under the microscope is part of the beautiful program `The Celluloid Specimen´ at Labocine.
You can watch it until Jan 3rd at:
https://www.labocine.com/issues/the-celluloid-specimen
Our last issue of the year is an analogic trip down memory lane. In the book with the same title, the author Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa examines twentieth-century behaviorist films that captured animal experiments, revealing the central role of cinema in generating psycho-social definitions of species, race, identity, and culture that continue to shape our contemporary political and scientific discourses.
Our focus here is on the very nature of the specimen. It instantly becomes a contradiction when it is imprinted on celluloid: living, non-living, preserved, damaged, natural, artificial – all at once. A specimen encomapsses the animal, plant or organic fragment that collectively serve as evidence for an existing, forgotten or future species or ecosystem. A specimen is often a (proto)type for scientific study or display.
Welcome to our Cabinet of Curiosities : our collection of beautiful film-sensitive by-products that have evolved since the first light exposure. The frames feels like a genetic code that have mutated into new forms and shapes. Traces of animal life, landscapes that appear frozen in time, subliminal images with signs of wear and tear, all inhabited onto the black and white or the myriad of color-sensitive film stocks. They’re calling to be preserved even more in the digital age and have landed in the Science New Wave.
Are the individual pieces found footage or archive? Is the ensemble seemingly curated or perhaps a jumble that provides us new meanings and viewing experiences?
Curated by Alexis Gambis
