1
00:00:07,240 --> 00:00:12,300
[Josiah McElheny: Making a Projection Painting]

2
00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:26,680
Today we're at my friend's studio

3
00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:30,270
and we're projecting lost footage--
or abandoned footage--

4
00:00:30,270 --> 00:00:33,030
by the great filmmaker, Maya Deren.

5
00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:41,920
Long after Deren died, they found the
leftover tails of shots

6
00:00:41,930 --> 00:00:44,280
and unused shots that she did complete

7
00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:47,570
that were then preserved as
just kind of a reel

8
00:00:47,570 --> 00:00:49,770
with no kind of edit to them.

9
00:01:00,900 --> 00:01:05,540
And what I thought to do was to create
a sort of performance

10
00:01:05,550 --> 00:01:07,570
in which we would project the film,

11
00:01:07,960 --> 00:01:12,140
and then I invited a film crew to come and
film the film

12
00:01:12,140 --> 00:01:14,780
as it's being projected on the screen.

13
00:01:20,930 --> 00:01:24,220
And the idea was to film from the worst seats.

14
00:01:24,220 --> 00:01:25,750
So imagine you're in a theater

15
00:01:25,750 --> 00:01:28,950
where you're stuck five feet in front of
the screen,

16
00:01:28,950 --> 00:01:30,679
so that when you're looking up,

17
00:01:30,679 --> 00:01:33,279
you see all this, kind of, distorted vision.

18
00:01:37,620 --> 00:01:42,940
One comes from an unfinished and lost film
called "Witch's Cradle"

19
00:01:42,950 --> 00:01:46,920
in which she collaborated with Anne Matta Clark
and Marcel Duchamp

20
00:01:46,920 --> 00:01:51,460
and was filmed at the famous
Art of the Twentieth Century gallery.

21
00:01:55,119 --> 00:01:59,799
I'm trying to understand this relationship
of abstraction and the body.

22
00:02:00,940 --> 00:02:06,240
She navigates this area between abstraction
and the body.

23
00:02:06,940 --> 00:02:10,300
The body becomes almost abstract
in some of her works.

24
00:02:11,920 --> 00:02:15,320
In the end, the film will be shown not as
a film,

25
00:02:15,330 --> 00:02:18,819
but as a painting on a kind of structure

26
00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:21,760
in which the front of the painting
is a piece of glass

27
00:02:21,770 --> 00:02:25,710
and behind it is a kind of fractured landscape,

28
00:02:27,920 --> 00:02:31,800
which will then further distort
on the painting itself.

29
00:02:32,800 --> 00:02:36,220
When we showed narrative film on these
distorting sculptures,

30
00:02:36,230 --> 00:02:37,519
it didn't work at all.

31
00:02:37,820 --> 00:02:40,280
It just looked like we were
commenting on it,

32
00:02:40,290 --> 00:02:45,870
or that you really felt us looking at this
preexisting work.

33
00:02:45,870 --> 00:02:48,120
Whereas using the unfinished film,

34
00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:50,200
it transformed itself much easier.

35
00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,880
It became something new almost instantly.

36
00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:05,659
That was really interesting to realize

37
00:03:05,659 --> 00:03:09,030
actually how enviable, in some sense,

38
00:03:09,030 --> 00:03:11,700
an original work of art can be--

39
00:03:11,700 --> 00:03:13,549
how complete it can be,

40
00:03:13,549 --> 00:03:15,409
and you can't, somehow, distort it.

41
00:03:17,660 --> 00:03:21,940
That the unfinished is what felt more malleable.