Bamboo Xerox (1983)

Overview

"Behind my desire to 'activate' the audience is a distaste for sutured, hegemonic cinema. By this, I mean a cinema dominated by both narrative and documentary traditions, cinema that hypnotizes its audience through invisible editing, illusionist sound, and 3D) perspective. With Bamboo Xerox, I found another strategy to move my audience and break illusions. I photographed bamboo (my favorite grass) from my backyard and then xeroxed both sections of living bamboo and the photographic stills of the bamboo. After editing the film, I had the entire six-minute film blueprinted as a black and white scroll. I stretched the scroll horizontally around the theater space so that the audience could see the film frame by frame before they saw the projection. Perhaps the audience could break the illusionist ritual-or at the very least experience a different way of seeing a film." — Barbara Hammer