2017
'Necessary Intermission' was created for a live cinema performance on July 6th, 2017, presented at the Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College.
Projected in a makeshift cinema housing a 12' × 9' screen, Necessary Intermission is a sixteen-millimeter film assembled from the strips that typically precede and follow a feature presentation. Silver, grey, and black fields of emulsion move across the screen. At each splice, a flash of bright white light fills the room, marking the point where one strip of film is joined to another.
Guide paths were laid out across the floor using lines of white plaster dust extending the width of the screen wall. More than one hundred viewers sat on black folding chairs arranged in two sections, leaving a central aisle that accommodated a 16 mm projector, audience circulation, and those entering or exiting the room. The sound of white-noise machines filled the black box theater. As the film was projected, the artist paced continuously, tracing the perimeter of the space. The projector required several failed starts, and at one point the film briefly caught fire in the gate before being threaded again. The room was hot and bothered.