Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Bruce McClure @ the Loft

MAGIC EYE @ The Loft presents


"Cycloptically Through The Window Disks - There's Rings For All!"
A Projector Performance by Bruce McClure
Saturday, May 16th, 8pm, $6
The Loft @ Load of Fun (120 W. North Ave)

Magic Eye is proud to host expanded-cinema artist Bruce McClure in his Baltimore debut. McClure, who recently played with Throbbing Gristle, will perform two half-hour live projector performances. Working with four modified 16mm projectors, film loops, guitar pedals and a handmade soundboard, McClure “plays” the mechanical supports of film like musical instruments. Harnessing the strobing light and percussive sounds from his stockpile of projectors, McClure’s performances are an improvisational audio-visual experience not to be missed.

“At the circus, in the safety of our seats, we watch the elephant coaxed into intemperate feats. As the lights come up we realize that we never left the velveteen plush of the movie house. Products of the 19th century, incandescent light and its offspring, the movie projector, were given a voice in the 1920’s by optical sound. These revolutionary technologies may be languishing at the edge of extinction but will be celebrated and preserved as echoes and afterimages of the machine age resonating in the vitality of the 21st century consciousness”. - Bruce McClure

Bruce McClure lives in Brooklyn, New York. Celebrated by the noise music, experimental film and fine art communities, McClure’s performances have stunned audiences at the Kill Your Timid Notion Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival “Views from the Avant-Garde”, the Toronto International Film Festival and the 2002 and 2004 Whitney Biennial. He is a recent recipient of the 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts.

Magic Eye is a sporadic screening series of experimental film and video. Based in The Loft, the series aims to bring innovative filmmakers to Baltimore to screen their work and join in a dialogue with the larger Baltimore art community. The series will also host retrospectives of established filmmakers from the avant-garde. In January, Magic Eye held it’s inaugural screening with the films of visiting artist Robert Todd.