Emptiness Can Hold Things

Emptiness Can Hold Things

2017 · 82 min

Places—like stories, but different—are structures of communication and collective memory. A place is an organization, and memory is often an articulation of space. Something about space escapes our attempts to look at it from above. At intervals and thresholds of an urban landscape, EMPTINESS CAN HOLD THINGS improvises on techniques of polylinear perspective long practiced in Japanese painting and landscape design, in order to explore experiential principles inherent in the definitions of place. Merging architectural space with cinematic construction, this experiment pursues a cinematic language for the genius loci, captured in manifold perspectives and composed with reference to a mobile viewpoint that is propelled by feet.

Directed by Rachel Strickland

Your Rating

More from Rachel StricklandSee all →

The Flower of Pain

The Flower of Pain · 1983

The Flower of Pain

A semi-autobiographical film about an adolescent relationship, about emotional illiterates of a particular age and milieu. Structured as a series of fragments – so called “shards of memory” – the film follows the progressive dissolution of the affair in search for clues to its undoing.

Backyard Transformations

Backyard Transformations · 1991

Backyard Transformations

This exploration in combinatorial media and the morphology of narrative integrates motion picture, sound, and text elements in a story construction environment for children. Introduced through a series of card games that elicit spontaneous, improvisational creation, a collection of fanciful characters, unexpected events, and imaginary viewpoints, fabricated in the storyteller’s own backyard, are shuffled and revealed like a deck of Tarot cards. 174 movie intervals furnish scenes and threads from which children construct and narrate original stories. The project was developed in Los Angeles, CA at Alan Kay’s Apple Computer Vivarium Lab.

Finger Film

Finger Film · 1976

A taxonomy of manipulation, gesture, and touch for a computer research project with touch-sensitive displays, Super 8 film, MIT Architecture Machine Group.

Folia

Calculating how short-duration cinema might set about to examine the experience of a tree that plays out in year-long cycles, this 24-minute video experimented with polylinear construction and polytemporal scaling of sound and image that were recorded during one 24-hour slice of street life in the span of a city block. A preliminary study for THE SOCIAL LIVES OF URBAN TREES, Folia combined observational cinema techniques with interval recording to trace characteristic rhythms, humors, drifts, and parallel passages through the sidewalk forest.

Fly Line

Fly Line · 2013

Afternoon fishers rehearse the fine art of allurement without disturbing any fish. Anglers Lodge and Casting Pools at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 23 March 2013. 24p.

Soundsurround

Soundsurround · 2006

MovieDocumentary

Just when twilight gathers the day's lingering colors, fresh air musicians can be overheard in the process of nocturnal arrangements, and musical scales swell the space where cars had parked from 9 to 5. Four times a week the band players congregate here to practice their instruments.

Shuffled Stories

Shuffled Stories · 1990

Shuffled Stories

SHUFFLED STORIES & TALES WITH TANGLED THREADS: Teaching Language with BACKYARD TRANSFORMATIONS. Video documentation of classroom experiments, Los Angeles Open School, 1990.

Antecedence: Terence McKenna Talks Virtual Reality

Antecedence: Terence McKenna Talks Virtual Reality · 1991

Antecedence: Terence McKenna Talks Virtual Reality

On a midsummer afternoon Terence McKenna contemplated the ecological complexity of rainforests, the intelligence of ant colonies, and the proposition of modeling a forest anthill in VR.

Kalopashka

Kalopashka · 1975

Good Easter. Super 8 film. Observance of Holy Week in the island of Patmos. The monastery that rises above the village, founded in 1088, is consecrated to Saint John the Apostle, who wrote the Book of Revelation while living in exile on this Aegean island.

Palladio Potatoes Piano Piano: Building a Villa in 29 Scenes

Palladio Potatoes Piano Piano: Building a Villa in 29 Scenes · 2008

Palladio Potatoes Piano Piano: Building a Villa in 29 Scenes

MovieDocumentary

2005-2008. Video. In 2005 San Francisco real estate magnate Angelo Sangiacomo commissioned Strickland to make a movie that would chronicle final stages in the construction of his new house in Pebble Beach, CA. Amidst the spectacle of the building site, the videographer sought to portray a design project of operatic proportions that involved a sometimes dissonant cast of characters and took more than 6 years to unfold. The owners hoped that this video record might lend future visibility to a structure’s bones and soul that otherwise vanish from sight by the time building is completed.

Solstice and Solyanka

Solstice and Solyanka · 1975

Solstice and Solyanka

Super 8 film. Observations of the Institute on Film, Video & Photography, Amherst, MA, summer 1975. Among the cast of characters, in order of appearance, are Robert Breer, John Terry, Steve Ascher, Richard Leacock, Jon Rubin, Frank Daniel, Ed Emshwiller, Ann McIntosh, Terry Lockhart, Standish Lawder, Jerome Liebling.

Allegro

Allegro · 2008

MovieDocumentary

In this prequel to PALLADIO POTATOES PIANO PIANO, 2 timelapse sequences condense 3 years of the villa's construction to 10 minutes 33 seconds.

Rebuilding an Old Japanese House

Rebuilding an Old Japanese House · 1981

Rebuilding an Old Japanese House

MovieDocumentary

Five Japanese carpenters came to Boston that summer to reconstruct a Kyoto silkweaver's 150 year old townhouse that had been packed in crates and shipped to Boston Children's Museum. This first-hand observation of traditional tools and woodworking techniques chronicles the assembly process. In the progress of construction the contractor performed three Shinto housebuilding ceremonies.

Casting Sand Flying Glass

Casting Sand Flying Glass · 2023

Casting Sand Flying Glass

A sculpture by artist Katie Paterson and architectural studio Zeller & Moye, Mirage consists of 448 cast glass cylinders that were made of sands collected from 70 deserts around the Earth. This video chronicles the fabrication of Mirage and its installation in an olive grove.

For The Birds

For The Birds · 2012

Semiotics is For Cinema as Ornithology is For the Birds

Unnamed Work in Progress

Unnamed Work in Progress · 2016

Unnamed Work in Progress

MovieDocumentary

Jim Campbell's sculptural installation for Cowles Commons in Des Moines consists of 8000 LED's that chase one another around 9 elliptical rings suspended above the plaza. The project subsequently became known as SWIRL, and was officially illuminated on Tuesday 19 January 2016.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter