For the closing aft of the Images Fest (April 27, 2017) I was asked to represent the Funnel, Toronto’s former experimental film co-op, in a sprawling convo about collectives old and new. That night each collective rep was offered screen real estate to showcase their wares. I thought I’d leave room for John and Adam, who have been hosting open screenings here in Toronto, which was how the Funnel began after all. And in the last calendar the org produced there were new wonders, many of them coming from New York (again?), including the luminous masterwork by Abigail Child that was so stunning in its intensity an entire panel at Toronto’s Experimental Film Congress was dedicated to it, and no one managed to say a word.
A Burning Thing by John Creson and Adam Rosen 3.5 minutes colour super 8 2017
Mayhem by Abigail Child 16.5 minutes b/w 16mm 1987
A Burning Thing by John Creson and Adam Rosen 3.5 minutes colour super 8 2016
A gaggle of nighttime fire performers are glimpsed with musical precision. Their bodies multiply in superimposition, then dissolve back into the illusion of a single identity, before shattering again into light odes. The whole thing was shot on a single bravura roll of super 8 film, no editing required for these perfectly made pictures. The coda returns us to the city, where a demented traffic crawls across a city newly remade.
Mayhem by Abigail Child 16.5 minutes b/w 16mm 1987
Who else would replay a history of genderbending desire and queer hopes through a noir lens? As if desire were a series of media codes, the body its final projection screen. Lensing a cadre of East Side familiars in raked lighting and rooftop/stairwell ensembles, Child deftly interweaves a variety of found footages to produce a semiotic traffic jam, as chase scenes rush towards violence and then fun and back again, as pursued becomes pursuer, as men change into women; and as if every argument could find its resolve in pleasure. Featuring a dizzying score, turntables courtesy of Christian Marclay. Part 6 of the artist’s quintessential series Is This What You Were Born For?