Saturday 15 January at 2 pm

Ken Jacobs’ famous film performances builds on a technique where he employs a simple analogue appliance in order to manipulate the film projector’s light, and gets still images, with the help of the viewer’s own perception, to move in a stroboscopic flow of pictures, a kind of optical illusion.

Ken Jacobs adds depth, not only in the shape of an escalated 3D effect, but specifically in the reading of the images. His works constitute a kind of the image’s own work – in the stroboscopic light another image than the one originally intended, becomes visible. These are painful works, on several levels. The images wobble and pulsate and seem to painfully extract a meaning. A social and political context is brought out.

Ken Jacobs has been one of the major influential figures within the field of American experimental film since the 1960th. Among his most known productions are Blonde Cobra (1963) and Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1969). Star Spangled to Death (2004, USA), a nearly 7 hours long film based on archive material, holds an exceptional position among the more recent works. His films, CAPITALISM: Slavery (2006) and CAPITALISM: Child Labor (2006) are included in the exhibition Image at Work at the Romanian Cultural Institute. These works are a digital elaboration of the artist’s film performances.