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Thursday, December 12, 2024A Brighter Darkness: The Work of Karissa Hahn
Post-film discussion w/ the filmmaker
$13 GA & $10 OFS
6pm doors / 7pm program
Note from Karissa Hahn:
“I´m a stranger in a strange land.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In my anachronistic endeavor to examine present-day truth, I create films, videos, and installations using obsolete consumer equipment sourced from scrap heaps and thrift stores. Small gauge film, toy cameras, cassette tapes, surveillance systems, and office printers form the arsenal of tools I use to assess the nature of contemporary media overload. This investigation of media equates to both my gestural work in super 8 and my assessment of media circulation by reproducing digital images frame-by-frame onto celluloid. The final products raise questions about media circulation and ownership, passive consumption vs. active production, and surveys the spectacle of information overload.
When using analog film as my starting point for gesture-based work, I use its durational constraints to my advantage. The length of one roll of Super 8, at 3 minutes, determines the duration. The long single take acts as a resistance against conventional editing norms. These short super 8 films exist in the spaces between moments, the pockets of calm before chaos, and the breaths between speech that frame the act of speaking. Simultaneously influenced by the brevity in Jack Goldstein’s moving-image work and the anti-illusionist strategies of Chantal Akerman, these performative films act to highlight the hidden intensities of the everyday.
The actual material of celluloid is also a canvas in my body of work that involves printing onto 16mm film with home office printers. Inspired largely by the writings of Hito Steyerl, the images that we swipe by constantly become tangible motion picture reels, blurring digital ephemera into physical reality. My film, REGAL, which premiered at the New York Film Festival, acts as a copy that has run full circle. It is a meticulous frame-by-frame recreation of the National Cinema Showtime Policy Trailer that would precede screenings in multiplexes. By redeeming the torrented file from YouTube and bringing it back onto film, REGAL acts as an analytical reinvention of its former ghost.
Run of Show:
in duration, no?
2020, super 8, black & white, sound, 07:30
the image happened, no?
Please step out of the frame.
2018, super 8, black & white, sound, 4min.
from your desk(top)
mistrust the manufactured image
distrust the assembled picture
give no credence to the massed account
discredit the aggregate narrative
defame the corporate chronicle
denigrate the collective annals
doubt the constructed copy
– consider the clone.
accept the dismantled vision
exalt the forged now brain
subscribe to the ditto
fuel the doodad delusion
nourish the gizmo nightmare
incite the idiot box prophecy
inflame the dingbat phantasm
a film burn becoming pixels as band-aid
a manufactured reinforcement
in the empire of computer and you
feeding machine-vision
the partition of screen
open window
2016, digital 8, color, sound, 2min.
digital8>mac reverb
Apertures (a brighter darkness)
2019, super 8 to digital, black & white, silent, 3min.
8 rolls of super 8 film, layered and re-photographed.
Eviction, Demolition
2019, super 8 to digital, black & white, sound, 3:50min.
and suddenly the last time in a home.
______
2016, super 8 to digital, black & white, sound, 3min.
The time it takes to boil a kettle of tea – is the same amount of time to relieve an air mattress – is the same duration of one roll of film. Inspired by Chantal Akerman’s, Je Tu Ill Elle, the mattress acts as a treacherous stage. Here, the object ends as a deflated sculpture, taking on new forms.
making a pot of tea, listening to the radio,
a sculpture of pose, a gesture incomplete
– no relief
a tea kettle boiling to silence is a petrified thought
air mattresses are the worst to fold up.
1_ _ _ _1
2016, super 8 to digital, black and white, sound, 03:00
one roll of super 8
OH, canted angle….
a ‘collaboration’ or rather, a collusion of sorts…. as for my volition….I fall, you falter….
thinking about “A Young Girl Defending Herself against Eros” by William Adolphe Bouguereau
1880
(I)FRAME
2016, 35mm, color, sound, 11min.
*flicker warning*
Shot at the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge in Pomona, CA on 16mm, datamoshed, and blown up to 35mm.
(I) FRAME is a mechanical ballet set to the original tempo that characterizes motion on screen at 24 (I) frames a second….A video is a stream of information, and this moving image relies upon the relationship of static frames which are algorithmically determined…. In the language of video compression, the (I) frames are the reference points between which movement is interpolated.
Manual deletion or misplacement of (I) frames results in a video glitch known as a datamosh … the stream of nformation d srupted, d sorgan zed … nterupeted … lost … the ( ) frame removed, rejected … BUT, reclaimed, the (I) frame, the burning bolts of the machine, are at once reasserted in this dance macabre….
– collaboration with Andrew Kim
Inkjet 3056A
2014, Color/Silent, 16mm, 5min.
A cinegel swatchbook is scanned onto clear leader using an HP-Deskjet household printer. A rhythmic exploration of pure color traveling through a digital space. Color information; translated.
In Effluence accord; Emulsion
2013, super 8 to 16mm to digital, color, silent, 03:00
Musings of leeway – an illusive figure emerges from the emulsion. One strip of super 8 film is reconstructed, taped onto 16mm, and then re-filmed on the Optical Printer. The effluence according to its new emulsion – becoming a reflection of its own action.
Effigy in Emulsion
2014, 8mm taped to 16mm (optical printer) to digital, color, sound, 03:00
8mm found footage is taped to 16mm clear leader and re-filmed on the Optical Printer. An artifact from a monumental occasion is examined. A photographer stole a frame of my stolen film! What could be uncovered in this washed out frame? A study in exposure change to un-develop a memory.
Chipping Off, too
2014, SD, color, sound, 01:30
My nail polish is chipping off – and I’m scared that my nails – and then fingers, will start chipping off too….
Total Running Time 51 min
About Karissa Hahn:
Karissa Hahn’s work articulates the nature of contemporary image reproduction and dissemination through the use of analogue and digital technologies. Whether creating performative films to highlight the hidden intensities of the everyday or blurring digital ephemera into physical reality through inkjet printing, she conjures up a storm of ’spectra ephemera.’ Hahn has shown work in various cinemas, galleries, and institutions such as the New York Film Festival Projections, TIFF Wavelengths, MoMA, CROSSROADS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Anthology Film Archives, among others. Hahn currently works as a public librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library.
Accessible Seating:
When purchasing tickets in advance, mark “Wheelchair / Accessible.” Accessible seating sections are located on the main floor in various areas for sight, hearing, size, and mobility needs. If you are comfortable sharing your needs, email [email protected] before purchasing so we can better assist you and ensure your time at the theater is enjoyable.
Tickets are now available online and can also be purchased at the box office beginning an hour before the show. A nominal service fee is applied for all ticket sales.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
206 5th Ave SE , Olympia, WA, United States, Washington 98501
Tickets
