Part of Fall 2003
Carl Brown transmutes the dross of silver halide suspended in gelatin into visual poetry. Farming crystals on celluloid in his darkroom lab for over twenty years, he is Canada’s master of hand-processed film. His alchemical process leaves behind the traces of the involuntary becoming of photo-chemicals; mineral and vegetable affix themselves to a piece of celluloid, like jewels in a clear plastic setting. An unabashed abstractionist, Brown stacks up to eight images on one piece of film so that the projector’s light refracts through flowering prisms before sliding down the screen in multicoloured patterns.
neige noire is Carl Brown’s most luminescent work to date. Pure clear colour defines the gently undulating images that flow from the foreground to the background and back again expressing rising fear and forgotten childhood trauma that the conscious mind must set right. neige noire is 64 minutes of two separate film reels projected side by side. In tandem, longtime collaborator John Kamevaar (Kaiser Nietsche and CCMC) mixes two tracks of alternating lyrical jazz ballads and heavy house beats.
Following neige noire will be the premiere of Carl Brown and French experimentalist Rose Lowder’s most recent collaboration L’Invitation au Voyage (33 min., 2003).