Film (Fluentum)

The nature of materials, their antecedents and histories of creation form the starting point for Margaret Honda’s artistic practice, which has spanned three decades. In the time-based installation Film (Fluentum), created for Fluentum, Margaret Honda focuses on the materiality of the medium of film. To this end, she works with a specific set of conceptual principles and arithmetical rules, which she applies to the context of Fluentum and the exhibition Time Without End: The number of windows in the space, the availability of color filters, as well as the duration of the exhibition become formative elements determining the work’s outcome.

Over the nearly thirteen weeks of the exhibition, a total of thirty-six LEE light filters, normally used in the film industry for color spotlights, are gradually installed in the nine window segments. The filters were organized as parts of “reels” following the manufacturer’s numbering system; the respective running time can be gathered from the separately installed score. The featured hues document all the light filters available at the time of the conception of Film (Fluentum) at the second-hand Los Angeles supplier Expendables Recycler. As unused remnants from various film productions, they mark a time-specific section of recent cinematic products by highlighting what did not become part of a production process. Interwoven with the architecture of Fluentum’s exhibition space and determined in physical form by the prevailing lighting conditions, the filters, as material carriers of images, transform the exterior environment and, as it were, alter the view of the interior space.

As with a conventional film, Film (Fluentum) is also coupled to the passage of time in its perception. However, while the length of the film determines the duration of the viewer’s stay in a conventional cinema setting, Film (Fluentum) is only ever presented in specific excerpts due to the filter changes taking place over several weeks. The perspective shifts from the closedness of things to the process that takes place between them. Honda’s work thus also refers to the material conditions images are produced, distributed, and displayed under.