Cinema Paper. Érik Bullot

Why produce a work of art when it’s so beautiful to dream about it?  

(Il Decameron, Pier Paolo Pasolini)     

Dreaming up a film. Setting out the fragments of an upcoming, unfinished film in space. On paper, sketching out the characters of a fable that traces the visionary promises of language, from Braille to telepathy, from paroptic vision to the invention of the theremin in the 1920s: reading with your hands, seeing with your skin, touching without contact... there you have it, a bundle of unfulfilled utopias that make up the potential archive of a possible cinema.      

Dreaming up a film. Imagine it separated from its original body, divorced from its inherent technology and customary devices. Cinema Paper, spoken cinema, cinema by other means, expanded cinema, virtual cinema.

For many years, Érik Bullot has been questioning the transformations of an unstable and constantly metamorphosing art form, from optical toys to the radical change that has meant the definitive establishment of the digital. What is cinema today? If it is no longer an imprint of light captured on a photochemical medium, if its uses and functions have definitively mutated, if its images have burst out across a sea of screens, from phones to galleries, is it still what we have known throughout the twentieth century? Disregarding (and moving past) its repeatedly proclaimed death, the artist and theorist reflects on the developments, limits and specificities associated with cinema – technological, social, aesthetic, institutional. To what extent will it be able to negotiate the terms of such a metamorphosis without denying its identity asks the author of Le Film et son double [Film and its Double]. To what extent is it able to be diffracted, like the light in a kaleidoscope?      

In this exhibition at the Filmoteca, Bullot updates the hypothesis of a living and dematerialised cinema by means of a poetic essay and a rigorously documented investigation of some of the obsessions and chimeras that cinema has outgrown. The proposal includes two previously unseen installations alongside works by Ramón y Cajal, August Strindberg, Vicente Huidobro, Roland Sabatier and Jakob Mohr, as well as different formats, spanning collage, the moving image, photography and illustration, plus a series of programmes that will accompany the exhibition in the form of screenings, discussions, readings and a performative conference.

The event will also mark the launch of the second volume of our Apunts de cinema [Notes on Cinema] series of publications, an essay in twenty-four fragments that combines a speculative exercise with scholarly research.     

“By closing the eyes, the mental cinema is projected onto the screen of our eyelids. The film will be imaginary, or it will not be.”

(Érik Bullot)  

 

Marina Vinyes Albes (curator)

Érik Bullot is a filmmaker and theorist. His films have been screened at numerous festivals and museums, such as the Jeu de Paume (Paris), La Enana Marrón (Madrid), the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement (Geneva), the CCCB, the New Museum (New York), the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires and the Cineteca Nacional de Chile, among others, as well as forming part of several collections: Centre Pompidou (Paris), Departmental Contemporary Art Collection (Seine Saint-Denis) and Xcèntric (Barcelona). He has recently exhibited at MUCEM (Marseille) and ISELEP (Brussels).   

He has published several books on film, including: Sayat Nova (Yellow Now, 2007), Renversements 1 & 2. Notes sur le cinéma (Paris Expérimental, 2009 and 2013), Sortir du cinéma (Mamco, 2013 ), Le Film et son double (Mamco, 2017), Roussel et le cinéma (Nouvelles Éditions Place, 2020), L’Attrait des ventriloques (Yellow Now, 2022) and, in Spanish, El cine es una invención post-mortem (Shangrila, 2015), Fotogenias y paradojas (UNTREF, 2018), Salir del cine (Shangrila, 2020) and Cine de la posible (Metales pesados, 2021).  

Currently, a professor at the National School of Fine Arts in Bourges (France), he has taught film and photography at a variety of art schools: Marseille, Le Fresnoy, Arles and Avignon.

Cinema imaginari. Conferència performativa

Exhibition Opening Event.

Th, 28 September | 19.00h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Paraula d’autor: Érik Bullot.

Master class. Pre-registration: taquilles@cccb.org

Fr, 29 September 2023 | 18.00h | Arxiu Xcèntric (CCCB)

Guided tour of the exhibition with Érik Bullot

Pre-registration: filmoteca.taquilla@gencat.cat

*Master class registration includes a place on the guided tour.

Fr, 29September 2023 | 19.30h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Cinema inacabat: José Antonio Maenza, Maya Deren i Serguéi Paradjànov.

Screenings with commentary.

Tu, 24 October 2023 | 18.00h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Cinema sense cinema.

Illustrated conference, part of the Aula de Cinema film classes.

Collaboration with Intangible Festival

Wed, 25 October 2023 | 17.00h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Retrat del cineasta en ventríloc.

Érik Bullot reflects on his artistic practice and writing in relation to the publication of Apunts de cinema, published by the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

*This session marks the end of Aula Xcèntric 2023: Escriure el cinema II. Free entry for those enrolled on the course.

Wed, 29 November 2023 | 18.30h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Estrena a Catalunya de la pel·lícula Langue des oiseaux (Érik Bullot, 2021).

With the filmmaker in attendance.

Wed, 29 November 2023 | 20.30h | Filmoteca de Catalunya

Teaser

Produced by

Filmoteca de Catalunya

Departament de Cultura

Curator

Marina Vinyes Albes

Programation, Exhibition and Learning Programmes Chief

Marina Vinyes Albes

Production manager

Núria Expósito

Esther Vilà

Assistant Production manager

Júlia Pérez i Gonell

Design Management

Jaume Coscollar (Taller Pontí)

Installation and Exhibition Production

Grop Exposicions i Museografia

Cinema paper Impression

Tinta invisible

Lighting

ILM

Translation and correction

Tys

Joaquim Sala Sanahuja 

Acknowledgments

ADGP

CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques, France) 

Colección legado Ramón y Cajal. Instituto Ramón y Cajal (CSIC)

Prinzhorn Collection, University Hospital Heidelberg

Fundación Telefónica

Museo Reina Sofia 

National Library of Sweden

Oliver Peyroux

Philippe Baudouin

In collaboration with:

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