Double Run Eight, 2022
Two-channel digital projection of original 16mm print, 2 minutes
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gelatin silver prints
Bell & Howell Filmo series 8mm camera, Slemmons camera collection
Double Run Eight was made with a “Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight” series camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Collection. The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print.
Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm film. This iteration of the film as a two-channel digital projection has one of the projections inverted, inviting the viewer to experience the film from both directions. The installation format also mimics the image plane, with two viewers and two projections becoming four quadrants, or four frames.
The accompanying photographs are contact prints of the negatives made using a Kodak 16mm Enlarger camera, also from the Slemmons Collection. This camera was designed to photograph 16mm frames onto still photographic film. The visual and temporal shift of the moving image to a photographic print serves as a reminder of the fundamental connection between still photography and cinema. The negative-positive inversions are a rudimentary principle of the analogue process, and the rephotographing sequence can be traced through the “double negative” contact print of a negative image on a black background.