AVAILABLE SPACE
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In 1979 I had a dream of Pyramid Lake, Nevada. I dreamed of space, of freeing the rectangular film screen to a more liberated form, of escaping the confines of the frame, the “domestic house”. In AVAILABLE SPACE I push the limits of restriction in eight different sections and eight different ways.
Who determined that film should be projected upon a rectangular white reflective screen? What would happen if this formula were challenged? What if the projector moved and the audience had to move to see the film?
AVAILABLE SPACE is a film made for performance on a 360 degree rotary projection table. A woman breaks through confining architectural space, the limited space of a film frame, and the boundaries of a movie screen. Unexpected angles, corners, slants, floor and ceiling are engaged in unexpected play and projection. The sculptural surfaces of the interior of the Hamburger Banhof Aktionsraum are explored asking the audience to leave their seats to see the film.
I am concerned about changing the static, hierarchical nature of the standard film projection and its imposition on the audience in a darkened and distanced theater.
I ask for active audience participation through movement, sound, image making. Can the audience be physically involved with film?
The potential of boundaries are confused, change context and create a new relationship between film and spectator suggesting interactive play.
Available Space explores the relationship of architectural space to image and to the limits of the projector’s beam.
This was the beginning film in a series of attempts to empower, activate, “make blood rush through the veins” of the viewing public.
*This film performance is reprised from 1979 where it screened at A Space, Toronto and in 1980 at New Langton Arts, San Francisco and Franklin Furnace, New York City.
