Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 7:30pm
William Raban's 2'45" + Dan Graham and Glenn Branca's Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn
Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay, Dan Graham and Glenn Branca, 1983, video, 46 mins
The audience is seated on the right side; the musicians are on the left side. Both audience and musicians face a large, wall-sized, two-way mirror. This mirror reflects both the audience's and the musician's front and eyes. A video screen, whose image is sufficiently luminescent to be seen through the two-way mirror, shows (by means of a tape loop) a six-second time-delayed view of the entire room, taken from a wide-angle lens placed on top of the video screen.
Conventionally, the audience identifies with the performer by gazing directly at his or her frontal area and eyes. In this set-up, the audience must look to the mirror in order to see the performer playing his or her instrument. At the same time, a member of the audience sees other audience members (including him- or herself) gazing. When the musicians look toward the mirror image to see other musicians for cues or to the six-second time-delayed image on the video, the audience member's view is positioned between the intersubjective gazes of the three musicians.
After the performance, a video recording of the work taken by the camera behind the two-way mirror replays the musical performance. Spectators can hear and see the playback, gazing into the two-way mirror, standing either where the musicians or the audience members had been located.
- DG
2'45", William Raban, 1972, 16mm, 10 mins
An important aspect of 2'45" is that it records the history of its making. It is a 'time-lapse' film in the sense that within its 2 minutes 45 seconds duration, it reveals all its past presentations as a film of a film of a film etc. Once the film has been projected, it is discarded, since it exists in the form of a latent image on the film in the camera, and will be developed prior to its projection for the next audience viewing and refilming.
- WR
Above image courtesy William Raban and LUX, London.
Tickets - $8, available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm.