Andrew Lampert is at the forefront of a new generation of artists engaging with film, video and performance, revisiting and extending the dialogue around an expanded cinema. Pursuing the alchemy between artist, art, and audience in a public space, Lampert explores the contingency of film as a medium, introducing unscripted and chance elements. Reveling in cinema as a performative environment, Lampert reclaims this space from a mass media culture to emphasize its potential for immediacy and accident—and to make each of his screenings and performances a one-of-a-kind event.
Lampert's media works defy strict categorization as films or videos. At EAI, Lampert will project Super-8 films and also present works on video. Taking on the role of projectionist, he will orchestrate the screening, providing introductions and commentary with performative elements. The event will include the first New York screening of a video from Lampert's new diary series, shot (often surreptitiously) with the artist's cell-phone-sized pocket video camera; short films described by Lampert as "the death of Kodachrome," and two works that look at adolescence, one in a fictionalized, filmic past (ETKA AND MASHA: TEENAGERS OF THE OLD WORLD, 2010, 12:29 min) and the other in today's video-saturated reality (MADELINE VICTORIOUS, 2010, 6:26 min). These projects are unified in their emphasis on the frame around the edges of narrative—the genres and clichés in which he cloaks on-screen action, the happy accidents during production, and the unexpected events during a screening that shape the audience's response and foreground human activity in the cinematic context.
Lampert explores the cinematic experience as content, experimenting with the physical spaces between projector, projectionist, audience and screen—and with the experiences made possible through their convergence. The cinema becomes a site of abstract and magical production in his performances, videos and films, as Lampert investigates the gap between an artwork's private intent and its public reception.
Following the screening, Lampert will join Alan Licht and EAI's Rebecca Cleman in conversation. Licht, an acclaimed musician, writer and curator, is a frequent collaborator of Lampert's. Over the last five years, they have staged a number of live performances together under the name Lamp/Licht. The program will conclude with a Q&A session.
