The Splice. A Paradigmatic In-Between.

Abstract

In film theory much has been written about editing and its power to produce meaning, but this basic cinematic technique has rarely been explored from a material viewpoint. However, there are experimental film practices in which the physicality of the splice itself—be it a cement splice or a tape splice—is exploited in surprising ways. Among those works that unleash the hidden potential of the splice, is American filmmaker David Gatten’s Secret History of the Dividing Line (2002). Looking for a material equivalent of the “dividing line” of the film title, Gatten found it in the cement splice mark, which he explores at length. In the projector performances of American artist Bruce McClure countless splices are made audible when they pass over the projector’s optical sound head. The individual loops are spliced with tape, and are then copied by print in a lab. The actual pattern of tape splices that hold the loop together, and the printed tape splices all make different sounds. Finally, Austrian artist Thomas Glänzel’s Ghost Frames (2018) exploits a 16 mm black and white camera-reverse-positive film from the late 1950s and in which the splicing tape had become so dry that it popped off the celluloid. As the glue had absorbed silver particles from the gelatin emulsion, each of the chips showed fragments of two half-frames from the film stills. Glänzel placed these “contact copies” on glass microscope slides, sealed them with synthetic resin, enlarged them and made negative prints on photographic paper, 24 cm x 30 cm. All of these artistic uses of the splice can be conceived as technical manifestations of the in-between, a specific form of intermediality.

Title of Event

Internationale Konferenz "Intermediality Now: Remapping In-Betweenness"

Organiser/Management