On the Road with Jorge Lorenzo
“‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac” by Jorge Lorenzo
Jorge Lorenzo is LIFT’s Winter 2017 Artist in Residence.
“‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac” by Jorge Lorenzo
Jorge Lorenzo is LIFT’s Winter 2017 Artist in Residence.
The Wank (USA 2004), 16mm, b&w, silent, 1:00min
Blue-up (USA 2005) 16mm, 4:30min., color, sound
PINHOLE SERIES 1: Bulb (USA 2006) 16mm film installation, loop, color, silent
FILM NOIR (100% Pure Black Film 1) (USA 2007) 35mm, 4:33 min., black, silent
Screen (Mexico 2008) (demo video 6:40min) film/video installation-appropriation
The Treachery of Time (Mexico 2008) 16mm film-to-video transfer, installation, loop, b&w, silent
1/48″ (Mexico 2008) 35mm, 1/24 sec., b&w, sound
The Horror (México-Colombia 2009) NTSC video, 2:56 min., color-b&w, sound
‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac (México/Colombia 2013) 35mm, 13:54 min., b&w, silent
Jorge Lorenzo is a distinct film artist working with in the conceptualist vein, combining an interest with the materiality of filmmaking with the humour of the conceptual art lineage. Lorenzo will be present for this screening of his films, including the infamous 1/48″, which played at the Images Festival in 2009 and has been named one of the “most subversive films of all times” by Alexander Howarth of the Austrian Filmmuseum, as well as ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, where Lorenzo typed the entire scroll of On the Road onto 35mm film. That and other films reveal Lorenzo’s conceptual impish-ness, a latent humour that he will build upon in the accompanying artist talk.
“In my earlier work, I started working with the ironic idea of eradicating imagery from the moving image medium or at least minimizing its presence as I did in 1/48” (2008), a film consisting of only one frame out of the 24 per second we normally see in regular productions. I have been very interested in avoiding representation for the sheer fact that I am constantly reminding myself, especially when making a film, that any form of representation is not an actual event, but a subjective reconstruction of it. I’ve gradually reached the conclusion that all forms of communication imply poetic intentions. Language for example, like poetry is just another way of “aestheticizing” –to avoid using the word “beautifying”– one’s own perceptions and experiences of the world; making our ideas sound or look “better” in order to convey our own opinions that other individuals don’t actually need, which only chain them to a specific version of the world, while oppressing their own views and experiences altogether. In my opinion, there is thus nothing to celebrate about communication and language, and nothing that we can trust in any form of artistic practice. The above ideas can be seen throughout my film work in different ways and different stages. My most recent project ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac (2013) is the most palpable example as applied to language. In this piece I re-typed Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel On the Road –written on a continuous paper scroll– onto a strip of 35mm film with the use of a typewriter. The project attempts, among other things, to convert Kerouac’s romantic, rhythmic writing method onto a cold and mechanical transcription in order to give the work new possibilities and readings that, when projected at 24 frames a second, although they do emphasize Kerouac’s intentions of immediacy, they transform the text into illegible blotches of letters that demystify and question language at its most elemental levels.”
—Lorenzo
After finishing his BA degree in Communication Science at Tecnológico de Monterrey in the year 2000, Mexican filmmaker Jorge Lorenzo got involved in the local Monterrey audiovisual production scene for a few years. In 2004 he got a Fulbright scholarship to study an MFA degree in Experimental Film and Video at the San Francisco Art Institute in California where he lived for three years absorbing the legacy and tradition of experimental cinema the area has developed throughout several decades. Lorenzo works on solely individual and personal film projects nowadays and although he is still active in the field of video and digital technology, his fondness for the use of celluloid is evident not because of the image it produces but because of the format’s physical, material, and formal characteristics. Thus, through several experimental techniques like cameraless film and appropriation methods, Lorenzo’s sly observations of film’s conceptual nature question, not only contemporary moving image technology in general, but our very existence and place in society as well. Lorenzo’s films have been screened at important experimental cinema venues such as the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), the Images Festival in Toronto, and the Experiments in Cinema festival in Albuquerque, among others. His piece 1/48” (2008)—which merely lasts one single frame out of the usual twenty-four we see every second—captured the attention of some members of the international experimental cinema community like Alexander Horwath, Director of the Austria Filmmuseum in Vienna, who has quoted it on several occasions “…the most subversive film of all times,” including an article published in the renowned film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Creative endeavors apart, Jorge Lorenzo teaches film and video-related courses at “Tec de Monterrey” in his hometown in Northeast Mexico. http://www.jorgelorenzocine.mx/en/pinhole-series
Jorge Lorenzo’s visit is made possible by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts through their Visiting Foreign Artists program.
Promotional support for the screening provided by the Consul General of Mexico – Toronto.
Thursday 15 December 2016 –
Non-members: $8.00
Members: $5.00
Location:
CineCycle
129 Spadina Avenue (down the alley)
Toronto ON Canada