Afterimage: The Flicker of Life
Kerry Laitala - 2010, 11:00, Film/Video Hybrid in Chromadepth, SF
Chromadepth Glasses will be provided
"Afterimage: Flicker of Life" incorporates etchings, archival photographs, inter-titles, found footage and live action material to create cinematic image sequences of recomposed still frames. This work is an homage to the 19th century photographer Edweard Muybridge and scientist Etienne Jules Marey as a lyrical exploration of their motion studies providing a crucial link from still image to moving pictures. Beginning with an animated wood-cut of a beating heart, "Afterimage- A Flicker of Life" traces a trajectory of Muybridge and Marey's works using iconic representations of artifacts that they left behind. "Afterimage:" then takes the viewer into the 21st Century using three dimensional technology. Human beings are reduced to their gestures and movements in space becoming forms of pure colored light. "Afterimage- a Flicker of Life" employs graphic tracings to create kinesthetic inscriptions that speak to the physicality of working with the film medium in a self-reflexive way. Making motion visible to the naked eye was something that Marey and Muybridge strove to achieve and "Afterimage:.." takes a whimsical approach to envisaging human and animal locomotion by illuminating the traces of their presence.
Laitala grew up in the wilds of the Maine coast, while developing a chronic passion for old things. She attended Massachusetts College of Art studying Photography and Film and received her Masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in Film. She has been awarded the Princess Grace Award in 1996, and the Special Projects Grant from PGF in 2004 and 2007.
She has recently finished the hand made, hand processed films entitled the "Muse of Cinema Series" with a flashlight in her studio. This film artist uses the “Muse Series” to directly address the audience by re-animating Magic Lantern slides from the early years of cinema and before the birth of cinema as we know it. By incorporating them into a cinematic collage, the works pay homage to magicians of an earlier age who thrilled audiences with their spectral displays. Her work has been screened internationally and in the celestial ether which connects us with the music of the spheres.
Laitala was also chosen as a recipient of a GOLDIE- (Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award) -2007 from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
