Patchwork Cinema @ Collective Gallery

As Edinburgh International Film Festival looms over Auld Reekie, Torsten Lauschmann’s latest offering at Edinburgh’s Collective Gallery poses some serious, timely questions about the way we view film, art and cinema. His exhibition, Patchwork Cinema, is a broad, eclectic study of the history of film and an attempt to regain the magic of cinema as a communal event, arguably lost in modernity. The exhibition is a composite of four works, all aimed at playful subversion. In a side room, a camera obscura is pointed at the human activity directly outside the gallery juxtaposing an ancient viewing technique with a thoroughly modern setting. In the waiting room a found still of an androgynous motorcyclist is animated so that her headlight shines back and moves according to the spectator’s gaze, and a real time film of a 24 hour digital clock, humanised by visible hands.

The standout piece, Patchwork Cinema Compilation 1, is an experimental 42 minute edit of found film footage spanning from the birth of the moving image to more contemporary fare. The compilation itself interests on two levels. Firstly many of the short pieces have never been screened in the UK before and range from the easily digested humour of silent cinema to the formalistic musings of Beckett and include rare examples of highly inventive pre-cinema techniques, such as phenakistoscopes and flipbooks. Secondly, Lauschmann directly challenges ideas of authorship and copyright by weaving these shorts together, creating his own cohesive work. The result is an emotive (rather than narrative) experience, with its own internal rhythms and codas, opening up different avenues for multiple readings.

Lauschmann also uses extraneous techniques, such as a disco ball, to engage the audience and highlight the important role of the screening room for his cinematic mixtape. The room is designed to offset what the artist views as the sanitised space of homogenous western cinemas and can be seen as an attempt to regain the circus-like atmosphere of “cinema before cinema”. Each seat seems to have its own character, ranging from lounging recliners to children’s rocking chairs. Similarly, the walls are covered in patchwork drapery with the screen itself being laid over a custom-made curtain. This D.I.Y. aesthetic makes for a relaxed, unique, communal space, which, combined with the experimental carnivalesque nature of the film, provides a powerful critique of the blank and isolating nature of modern cinema.