certaines observations. rose lowder

It doesn't take much for everything to seem different.

Our first program both serves as an overview and offers insight into the various timelines and cinematic forms that make up her nearly four-decade-long film career. Accordingly, we begin with her very first work, Roulement, rouerie, aubage, which combines three short films into one. Here, one of the main characteristics of her entire oeuvre is already evident. The film is entirely designed in the camera and is based on a series of relationships established between two operative mechanisms: a selection of motifs from a waterwheel on the Sorgue, and a certain number of visual characteristics highlighted by the film techniques chosen to capture the images (always filmed in daylight, using film stock of varying emulsion sensitivity). This preference for rigorous yet playful exploration and use of the cinematographic machine is the profound link and driving force behind all of Lowder's films, enlivening her visual studies. Parcelle is based on the alternating appearance and variable duration of tiny colored squares or circles placed on a black background and inserted in series between monochrome white or colored images. The diverse possibilities opened up for the viewer's perception by the single-frame shots and the in-camera-editing are illustrated by Voiliers et coquelicots and the ongoing series Bouquets. The segments of this series are composed of images taken at the same location at different times. The rapid editing frequency, combined with astonishing multiple exposures, creates small masterpieces in which flower meadows, landscapes, animals, and people are fused into complex compositions. Beijing 1988 represents the last branch of Lowder's cinematic work: the cinematic diary or travel film that captures a country in flux.

In the presence of Rose Lowder. With kind support by Instituto Cervantes Frankfurt. Images © All rights reserved by the artist / Courtesy of Light Cone.

The second program, which also forms the conclusion of our festival, consists of two rarely shown double projections that build on Lowder's exploration of the parameters of cinematic image design and continue them under other modalities. Certaines observations, whose title is derived from the mathematical principles of Newton's natural philosophy (in which “certain observations” serve to define representations of the appearance of real or apparent moving things) is conceived for two projectors and one screen: two film reels, one in black and white (positive), the other in white and black (negative), which come from the same original and must be projected one on top of the other with the same image orientation. If the two projectors are not synchronized (which is usually the case), the projectionist can occasionally stop one of the projectors for a few moments to try to synchronize the two images. The projectionist can also, if they wish, place the two images side by side for a brief moment and then synchronize them again. The concept of a constant reference comes from poetic rhetoric, where it refers to an element of rhythm. In this way, the process of separating, isolating, and capturing certain aspects of a scene (in this case, a tree in the garden of the Rocher des Doms) by successively adjusting the focus of a series of photograms according to different scores is implemented in a special way in Retour d'un repère. Usually shown in its single-channel version, in the double projection, two film prints with different color tones are combined. The two prints are projected simultaneously and superimposed on each other. This effect of combining and adding anticipates one of Lowder's most important works, Retour d'un repère composé (1981), which was intensively discussed in the 1980s. We are particularly pleased that Peruvian filmmaker Nicole Remy will be placing her work in dialogue with Lowder's works. Remy was born in Lima and is based in Madrid since 2021, where she studied at LAV. Her work focuses on a structural cinema, working with the limitations and, therefore, the possibilities of the film camera and film support. In addition to Con cierta luz, a 16mm double projection, Nicole will perform Constant, copresent, a new super 8 double projection, for the first time. Con cierta luz is a journey through different processes of capturing light using pinhole cameras, accompanied by a cassette recorder during my residency at Nanolab (Daylesford, Australia). It represents a step between the interior and the exterior, between moving forward and going back. It is about the space I inhabit, the one I walk through and draw over and over again. Constant, copresent is an ongoing process of moving around different trees, in different places — from Madrid to the rainforest of Tambopata — exploring how to draw and capture their stillness, volume, and presence. Filmed in Super 8 over the past year, these choreographies are an attempt to translate what is, in fact, constant and present, and encapsulate it through movement. (N.R.)

In the presence of Rose Lowder and Nicole Remy. With kind support by Instituto Cervantes Frankfurt. Images © All rights reserved by the artist / Courtesy of Light Cone.