2’45”
William Raban
Black and white 16mm film, site-specific, 2 mins 45 seconds x variable numbers of screenings.
UK 1973–1980
“A film event that is refilmed each time that it is projected. On first showing there is only the blank screen. Image complexity develops through the successive stages of refilming.”
William Raban. Notes for ICA and NFT Expanded show, September 1973
According to Raban, “at least a dozen complete editions” of 2’45” were made between 1973–1980. By “editions,” Raban means clusters of sequential performances/screenings/filmings – preferably taking place in a “festival” setting over several days - that each contribute to a partially predetermined plan intended to highlight both routine and chance in familiar, yet contested enactments of cinema spectatorship. Constrained by the 2’45” duration of a single reel of film, Raban documented each successive screening with a 16mm synch sound newsreel camera, developing each film reel before the next screening. The result of this process was an increasingly convoluted soundtrack and moving images that appeared to show a progressively recursive structure, emphasized by a naturally occurring alternation between positive and negative generated by the re-filming. In terms of the cinematographic apparatus or dispositif, Raban consciously sought to close the gap between production and reception. That said, he is interested in maintaining a specifically filmic delay or interval (absent in video) between the two. 2’45” promotes a notion of cinema spectatorship based not on unbridled escapism, but good-humored, mundane captivity (albeit short-lived). (Barnaby Dicker)
William Raban, born 1948 in Norfolk, UK, lives and works in London.
More images
References
Duncan White, “Interview of William Raban, London, February 2008”, http://www.rewind.ac.uk/expanded/Narrative/Interviews_files/RabanTS.pdf.
Federico Windhausen, “Minimalist Principles: An Exchange With William Raban, 3 Jul 2016,” https://lux.org.uk/writing/minimalist-principles.