Is it possible to create a cinema stripped down to only the movement that eludes it? To attempt a Beckett-style cinema that claims not to reproduce reality, but to “bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it—be it something or nothing—begins to seep through.” Would this cinema project onto the screen the basic mechanics of the spectator’s phantasy? Could this technique reconstruct a secret archive, a memory of repression, a repression of a reality the camera originally prohibited? To offer a radiographic analysis of what is under the skin of the image, an x-ray of motion pictures.

By analyzing films with custom software, I begin with subtraction. Realising cinematic time is only half of the time of reality, and cinematic movement is only a series of static moments, I subtract frames from each other in search for the movement that passed in between the frames—the movement that existed in between moments. In order to do this, I use a negative theological strategy; that is: to move towards the invisible through cancellation. The result reveals new frames for a new film, a reconstructed film composed only of interframes not illustrating colour or form, but illuminating the invisible movement.

These films are then playback on a custom built analytic project controlled by a computer with set screening times in the gallery. The projection continues the strategy of the gaps between images and is spatialized to gaps in time between screenings in the gallery. When the screening is done, the projector rewinds itself and starts the cycle again, a temporarlity that is different than the typical looping projectors often found in exhibitions.

Three films have been produced using this technique: