Linda Fregni Nagler

The magic lantern was the forerunner of the film projector and was used to project images on walls at the end of the 19th century. Using two antique magic lanterns – or sciopticons, as they are also called – she creates a performance that takes the audience on a journey into the past.

The viewer travels through time by means of the photos that Linda Fregni Nagler has collected for many years and which are projected by her old machines. The photos were taken between 1860 and 1940 and most of them are from Europe and the USA. Some are black and white, others beautifully and meticulously hand-tinted. They were originally intended as teaching aids, family portraits, scientific supports or documentation of people and places. Some have detailed descriptions written along the margins about the subject in the photo, personal notes by the photographer or owner of the picture, copyrights of the slide producer; other images do not carry any caption and their subject remains mysterious.

Fregni Nagler’s performance treats us to an associative image flow, which is composed by the artist specifically for each separate occasion. Out of the hundreds of photos in her collection, she chooses a number of images that are shown in double projections. The pictures in the old magic lanterns are switched by hand by two people, while a third reads the handwritten texts on the photos that do not appear in the projection. The performance evolves into a narrative, where the images from disparate contexts mutually influence each other by means of their place in the flow.  In this way, this visual trail can lead us to places we did not know we were heading for, like a game of “cadavre exquis” in projections.

Projectionists: Linda Fregni Nagler and Barbara Boiocchi

Voice: Stephen Piccolo

Curator: Camilla Carlberg