Call + Response by Ellen Lake

Description

Call + Response is a series of videos combining 16 mm home movies from the 1930s and 40s with cell phone and digital media today. These video diptychs can be shown projected, on monitors, or in a site-specific installation.

The source material for this project is 16 mm home movies I discovered in my grandmother’s closet. The films smelled like vinegar and were beginning to decay. I digitized 21 reels and draw from the collection for this project. Created with no thought of an audience beyond the living room, these films maintain their sense of intimacy and offer evocative images of life seventy years ago. Contrary to the stereotype of the faded, scratched, and shaky home movie, these films are carefully shot often with lush, vibrant color.

Over half of all films made before 1950 have deteriorated, been discarded or destroyed. Thinking about the rapid evolution in technology, how often something is lost to make way for something new, this project juxtaposes the past and present to investigate ideas about personal diary, collective memory, nostalgia, preservation, and the place where private and public experiences converge. With the ever-widening range of technological media available today, this project explores ideas about time, technology, and history.

Call + Response has room for collaboration with students, artists, and other mediamakers. I can post vignettes from the old 16 mm home movies and invite contemporary response videos from the community. These collaborative videos will be compiled, the artist will be credited, and included in the project.

Bio/C.V.

Ellen Lake received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California in 2002, where she studied sculpture, film & video, and installation. She is the recipient of Bay Area Video Coalition’s 2005 Mediamaker Award. Work from her latest series combining home movies from the 1930s with cell phone and digital media today has shown at the Walker Art Center, Exit Art, Crawl Space, Everson Museum, Heaven Gallery, Arizona State University Art Museum, Aurora Picture Show, Antimatter Underground Film Festival, Madcat Film Festival, and Axiom Gallery. Additional work has shown at Pacific Film Archive, the Exploratorium, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Tank, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and internationally at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel.

For C.V. click here

Work Samples

I Look Forward To It, 16 mm film & cell phone video, 1 min., 2008




Let's Not Keep Score, 16 mm film & cell phone video, 1 min., 2008