Insch - 1
/5
- Insch - 1
- 1976
- 16mm film, b&w, no sound
- 6min, 4sec
The film “Insch-1” probes the qualities of 1970s Super 8 film—in particular the Kodak film TRI-X, which was not only used for moving images but also became popular in analog black-and-white photography. While the title suggests the standard unit used to measure length in the US, it actually denotes the nickname of the artist’s wife Ingrid. At the beginning of the film, her lips are shown in close-up takes as she says, “This is a good film,” and “This is a bad film.” Since this film is silent, the content can only be figured out by lip-reading, which hints at a democratic model via which every film can be judged. The film’s main section remains blurry and shows the heavy grain structure of the film stock. The fact that what the artist was filming here was a scene where his wife was putting on make-up is irrelevant and cannot be discerned due to the snowy, grainy quality and weakly delineated contours of the action. It is thus the aesthetic qualities of the medium that occupy the center of attention, thereby concealing the mundane situations being shown. W.S.