Available Light
Gibson + Recoder
Film installation
16 mm projectors, film loopers, 400 ft color films, 18 fps, dimensions variable
USA 1999–ongoing
“In their Available Light series, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder address a basic, almost crude, analog procedure to produce a sublime cinema of pure light and color. Made without a camera, color negative stock is exposed to direct sunlight on both sides of the roll wound tightly on its core. Light enters the outermost edge of the film roll, which, according to the artists, provides the ‘optical density through which the vertical medium takes a sidelong glance at itself via long exposures’. The analog process continues in the dual projection of the negative film Blue-Violet with its doppelganger positive film print Yellow-Red. Gently pulsating vertical color bands, both negative and positive specimens are projected back-to-back in an endless loop mirroring the diametrically opposite and yet complementary sides of the film printing process.” (Högner 2018: 10)
Sandra Gibson (born 1968) and Luis Recoder (born 1971), live and work in New York, USA.
More images
Reference
John Hanhardt, “The End(s) of Film,” in Celluloid: Tacita Dean, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Rosa Barba, Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder, eds. Marente Bloemheuvel and Jaap Guldemond (Amsterdam: EYE Filmmuseum, nai010 publishers, 2016), pp. 99–102.
Anna Högner, Analog_Digital: Media (Ex)Changes, Metrokino Kulturhaus / Film Archiv Austria, October 3, 2017 – January 28, 2018, exhibition booklet, p. 10.
