Interview with Daniel Barrow, at the LFF Experimenta weekend

Canadian artist Daniel Barrow will be presenting one of his hand-drawn transparency ‘manual animations’ at the London Film Festival on 23 October 2010 as part of this year’s Experimenta season.

Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry (featuring a score by The Aislers Set Amy Linton) tells the story of an estranged garbage collector and failed art student who starts a project chronicling the lives of those around him, snooping into their houses and their trash, only to be foiled by a maniacal killer who takes his leads from his project, picking off subjects one by one. Saturday’s performance is now sold out but read below for the artist’s thoughts on how he developed his completely unique method and more.

LUX: Your live animation performance for Experimenta sounds quite unlike anything else happening at the London Film Festival this year; from the description it calls to mind early cinema magic lantern shows. What inspired you toward developing your very particular style of film making?

Daniel Barrow: My interest in magic lantern shows developed well after I had started touring my overhead animations. My first references and inspirations were always, comic books, cinema and lecture techniques. I began making overhead projector pieces while I was still an art history major in art school. My Byzantine/Medieval professor was an ex-nun who had taught art history since the 1950s. Over the span of decades she had perfected a series of very structured, rehearsed lectures. She would begin every lecture with two images on slide projectors, asking us to compare and contrast. We were not allowed to take notes while she lectured because she wanted everyone to have the same notes. Periodically, throughout her lectures, she would turn off the slide projectors and dramatically walk across the stage to an overhead projector where everything she had just said was condensed to point-form notations. There was something delightful and cozy about the juxtapositions of her voice, her hand-written scrawl and the art historical references. My first performances were intended as parodies of her lectures, but people took me very seriously. I immediately received an offer from a classmate to perform in a church, which I reluctantly accepted. Gradually these overhead projector pieces became more narrative and pictorial.

LUX: The narrative of Every Time I See Your Image I Cry self-consciously deals with questions around transformation