S.P.A.C.E. EXPANDED

Saturday, November 22, 2025, 7 p.m.
EXPANDED CINEMA PERFORMANCES

INTRODUCTION
Katrin Mundt, Director of the European Media Art Festival Osnabrück (EMAF)
and others

PROGRAM
Malcolm Le Grice, Horror Film 1, 1971, Reenactment by Betija Zvejniece
Oliver Husain, Kerstin Schroedinger, DNCB, 2021
Bernd Lützeler, REVUE !!!, 2025
Pilar Falco, 333: Invocation, 2024

S.P.A.C.E. was a residency program (Nov. 2022 – Oct. 2024) set up by LaborBerlin as part of the SPECTRAL project, a collaborative initiative between six European artist-run film labs dedicated to exploring analog projection as an artistic practice. The residency provided artists with space, resources, and access to a fully equipped studio featuring projectors, film loopers, screens, and sound equipment. Its proximity to LaborBerlin’s analogue film lab allowed artists to integrate film processing and post-production into their workflows. Within this framework, participants explored a form of cinema that extends beyond the screen.

Organized by LaborBerlin, this program presents a selection of works developed during these residencies: live expanded cinema performances and installations that challenge conventional relationships between image and sound, dynamically activating the projection space and transforming it into a site of shared experience. Each piece emerged from an intensive period of artistic research and hands-on experimentation, highlighting the enduring vitality of analogue film as a living, evolving art form.

By bringing these works together, the program reaffirms the importance of creating spaces dedicated to the continued evolution of expanded cinema—where light, sound, bodies, and environment converge in shifting constellations of meaning, and the boundaries of the moving image are continuously redefined.
As part of the event, the Expanded Cinema Study Collection will also be accessible. It brings together video documentation from the series Expanded Cinema: Film as Spectacle, Event and Performance (HMKV Dortmund, 2004) and Expanded Cinema: Space / Time / Structure (WKV Stuttgart, 2006), both curated by Mark Webber.

Malcolm Le Grice, Horror Film 1, 1971, Reenactment by Betija Zvejniece, 14', sound
First presented in 1971, Horror Film 1 is a performance with three film projectors and a body. The three projections superimpose three loops creating constantly changing color effects. The body of the performer, placed in front of the screen, gradually moves towards the projectors while operating a series of movements that creates a complex set of colored shadows. The central image is larger than the two side images, which are superimposed in the center of the larger frame. A constant breathing is the only soundtrack that accompanies this 14 min performance.

Oliver Husain, Kerstin Schroedinger, DNCB, 2021, ca. 25', sound
DNCB stands for Dinitrochlorobenzene. It is a yellowish, crystalline, and highly toxic chemical used in color film processing. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the substance was also used as a treatment in alternative AIDS therapies. The performance combines layered images and sounds that reflect on the complex history of this chemical substance and the self-organized communities who used it. 

Bernd Lützeler, REVUE !!!, 2025, ca. 10–15', sound, music: Brain Operating System
Two Super-8 film projectors invite us to a stereoscopic 3D projection, a firework of psychedelic patterns and artifacts from the golden age of amateur cinema: it pumps, jumps, slides, and distorts the reference points of our languid brains. A trip.

Pilar Falco, 333: Invocation, 2024, ca. 25', sound
333: Invocation is a 16mm film noise performance that explores the combination of abstract and photographic images, to generate open associations and perceptions in the audience. Two frames coexist on a transparent screen that is lightweight and immobile. The possibility of discovering details and new compositions through repetition: a new perspective on the same images combined with a sequence of a moving body.

A program by
LaborBerlin

Funded by
Die Europäische Union
Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, Berlin