focused on the relationship between nature and culture in cinema, a project that is still ongoing. Phytography enables interaction between the phytochemical properties of plants and photochemical emulsion. It is also an approach that strives for a deeper relationship with plants, both through observation and education. I have applied and exhibited this concept in various ways: in films, installations, directly on photopaper and as enlarged prints. More documentation about methods and materials can be found on this website (https://phytogram.blog). A paper describing the theoretical underpinning and historical context can be found here .