Workshop

Recipes for Disaster:

Direct Animation and Looping with 16mm Film, Paper and Scotch Tape

Date: May 23-25, 2025
Workshop: 10am – 2pm
Location: ACUD Studio

Participation is limited to 20 participants
and pre-registration is required.

COURSE DESCRIPTION
Participants will learn to make motion pictures and looping sound with a very economical tool: simple adhesive tape! Unfolding over the course of three mornings, students - armed with film leader, simple adhesive tape and a bucket of water - will learn to “paste” printed matter onto 16mm film frames, each ultimately producing a short loop (approximately ten seconds in length). We will then segue into making our own cassette tape loops, splicing by hand and re-recording onto them.

Participants will leave with their very own 16mm collage and reusable audio cassette tape loop.

FILMMAKER BIOS
Christin Turner (b. 1985, USA) is a Berlin-based filmmaker whose work seeks to change our ideas of the past with a new and more modern outlook. For her, video and audio are malleable forms enabling a multi-layered sedimentary approach to image-making. She is a member of Labor Berlin, and her 16mm films and videos have played at festivals and galleries worldwide.

Christian Flemm is a personal filmmaker, curator and laboratory technician who lives and works in Berlin. He practices Medium Intimacy, a devotional approach to filmmaking that resists the accelerations of digital through narrow-gauge images made for bedroom walls.

This course is designed as an introduction to direct animation techniques, and is intended for artists of all ages.

info : fractoproduction@gmail.com

REGISTRATION

*16mm film prints courtesy of Christian Flemm’s private collection

Fri 23 May

10:00 - 17:00 / ACUD STUDIO

After a brief introduction, the class will begin with a 16mm screening of Mothlight (Brakhage, 1963), Stars & Stripes (McLaren, 1939), and Bedtime Story (Shatavsky, 1983)* acquainting students with historical direct animation techniques and situating direct animation within the tradition of experimental and avant-garde art.

Following this, students will look at individual film frames with instructors on the light table. During this time, instructors will explain the proper orientation of the 16mm film image, and how the film runs through the projector. Frame rate, duplication and movement are also considered and discussed as phenomena.

Each student is then given a set amount of film material, which is worked on over the course of the three day period. Students are asked to keep their final loop at a certain predetermined length (e.g. the length of this side of the table), for the sake of brevity.

Students are then introduced to the animation materials, and are set to work. Instructors remain available to answer any questions for the duration of the workshop.

Sat 24 May

10:00 - 17:00 / ACUD STUDIO

Students will be introduced to techniques for making analogue audio loops using cassette tapes and scotch tape. There will be a short presentation of sound artists using repetition, like Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, and Gunvor Nelson. Students will then record their own using a 4-track tape deck, cassettes, and scotch tape.

Sun 25 May

10:00 - 17:00 / ACUD STUDIO

At the end of the work period, each student’s work is projected on a loop accompanied by the sound of their cassette.

Recipes for Disaster:

Direct Animation and Looping with 16mm Film, Paper and Scotch Tape

Fri 23 May

Sat 24 May

Sun 25 May

Thu 22

Fri 23

Sat 24

Sun 25