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Patrick Reynolds
Winter Hof, 2012 looping 4K video, installation, Dan Hudson
Patrick Reynolds Disco Ball depicts the passage of time and the eccentricities inherent in singular moments. The film blends three years’ worth of personal documentary footage and sounds from disparate events in multiple domestic locations and condenses its imagery into
separate singular frame-by-frame compressed digital color spaces. Unfolding as a nonlinear, non-narrative piece, Disco Ball analyzes memory's natural consolidation of the past and straddles the lines between animation, video art, and experimental documentary.
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It hopes to consider the effect of time and readily available digital recording technology on the contemporary state of the perception and recollection of memory. The film was shot between 2011 and 2013 in my apartments in Brooklyn as well as during a trip to North Carolina. It was
completed in Chicago in early 2014 (where I'm currently located).
An interview with
Dan Hudson In Disco Ball you have used your personal documentary footage following a non narrative storytelling. We daresay that recurrent characteristic of your artworks is experience as starting point of artistic production: in your opinion, is experience an absolutely necessary part of creative process?
I don’t think that personal experience is a necessarily an intrinsic element of all creative processes, but it certainly serves as point of commencement in much of my own work. Still, even with my own projects I use personal experience as a sort of base layer on top of which I try to create work that’s more universally relatable. I typically work from the bottom up – I’m constantly taking photographs and shooting video, which I use as a sort of pool of available material for the creation of larger and more conceptually-driven works. How did you come up with the idea for Disco Ball?
In 2011 I began experiments processing video using extracted frames and relatively simple Photoshop actions to create videos that had been converted to extremely restricted and dynamic color spaces. I first used this method in my 2011 film Sleeping Alone for a short sequence that was meant to depict the remembrance of passed time. Disco Ball is supposed to serve as a companion piece to Sleeping Alone, but it differs from the first film in that it was created using a library of videos that had largely been created months or years prior to the editing stage. Where Sleeping Alone was shot and edited entirely within the span of a few months (and, as a result, attempted to mediate the “present-ness” of the footage), Disco Ball is a much more
reflective piece that condenses footage spanning a much longer period of time. I thought it would be a good project to continue exploring the video processing techniques that I’d previously employed, and I decided to base the entire visual look and editing style around the aesthetics established through those processing techniques. Perception and recollection of memory are fundamental aspects of your artistic research. Could you introduce our readers to your vision of time?
I wouldn’t say that I look at time or its passing with a great degree of scientific or intellectual inquiry, but I am fascinated by the impact of subjectivity and surroundings on the perception of time. There is a persistent debate within the photographic community regarding the authenticity of the photographic image; I don’t think that I’ve necessarily come to any conclusions regarding that debate, but I am a firm believer in the photographic
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image as a marker of a specific time and place. In this sense, as time continues on my relationship with the images that I create is constantly evolving and transforming. Your vision of memory and time reminds us of the stunning essays by Oliver Sacks. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?
My artistic influences are truly all over the place, but I’d say that my approach to my projects has been most directly informed by my love for punk music and its varying forms of physical ephemera – I spend much of my time designing and creating handmade artist books and zines, and I am also a musician and recording artist. As far as filmmakers go, I am a huge fan of Norman McLaren and other experimental animators and non-narrative filmmakers. I also love pop music, Hollywood films, Ingmar Bergman, The Bell Jar, McDonalds, William Eggleston, westerns, and
Masterchef. I try to enjoy a diverse group of artists and their works to maintain broad perspectives. I also like to toe the line between taking things too seriously and not taking things seriously enough, and I think that that’s been a result of my artistic influences as well. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?
Whenever I take new photos or shoot video, I typically take a look at the result (sometimes posting it to the Internet), and then let it sit for a while as I continue to create new work. As time passes by, certain images and moments tend to stick out in my mind, and as these images start to coalesce I begin to think of ways that they can work well in conversation with one another. I allow projects to develop themselves in this way organically, and from there I try to tease out and extend on conceptual elements as they begin to emerge.
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Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts with us, Patrick. What’s next for Patrick Reynolds? Are there any new projects on the horizon?
I’ve just finished working on a new photography book called I Firmly Resolve, which I debuted this past weekend at the Medium Cool book fair in Chicago. Next week I will begin a residency in Portugal, where I will be shooting photographs and video for a documentary and accompanying book that I hope to have completed by next April. I will also be screening Disco Ball later this month at a group show at Kitchen Space in Chicago. Thank you!
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