The internationally renowned artist is currently showing at Tate Modern, and recently created an artwork for the Liverpool Biennial. As well as making films, Barba works with the physical materials of cinema, creating sculptures out of projection apparatus using moving images, projected light and sound. Her publication series ‘Printed Cinema’ documents and reveals the processes behind her artworks.
The screening included seven of her works from the last ten years, from shorter pieces of just three minutes, such as ‘It’s Gonna Happen’, which simply used text and sound, through to longer pieces, like ‘Outwardly From Earth’s Center’, which merged fiction and documentary in a more narrative-based structure. Unusually for an artist working in the digital age, Barba makes a point of only working with tangible formats, from 16mm, 35mm to Digibeta. She works in this way whilst also avoiding any air of nostalgia; the films shown on Wednesday night had an open futuristic dreamlike quality reflecting the artist’s concerns with archaeology, architecture and dystopia. They also showed how she has worked with communities of people, building narratives out of real situations and environments.
The event was programmed to coincide with the exhibition Unspooling – Artists and Cinema currently showing at Cornerhouse until Sunday 9 January, which examines new possibilities of future cinematic production, spectacle and storytelling.
Mary Stark
Cornerhouse Digital Reporter
@starkmary