Tacita Dean's FILM, shot in 35mm film for the Tate Modern's vast Engine Hall, is showing at ACCA as part of the Melbourne Festival (10 October - 24 November).
In a recent article in the The Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Stephens updates readers on the artist's mission to resist "technological determinism' and save film from obsolescence in the digital age.
In 2006 Dean made a film about the Kodak factory in France, using soon-to-be-obselete film stock - and the place closed down shortly after. Since then, she's found it increasingly difficult to source film stock and get it processed and to get people in authority to understand why it is so glorious.
In an earlier article published in the Guardian she wrote: "My relationship to film begins at the moment of shooting, and ends in the moment of projection. Along the way there are several stages of magical transformation that imbue the work with varying layers of intensity. This is why the film image is different from the digital image: it is not only emulsion versus pixels, or light versus electronics, but something deeper - something to do with poetry."
Image: Tacita Dean's installation in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, October 2011-March 2012. Photograph from the Guardian
