Aberration of Light: Dark Chamber Disclosure

Thursday, April 14, 6:00 pm | Live performance! Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Olivia Block in person!

“Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder are creating some of the most innovative and engaging light works of the present time.” – Mark Webber, London Film Festival

Since 2001, New York-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder have collaborated on a series of performances and installations that transform the mundane mechanics of film projection into sublime experiences of light and space. The duo uses a system of film loops, crystals, and hand gestures to bend, reflect, and refract the projector’s beam, recasting the theatrical space of the cinema into a unique medium for sculpting light. This evening, in their first-ever Chicago appearance together, Gibson and Recoder present their latest projector performance, developed with noted Chicago-based composer and sound artist, Olivia Block. Block, who mixes field recordings and live instrumentation, has been likened to “a good cinematographer who happens to use sounds instead of images” (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader). This is the second piece the three have created together; the first, Untitled (2008) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened at the Tate Modern, London, and Redcat, Los Angeles. 2010-11, Sandra Gibson/Luis Recoder/Olivia Block, USA, multiple formats, ca. 60 mins plus discussion.

SANDRA GIBSON (1968, Portland, OR) and LUIS RECODER (1971, San Francisco, CA) are internationally acclaimed artists whose work primarily addresses the medium and idea of the cinema. Ed Halter, Artforum critic and co-founder of Light Industry, has written: “In their collaborative film performances, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder employ simple mechanical means to hypnotically elaborate ends…Their performances melt the projector’s machine materialism into ethereal experiences.” Gibson and Recoder’s projector performances and installations have exhibited at numerous museums, galleries, and festivals such as the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Museum of American Art (NY), Performa 09 Biennial at Light Industry (NY), Radical Light at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Film.Text.Performance.Film at Ballroom Marfa (Marfa), BFI 50th London Film Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Expanded Cinema: Film als Spektakel, Ereignis und Performance at Hartware MedienKunstVerein (Dortmund), Kill Your Timid Notion at Dundee Contemporary Arts (Dundee), Image Forum Festival at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa), and 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam).

OLIVIA BLOCK (b. 1971, Dallas, TX) is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Block works with recorded media, chamber ensembles, video, and site-specific sound installations. She has performed throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours and festivals including Sonic Light, Dissonanze, Archipel, Angelica, Sunoni per il Popolo, Outer Ear, and many others. Her works have premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, and she has completed residencies and premiered works at Mills College of Music and The Berklee College of Music. She has taught master classes at several additional universities. Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the library at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and at the “Echoes Through the Mountains” exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her 2008 DVD release with video artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Untitled, on SOS editions, has been screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Expanded Cinema symposium at the Tate Modern in London. Her release Mobius Fuse was voted one of the best albums of the decade by Pitchfork. Block has published recordings through Sedimental, either/OAR, and Cut, among other labels.