I use film as a living presence on stage. In my analog film works, I explore ways to actualise the subject of my performance within the very material of the film I’m projecting.
Expanded cinema audiovisual performance for two 16mm film projectors with optical sounds, two screens, and one amplified trumpet with a loop station.
Summary
• DIsINCARNATE is the creation of a human creature. Dwelling in a state between the living and the non-living, I explore the incorporation of human skin and hair in the film emulsion.
• This performance continues my research into using analog film as a living entity on stage.
• DIsINCARNATE draws inspiration from the quantum superposition principle, broadening our understanding of existence and reimagining the human category. It investigates how we can relate to other forms of life and non-binary states of being.
DIsINCARNATE focuses on the concept of existing/not existing and the possibility of living in a state of being and non-being simultaneously.
To express the concept of “being” in existential terms, I stripped the human persona of identifiable features. My black-and-white human silhouette is devoid of identity and struggles to fit into a human category.
The very film forming the creature includes human elements—skin, hair, and other biological materials—that I mixed with the film emulsion. Thus, the film becomes part of the human prototype in the performance, mirroring the same struggle to fit into the category of the living.
The superposition principle implies the coexistence of conflicting states within a single wave of probability. I sought to extend this idea to human materiality, exploring the possibility of existing and not existing simultaneously. If a photon can exist in conflicting states, perhaps I can be both alive and dead at once.
My motivation is to create an experience that challenges our binary perception of reality. Living in a computational world, we often conceive reality as binary—on/off, I/O. By introducing the concept of quantum superposition, I question whether human existence could parallel the behavior of a qubit.
I unfold something that is undefined, that exists in multiple and conflicting states, doesn’t have unity but roughly assembled parts, but it has more possibilities than we have, because we chose where to stay and it doesn’t.
DIsINCARNATE was developed during the SPECTRAL residency, in collaboration with Filmwerkplaats and WORM Rotterdam. Please contact me if you would like to view the video documentation.
CINZIA NISTICO 