Screening Room
Morgan Fisher
16 mm, black and white, silent, 5 min
USA 1968 (Vienna 2012 version)
“Screening Room is, on the one hand […] a ‘site-specific’ film that Fisher (or a cameraman he has instructed) shoots in an empty movie theater (or gallery space) as well as on the way to it and that must be screened only for an audience at the same theater (or gallery); on the other hand, the artist emphasizes that every version shot in accordance with this rule constitutes the same film.” (Bellenbaum and Buchmann 2012: 214–215).
The version, or more precisely the “state” that Fisher made for the Austrian Filmmuseum in 2012, can – as with all the other “states” – only be seen projected at the very place it was made, a strategy that refuses the universal availability of the moving image, which has become the norm. We see a five-minute shot that represents the subjective view of a visitor – his or her advance up Augustinerstraße, through the passageways of Hofburg Palace, past the Filmbar, turning off into the foyer and the “Invisible Cinema”, and taking a seat in front of the projector-lit screen. The concept of Screening Room uses one of the main characteristics of film to highlight another. Fisher revokes the film copy’s “right” to be shown everywhere in the world and focuses on an inherent momentum in every all so “illusionary” film screening: A projection is a reality and therefore a unique event. This is precisely what the viewer realizes when the projectionist follows Fisher’s accompanying instructions: The lamp of the projector should cast another 20 seconds of white light onto the screen after the copy (which has no lead out) has been shown. The filmic image of the illuminated screen, a white image that fills the complete frame at the end of Screening Room, merges with the filmless, illuminated screen itself: the same screen that was just seen in the film. A virtual image becomes material reality. (Alejandro Bachmann)
Morgan Fisher, born 1942 in Washington, DC, lives and works in Santa Monica, CA.
More images
All frame enlargements: Austrian Film Museum.
Reference
Rainer Bellenbaum and Sabeth Buchmann, “Necessity as Option. On Conceptual Procedures in the Work of Morgan Fisher,” in Morgan Fisher. Two Exhibitions, eds. Sabine Folie for Generali Foundation (Vienna: Walther König, 2012), pp. 207–216.