Double Run Eight
Solo exhibition for the Chicago Cluster Project at Epiphany Center for the Arts
September 9 - October 22, 2022

Double Run Eight was made with a “Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight” series camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive. The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print. Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm print. The exhibition at the Epiphany Center for the Arts showed the original negative as a 16mm projection loop. The negative degraded over time, accumulating scratches and dust throughout the duration of the show and eventually disintegrated. The film exists now as a 16mm print. 

The accompanying photographs were made using a Kodak 16mm Enlarger camera also from the Slemmons Camera Archive. This camera was designed to photograph 16mm frames onto still photographic film. The visual and temporal shift of the moving image to a photographic print serves as a reminder of the fundamental connection between still photography and cinema. The negative-positive inversions are a rudimentary principle of the analogue process, thus the rephotographing sequence can be traced through the “double negative” contact print of a negative image on a black background and the white prints resulting from contact printing of these.

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