Dada's Daughter 2022

0h 33min Director: Sara Sowell

Dada’s Daughter is an expanded cinema performance comprising 16mm projections, cinema-objects and a live score. The performance is introduced with hand-developed black and white 16mm photograms made from the imprints of microplastic stars, tacks, jewelry and industrial scrap metal. This process of exposing objects onto celluloid is drawn from Man Ray’s “rayographs,” produced as early as 1923. Spliced in between these images are sections of clear film leader that cue a live performance re-animating the cinema-objects used to create the photograms. When placed in front of the projector these objects create tactile optical images; impressions of form, shape and pattern that reenact the photogramming process. The presence of the photogram reel and performative qualities of this work highlight the tension between ontological concepts of cinema—the material and the ephemeral.