BRATTLEBORO — The Center for Digital Arts (CDA) is doing something unusual: presenting a show with nothing created digitally.
On Saturday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m., CDA will host the New England Home Movie Tour, which features handmade and homemade works by a group of artists from New England: Luther Price, Jodie Mack, Robert Todd, Jonathan Schwartz, Jo Dery, Colin Brant, and Warren Cockerham.
The tour, which includes both films and handmade slides, has traveled across the country in as diverse places as Atlanta, Denver, and Chicago, and it is making its last stop at CDA before its organizer, Cockerham, brings it home to Bennington College, where he teaches.
Some of the films have narrative; others read more purely abstract. Some use celluloid technology to evoke great cinematography, while other offerings come across as more avant garde.
On the tour's website, Cockerham writes that the show celebrates “the tactility and intimacy of celluloid-based moving images,” as it aims to share films “that embrace the contemporary DIY strategies, politics, and aesthetics of an enduring, artisanal, and personal approach to filmmaking.”
An evening's presentation runs about 90 minutes, consisting of films ranging from 2 to 10 minutes.
Since the traveling show includes more than 30 films (16mm) and 180 slides (35mm) - more than could possibly be shown on a single evening - the presentation for each location was uniquely programmed by Cockerham and Brant with the specific audience in mind.
Since both artists traveled with the show, they were available at every presentation to discuss their work and answer questions.
The stop at CDA will bring along the other artists whose work is included in the tour.
'Something there you can't get any other way'
But celluloid film at the Center for Digital Arts?
The official mission of CDA may be to foster “the creation, presentation and appreciation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving video and computer-based technologies,” but its artistic director, Michel Moyse, feels the tour is a perfect fit.
“We encourage people working with film and new media,” he says. “Of course, we emphasize digital art here, but there is a trend of young people to return to 16mm film because there is something there you can't get any other way.
“For instance, some of the films in the tour follow the long-established tradition of hand-painted work on film.”
Moyse finds this return to celluloid exciting.
“The tour has an impressive array of films,” he says. “And boy, do the people in the show have impressive credentials. Having artists of this caliber at CDA fulfills our mission.”
Cockerham elaborates.
“Jonathan Schwartz, who lives in Brattleboro, was listed in the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Avant-Garde Poll in Film Comment as one of 25 Filmmakers for the 21st century,” he says. (Schwartz tied for number 7.)
Also, “Luther Price's hand-manipulated slides (which are included in this show) were part of the 2012 Whitney Museum's Biennial. And Jodie Mack has become something of an art star in recent years.
“But the truth is that all of the filmmakers have won numerous awards and have shown their work at prestigious festivals. It's a remarkably prestigious group of artists in the tour.”
Cockerham explains how the tour came about.
“Four years ago, I moved to Vermont from Chicago, where there is a tight-knit community interested in this kind of work. When I came to Bennington, I already knew about three New England artists working in film, and I invited them over to the college to show their work.”
Soon Cockerham became acquainted with a larger group of like-minded artists.
“I came to discover similarities in their work, not so much in form as in approach,” he says. “All were using 16mm film in interesting and exciting ways.”
Cockerham found so much quality work in short film being produced in New England that he organized the tour.
“I did not plan to organize a show of work exclusively on celluloid, but as I began putting it together I discovered so many interesting artists working in it,” Cockerham says.
Young artists are returning to celluloid because not only are there things you can do only in that medium, “but also because it's cheaper and in some ways easier to work directly on the film itself,” he adds. “Instead of an artist processing film in a lab, he or she can do it at home through non-traditional ways of film processing.”
The “home movies” of the title refers both to the rather primitive style of manipulating film, which can be done at home, and to the subject of “home” itself. Cockerham's own 3 Generations: Training (2014) directly examines the ideology of home movies.
“I would characterize my work as addressing the more traumatic side of home than some of the other films in the show,” he says. “3 Generations: Training is collage work that merges seven or eight elements through montage, including a 1970s educational film for parents about toilet training, silkscreen copies, macro footage of court and police records, two photographs, elastration footage, and fingerprints.”
Not only his, but most of the films in the tour is new work, Cockerham says.
“I would guess that 75 percent of them were made in the last three years. Over half of the films we show are completely original. By that, I mean that there are no digital or even celluloid copies. The one film is all there is.
“Many of the films are handmade originals, rather in the tradition of Stan Brakhage painting directly on film,” he says.
“Jodie Mack, for instance, paints on the side of the film to distort the film's soundtrack in fascinating ways, as she treats film as sound sculpture. These films can re-appropriate what we might consider an original work of art in film.”
Another difficulty with these films is how to show them.
The New England Movie Tour at CDA will project the 16mm films and 35mm slides on two twin-xenon arc 16mm projectors and 35mm slide projectors.
“Colin and I have the technical competence and equipment to show these works,” Cockerham notes. “Yet even on the tour, some works have to be shown late in a program because of what they do to the projector, and after every showing the machine needs to be thoroughly oiled and cleaned.”
“No one [else] will project these films because they damage the projectors if not shown correctly,” Cockerham says.