Sunday March 9, 7pm
Karel Doing
Ruins and Resilience Expanded
All works on 16mm film — In Person Only
Microscope is excited to welcome UK-based artist and filmmaker Karel Doing to the gallery on one of his rare visits to New York for a special evening of expanded cinema performance and double-screen 16mm films.
Doing developed the camera-less process phytography, which utilizes plants and their chemicals to generate images on film by placing them in contact with the photosensitive side of the filmstrip. Since 1990, Doing has completed over 40 films as well as expanded cinema performances and installations. And, his latest book, “Ruins and Resilience: The Longevity of Experimental Film,” was published by Goldsmiths Press last year.
The program includes a special, double projection version of his work “Phytography,” focusing on his longstanding practice of marrying the natural and cinematic worlds and processes, and in which “selected leaves, petals and stems have imprinted their own images on the film’s emulsion.” His black and white series in 5 parts “Palindromes” groups together films that appear the same when watched forwards and backwards, alternating sequences that play with top-bottom, positive-negative, and back-forth, through the use of mirrors, animation and double exposures.
Set to field recordings from a tropical rainforest, the performance “Pattern/Chaos” is a “negotiation between the unpredictability of organic processes and the regularity of frames, optics and motors.” Manually handled kinetic and optical objects augment the 16mm film projection, consisting of seemingly abstract images resulting from the interaction of film with salt, moss, and grass, among others.
Karel Doing will be available post-screening for a Q&A with the audience.
General Admission: $12
Members Admission: $9
Program:
Phytography (expanded version)
2 x 16mm, color, 2020, 8 minutes
Phytography dives into the rich and varied world of plant chemistry. This collection of organic ”objets trouvés” demonstrates how nature generates multiple creative solutions, each one structured intricately. Through the application of a simple chemical process, the selected leaves, petals and stems have imprinted their own images on the film’s emulsion. Shapes, colours and rhythms whirl across the screen drawing the viewer into a world beyond language and speech. The film taps into a realm of mutualism and generosity, readily available despite the environmental havoc caused by human greed and overconsumption.
Palindrome Series
2 x 16mm film, black & white, 2013, 18 minutes
Double screen series of 5 films. Each piece is constructed in the form of the palindrome; a sequence of elements which appear the same when perceived both forwards and backwards. Reading the image becomes an active game, with sequences that appear upside-down, forward-backward and in negative and positive. The 5 different parts were given palindromic names: RotatoR, 13.31, LeveL, TestseT, and OXO XOXO.
Pattern/Chaos
16mm film, kinetic and optical objects, 2015, 18 minutes
The expanded cinema performance “Pattern/Chaos” is a negotiation between the unpredictability of organic processes and the regularity of frames, optics and motors. Images that are at first glance perceived as abstract turn out to be concrete precipitation from phenomena that surround us in every day life. Moving images on celluloid are made aided by salt, moss, branches and grass. Kinetic and shadow objects made from found and recuperated materials are used to break-up and expand the film-frame.
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Karel Doing is an independent artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose practice investigates the relationship between culture and nature by means of analogue and organic process, experiment, and co-creation. His work has been shown across continents at festivals, in cinemas, in clubs, and in galleries. He was a founder member of Studio één, a pioneering DiY film laboratory. He has invented “phytography,” a technique that combines plants and photochemical emulsion.
