Andrew Norman Wilson, “This Light: The New York Announcement of a New Cinema”

 

This event is an attempt to describe a free cinema that emerges out of a desire to make private viewing habits public. The cinema goes by the name This Light. At a time when public space is rapidly dissolving into private property and attention is dissolving into the monetized distraction of streaming content in solitude, the cinema activates the possibilities offered through networked technology and opens the domestic up to what could be called anybody. 

To some extent, This Light is a reaction to the lack of a screening venue (or even a regular screening series) in Los Angeles committed to expanding the definition of moving images as an art form. With no particular allegiances to anything, This Light seeks to dissolve boundaries between different audiences through uncommon arrangements.

The architecture of the first cinema will be an informal, parasitic structure that exploits the environmental potentials of a private back yard in Southern California. By day it will be a functional camera obscura (closed roof) or breathable patio sunshade (open roof), by night a soundproofed cinema with an HD projector, hifi soundsystem, and comfortable seating. It will be lightweight and portable enough to be moved to a new site if need be, drawing on the history of nomadic units as an emancipatory project.

The New York announcement of This Light will include a presentation of works by Anthony Discenza, Emily Wardill, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Mary Helena Clark, and Darren Bader followed by a reading of the cinema’s creed. 

Andrew Norman Wilson has worked within a repertory cinema, an underground media art gallery, an art house cinema, a video store, a free alternative art school, an inner-city after school video program, a rural summer film program, an orphanage, a political lobby group, a labor union, the motion picture industry, the music industry, live event production, nightclubs, BFA programs, MFA programs, film festivals, contemporary art museums, corporate video departments, residencies, illegal file sharing networks, and churches. More information on him can be found at www.andrewnormanwilson.com.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.