Uma janela para Los Angeles

Two Faces Have I faz orbitar trabalhos de Jana Euler, Pati Hill e Sylvie Fanchon em torno dos filmes de Chris Langdon, "o mais importante realizador desconhecido da história da vanguarda de Los Angeles". Retirado de um filme de Langdon, o título da exposição poderia também referir-se às duas apresentações (Lisboa/Porto), ou ao gesto através do qual uma coisa se pode transformar noutra, especialmente quando colocada nas mãos de qualquer um destes artistas.

Two Faces Have I,
de Lou Christie

Chris Langdon

Chris Langdon (1952) foi criado em Indiana. Estudou no California Institute of the Arts (1971-76), onde produziu 40 curtas-metragens de 16mm e 35mm e foi premiado com um BFA e um MFA. Os seus filmes ficaram conhecidos por satirizar as tendências do mundo da arte de Los Angeles e usar elementos retirados da cultura popular para questionar como vemos as imagens. Chris gostava de confundir "arte inferior" com "arte superior". Depois de 1976, abandonou o cinema e começou a pintar representativamente, algo que estava fora de moda na época. O trabalho posterior passou por escultura, litografia, montagem, fotografia e outros meios. No final dos anos 1990, Chris Langdon aposentou-se da arte, mudou-se para a China durante alguns anos para estudar acupuntura e fitoterapia. Os filmes de Langdon voltaram a circular em 2010, graças aos esforços de Mark Toscano, do Academy Film Archive, entidade responsável pelo restauro dos filmes. Two Faces Have I apresenta pela primeira vez um conjunto deles em contexto expositivo.

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Inge em discurso direto sobre os filmes em exposição

“Venusville is a film made with my good friend, Fred Worden. It probably owes a lot to the boat names guessing part of Robert Nelson’s film, “Bleu Shut”. But I had just started using out of date calor negative print stock as camera stock. It had an asa of maybe 2, but made some interesting colors and grain due to “pushing” in processing. Fred and I got into a discussion one day about the perception difference between a motion picture of a still object and a freeze frame made on an optimal printer. So we decided to each individually shoot footage and make freeze frame footage, we spliced the rolls together, watched them and commented on them with some radio on and that was the soundtrack. I don’t know what possessed us to think that it was a film worth putting a title on.”

“The Gypsy Cried came about very incidentally. I somehow was in the possession of a sync sound camera and tape recorder, a rare event. I filmed my record player playing one of my favorite songs. The song is the story. It was a kind of a twist on the music rights law, a device I employed other times. “Last Interview with P. Pasolini” I made this film to commemorate the passing of Pier Paolo Pasolini. There was something suspicious about his creepy allegories and sanctimonious narcissism in his films. Perhaps the manner of this demise verified it? “

“My Laser made with friend Ken Feingold, a spontaneous idea. I had made a series of photos at night with the laser pointer on sidewalks, and the laser was a table in my studio when Ken came by, and he asked about it. It seemed so insane, we made a film. In retrospect, the photos I made (I wanted to film it but couldn’t afford the ultra high speed film, mainly used in police surveillance, in fact I think it was called surveillance film. I settled instead for several rolls of 35mm still camera film. My studio was located in a part of downtown LA that very few people traversed the streets after dark unless they were intoxicated. I would target the laser point in front of the resellers moving it along as they went and recorded their reactions if any. Lasers were very unusual at that time. "

“Two Faces Have I this one probably came from that intuitive corner of my painter’s soul. The few times I have seen it, I don’t believe I could have known that something in it transcended my smart-ass young self who made it. It has all the animistic sadness of whatever we try to do, work hard at, and retire from.”