Directing
“Bruce McClure doesn’t make films, he performs them… Twirling knobs, flipping switches, and adjusting lenses, he coaxes a bank of whirring projectors into producing images impossible to record.” THE BROOKLYN RAIL.
Bruce McClure multiple projector performance
Three common time loops, metered as one translucent to three frames of emulsion, with accents arising from their insides. Nested within each is a deficient partner, cut from the same womb, but with a caesura marked by extra frames between one pair of its luminous ornaments. Cycling, polar coordinates are rendered rectangular on the screen making waves with a beginning and an end.
A triple 16 mm projection performance, the minimalist NETHERGATE features metal scenic including horizontal and vertical slits with bi-packed loops of emulsion and transparent base ‘where obstructions replace passages’ (BM). The generated optical signals are processed by way of guitar effect pedals.
This event was part of Arika’s Kill Your Timid Notion Tour in 2008, preserved as part of their archive.
If any film could eat you alive, it would be this one. This epic finale to Bruce McClure’s Wexner Center projection performance builds to an all-consuming crescendo of light and sound. On handwritten program notes that McClure distributed at another performance, he wrote in the margin: "There is never enough time before an execution." And McClure’s performance, especially by ending with the void of Untitled Compliment's maw, felt like an attempt to extend and retain a special type of vision before the petite mort of the house lights. It's an experience that can't be transmitted or recorded by any device other than being in that specific time and place. -Chris Stults, Wexner Center for the Arts
One day, I bought a small lot of old Super 8 home movies for 15 bucks off eBay. Projected on my wall, I was struck by how many of the reels consisted of a random family's summer vacation footage. It felt slightly perverse to bear witness to the depth of a stranger's memories, and as I began wondering why they ended up for sale online, I felt a creeping obligation to destroy these images. Drown is what resulted from that endeavor.
Personalised instruments are used to transform loops of pure black and white frames into an immersive riot of perceptual phenomenon in colour, motion and sound. Bruce will employ four adapted 16mm projectors, the motors modified, brass grids retro-fitted between lens and gate. A stroboscopic and intense sensory overload of flashing abstract forms, cut to ribbons by modified projectors. You’re met with a white strobing circle pulsing on screen and slowly transformed as additional, overlapping projectors create strange halo’s and spheres, odd 3D expansions and contractions. As more projectors are added the image is shredded under a beating grid, color and form thrumming in front of your eyes until, as the last projector dims and you’re left in the dark, crazy blue tendrils follow your gaze, after-images burned on the retina like a delicate coda to Bruce’s performances. -Kill Your Timid Notion festival
"A Mixtape for Stom" is an intimate documentary portrait of Japanese experimental filmmaker Stom Sogo (1975–2012), whose frenetic Super-8mm works became emblematic of New York’s underground cinema at the turn of the millennium. A close friend, filmmaker Adrian Goycoolea reflects on Sogo’s life and legacy, framing the film as a reply to the final email he received from him. Drawing from personal archives, interviews, and memory, the film assembles a collage of Sogo’s art and presence: radiant, restless, and unresolved. Contributors include Jonas Mekas, Bruce McClure, Raha Raissnia, Julius Ziz, Ed Halter, Andy Lampert, and members of Sogo’s family, offering perspectives on his talent, struggles, and influence. Scored by Joe Watson of Stereolab, "A Mixtape for Stom" is at once an elegy and an act of remembrance; a meditation on friendship and grief, and a testament to an underground legacy that continues to reverberate.
"Two Projectors & A Barrel Full of Monkeys" calls to attention the machinery that will make film loops accessible to the audience and the projectionist. A barrel roll is a flight maneuver in which an airplane makes a complete rotation on its longitudinal axis while approximately maintaining its original direction. Meanwhile, maneuvers are possible actions given the materials at hand.
The artist used airbrush to spread ink on clear 16 mm film in his Brooklyn studio.
An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.
McClure creates hypnotic and immersive film experiences from a minimal quantity of audio-visual information. Loops constructed by bleaching clear frames from opaque emulsion are manipulated live by the filmmaker, using guitar effects pedals and adapted 16mm projectors, which have been modified in order to vary their intensity, speed and framing.
