Performances and Screening
In person only
Microscope kicks off its series of “imageless” performances in connection and collaboration with the current series “Imageless Films” at Anthology Film Archives with “Films Imaginaires,” a rare evening of 16mm films and performances by the French artist Maurice Lemaître (1926 – 2018).
Lemaître, the author of the legendary 1951 film “Le film est déjà commencé?” (Has the Film Started Yet?) and known for introducing live performative elements in the traditional screening, is one of the main figures of the Lettrist movement along with Isidore Isou, François Dufrêne and Gil J. Wolman, among others. Through what he called “syncinema” — a screening with: “a special type of screen, a projection intended as mise en scène in which interventions by the ‘public’ (actors, audience, ushers, projectionists, etc.) are incorporated, within a venue entirely rearranged (screening room, entrance, etc.)” — he effectively transitioned from the “film” to the “séance de cinéma,” that is to say a more theatrical form of screening, a performative cinematic event.
In 1963, the artist began making works that he described as “infinitesimal” and “super-temporal” borrowing the two terms and concepts from Isou, who had formulated them a few years earlier. Whereas “infinitesimal” is a work based on “particles lacking immediate sense, in which every element exists as long as it allows to imagine another element that is nonexistent or possible,” (Isou) a “super-temporal” work is one offering “an open structure in which audience interventions are endlessly possible, and in this sense continuously surpassing time,” (Lemaître).
These works that are based on his pivotal interest in the activation of the audience and more akin to sets of instructions than to actual films not only require the viewers’ participation but also ask audience members to be involved in the creative process and imagine the films themselves.
The event includes the projection of two collections of such imaginary films and film concepts that Lemaître turned into inter-titles for 16mm film projection, “Films Imaginaires” (Imaginary Films) from 1985 and “6 films infinitésimaux et supertemporels” (6 infinitesimal and super-temporal films) assembled in 1975 and including the works: “Moteur!” (1967), “Le film de demain” (1967), “Votre Film” (1969), “Un film à faire” (1970), “Un programme d’avant-garde” (1970), and “Qu’attendez-vous? Un Film?” (1975).
The screening is preceded by restagings of a few of the performances described in the films — including a raffle with special prizes and quizzes! — following the artist’s instructions to the best of the gallery’s abilities, while attempting to stay true to their original spirit.
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Maurice Lemaître, who was a poet, painter, sculptor, playwright, novelist, and photographer born in Paris in 1926, joined the Lettrist group in 1949, after a short involvement in the libertarian movement. He quickly became one of the principal Lettrism disseminators and artists while developing a groundbreaking artistic, filmic, and literary oeuvre.
Maurice Lemaître completed his first film “Le film est déjà commencé?” in 1951.Through this work, open to the audience’s participation, he at once revolutionized cinema, renewed the notion of “avant-garde” and invented a new form of cinematic presentation — the “syncinema” — prefiguring the happenings of the 1960s.
Starting from the 1950s and until his death in 2018, Maurice Lemaître produced a cinematic oeuvre that today appears to be one of the essential axis of his creation. Author of over a hundred films and film performances, the artist has investigated the multiple dimensions of his work through cinema. This is why Lemaître, alternating conceptual films to works considering film in its physicality, performances or “dysnarrative” practices, was a pioneering figure in each of these domains. — Christian Lebrat, from “Maurice Lemaître – Oeuvres De Cinema (1951-2007)”