WASHI MM review from Daniel Adams
16mm on 3 projectors
Performed at AME Huddersfield 7th April 2023
Japanese Washi paper might not be top of the list for materials to apply to film, but the result is an extraordinarily effective experience.
On a purely material level, the film piece is achieved by applying washi paper to 16mm film and then creating a print from this film strip in which the patterns and textures of the paper are also printed onto the film’s optical soundtrack. Thus, the curiously propulsive rhythmic soundtrack is created by literally converting the image into sound.
It seems relevant to note, in relation to this piece, that washi paper provides, among other things, a raw material in the art of screen painting. So it is (to my mind at least) that the screen becomes the subject of this work. In Loo’s performance, the printed images on the paper are relatively straightforward geometrical patterns, but their development in the work takes us to considerably more unexpected places. There are fluctuations between patterns, moments at which the three projectors seem somehow in sync, others where there is a sense of visual and auditory counterpoint. There are also illusions of depth at various moments, but not throughout. Occasionally, as is often the case in screen-painting, we get a sense of positive and negative space, caused by both seeming inversion of the colour palette, or part thereof, and interplay of the three projectors. The audience themselves can become screens as well, as the work progresses, as we see what happens when people find themselves in the beam of a projector: we are projected upon, as we engage in the act of experiencing the projected images.
Over the course of the work, the central projected image changes size, at one point thanks to the filmmaker changing the lens of the projector so that this image fills a huge amount of space, mixing its image with those of the other two projectors and possibly bathing part of the audience in the light and patterns. Later in the piece, the beam of light from the projectors is itself altered by the placement of coloured gels (acetate sheets) over the lenses.
In the performance at AME in Huddersfield, the point at which the central image swamps the others was particularly remarkable: the performance space has the architectural feature of a beam across the wall on which the film was shown, meaning that the large image overlapped it. Whilst I am unsure if this is really a desired effect, I rather liked it, as it resulted in an additional texture afforded by a chance interaction with the space.
The viewing experience strikes me as one of extraordinary freedom. There is no right or wrong way to experience the work and one is likely to find one’s attention diverted from one area of the projected images to another quite unconsciously. It is also a multi-dimensional experience, not simply one in which an audience sits and watches what is on a single screen area. I noticed people turning to look at how the space was being lit by the on-screen images. Others turned to get a look at the projectors, as coloured gels were placed in front of the beams of light.
So a tension presents itself between reflection and immersion. We reflect on the experience of patterns on the screen(s) whilst being immersed (in quite a literal sense) in the space of the film performance. We are caught in a strange limbo between immersion and contemplation… but perhaps we are immersed in contemplation. In Loo’s work, it seems we are both immersed in and reflecting upon a sensory experience; both focussed on the work, whilst free to explore the work in our own way; fundamentally aware of our own parallel presence alongside her work of film art.
DA