Interview by Alex Mackenzie

In today's transforming landscape of motion picture film Lee Krist is a cinematic artist committed to hedonistically indulging in the vast tapestry of photographic emulsion. For the past eight years, Krist has created experimental films that specialize in hand-processing techniques. His Big Film Series--a collection of hand-processed 35mm film portraits shot and projected using turn-of-the-century, hand-cranked motion picture equipment--has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Cinematheque and Pleasure Dome in Toronto. His latest film installation, Tableaux Vivant, is a visual exploration of the processes inherent in the medium of film. Krist currently teaches at the Northwest Film Center and has taught workshops at Bard College and LIFT.
This spring Lee is artist-in-residence at LIFT, where he will be giving workshops in experimental animation, rotoscoping and reversal hand-processing. He will be using LIFT.'s newly acquired 35mm Oxberry printer to work on his current film in Tableaux Vivant and to produce archival prints of the portraits in the Big Film Series.
Alex Mackenzie interviewed Lee Krist four years ago when he was in Vancouver presenting work at the Blinding Light!! Cinema, and caught up with him recently via email. The original version of this interview appeared in 250W (issue #1, August 2000).

Alex Mackenzie: Maybe we can start off by discussing your body of work and how hand-cranked material fits into it--is this a natural progression, jumping off from other pursuits?
Lee Krist: My use of a hand-cranked camera originated in my experimentations with making photographic emulsions. I hand-process all of my films, so I gradually got more and more interested in photo-chemistry. Having a chemistry lab at my disposal was also a big asset. But the 35mm hand-crank route was a result of needing to work with a durable large-format film camera that could basically pass anything and everything through its gate. In addition to the long exposure, my hand-cranked camera allowed me the technical capabilities to pursue making my own film stock.
AM: Are you in communication with anyone else creating their own emulsions, or is this entirely your domain?
LK: I hear bits and pieces about people doing similar things. But it's mostly second-hand news. I know many people have tried it, but I am quite unaware of the extent of their photochemical achievements.
AM: Could you speak a bit more about the actual creation of film emulsion? How does that work exactly (okay, not exactly, but generally…)?
LK: Well, to simplify it, all you have to do is sensitize silver and have it properly suspended on a surface--something that I have yet to successfully achieve. If I were a photographer, my life would be so easy.
AM: I understand that you work at a film lab and that it was a dream of yours to pursue this. Does the content of lab contracts (commercial work) matter to you, or is it the process itself that takes precedence? How much are you keeping this job to have access to lab chemicals, and how much do you really love it?
LK: I like working with film--touching it, handling it. I'm not into it for the chemical perks, just the ability to get paid to slave away at something I find interesting. For me it does have this secret craft appeal, like I'm preparing for the future. The only troublesome things about the job are the environmental and carcinogenic hazards.
AM: Your films seem very personal--intimate, and fascinated by a closed system of elements. How do the subject of your films and the techniques you pursue cross-pollinate?
LK: Wow! I really like the closed system of elements metaphor. It's a good euphemism for what I do. For the portrait series, the subject matter was very grounded in the technical situation that I was in. My previous work was comprised of landscape and abstract imagery. But I was completely paralyzed by the idea of shooting on very precious and time-consuming stock, so the most logical approach was to film things that were personally sacred to me.
AM: I like that both the film stock and the film subject become sacred. It seems that both the technical and the conceptual spring from limitations inherent to the medium at play: economics, durability, etc. Do you find the limitations to be inspiring? Necessary even?
LK: For me it's not the limitations themselves that are inspiring but my personal response to them: the attempt to work and struggle within the confines of a specific situation and achieve personal satisfaction with the results, as if it was my original intention.
AM: How important is the necessary "in-person" element to your presentations? Is it exciting, disconcerting, primary? Is this as much a part of the "piece" as the making of it?
LK: It is one of those unexpected surprises, something you don't think you’ll like until you experience it. It has enriched my life tenfold, it really got me out of that hermetic filmmaking mode that is quite rampant in experimental filmmaking. It's nice to bring things to basics and be able to show people your films as a personal extension of yourself and the life that surrounds you. So for me it makes the experience of being an artist more tangible.
AM: How specifically performative is your work? Do you integrate the projector set-up in the audience somehow? How much do you think the audience is watching you instead of your work, and is that okay with you?
LK: I feel my work could be more performative. Right now, it's at the simple "show people your films" stage. I try and set myself up in the middle of an audience. That way it doesn't feel like everyone is watching me and it makes me less nervous. I'm okay with people watching me crank instead of paying strict attention to my films because when you think about it, how many times do people get to watch someone hand-crank a projector? It's reassuring to see the combination of the two.
AM: You choose to work with these limited tools and so are inspired by your responses to them, but you actually set up these limitations in the first place. If you had, for example, chosen the video medium, this wouldn't come up. Nor would you be pursuing anything resembling what you are doing with your work now. It seems you are making a very conscious decision to limit yourself in a very specific way. I guess it leads back to that question of responsibility and the role of serendipity or chance results when you create work. Could you speak about that?
LK: I don't see responsibility and serendipity as being necessarily that bi-polar.
AM: I agree--they are not at opposite ends of the spectrum. I am mostly curious about the drive forward which you feel when creating work. Is it: experiment with a "who knows what will happen next" attitude, get certain results and then refine? Or seek out something very specific, get results and refine? Or keep trying until you get what you want? In other words, how much is your work about chance and how much is it about planning?
LK: I have very specific visual intentions for my films. I aim at perfection and what happens is another story. If I ever got what I want I'm not so sure I would be pleased with it. But in terms of my work structure, I tend to have a more pseudo-scientific process. I don't get specific with certain projects, but I do have a general intent that provides me with various results that I couldn't repeat if I wanted to.
AM: Could you explain the Big Film Cycle? Are there more than one?
LK: The Big Film Cycle is just a name for the series of 35mm films that I present. At present it encompasses five films and will include more films upon their completion. I prefer to think of it as a series. I'm not quite sure how the cycle came to be. I think Stephen [Kent Jusick, New York-based curator] wrote it up as that for the Daily News. I prefer for it to be called Big Film.
AM: Given the form and technique involved, how concerned are you about the preservation of the films you make? Do you see them as having a limited life cycle and being ephemeral in nature, or do you see preservation as important/necessary?
LK: I'm concerned enough to panic about only having and showing originals, but not enough to do anything about it. Everything I present is camera originals. And the first few scratches hurt, but after a while it just becomes this choice you have to make: show films or save them. I should make prints, but if being a printer at a lab has taught me anything, it is that when it comes to making prints of films there is no such thing as exact mechanical reproduction. It would be so hard just to get the various exposures right, let alone the hand-processed colours. So for me that means there is just one. And in that sense, I guess it gives the films an ephemeral quality that is not usually present in most work. They aren't going to last, but then they might as well go out with a bang instead of as vinaigrette. That being said, there will be a time for restoration but it's not now. And the purpose wouldn't necessarily be to reproduce the work per se, but to partially capture some form of it for later vague recollection.
AM: I'm interested in the "dead media" qualities of your work. Do you feel that label references your work? And to what extent are the technical apparatus that we use changing? Or is it just the way we receive and process information that is changing?
LK: For me it is very important not to look at my films and see superficial historicism in the use of materials of the past. I feel that my work is very much located in the present and is involved in a discourse that questions how we use certain technologies and our relationship to them. And I feel this does relate to questions concerning my transgender identity.
AM: I very much agree with you that the use of so-called outmoded technologies is not a hearkening back to the past, but rather a way of examining the present and possibly a reaction to the modes of information processing available to us as a culture today. I have worked with Super 8 cartridge projectors not because they are hiply retro but because they do what I need them to do, which is to create filmic images that I can quickly switch between without having to reload projectors. While this sort of thing is now possible with videodisc technology, it is not possible economically. And so in a way both you and I are reacting to economics at a certain level too, obviously in combination with aesthetic interests.
As with much of the successful experimental work out there, I believe your work challenges the viewer/audience to reconsider what is a "good" image and how "standards" are in fact an economic ploy and cop out. But I particularly like that your work exists outside of this realm and, far from being a reaction, actually exists on its own terms (which is far more interesting) while still maintaining this role wherein it does create discourse.
I am curious to know how much gender issues play into your work, and how you feel about the pigeonholing of work that is "gay," "queer" or "transgendered" in festivals which base content on sexual orientation. How does your trans identity affect or inform your work?
LK: In terms of the pigeonholing of certain work, this just creates a queer ghetto that no one wants you to get out of. While queer film festivals are vital in challenging the dominance of hetero-normative experience in film, it is vital that we go a step further: in addition to questioning the messages in media's representation of society, also question the medium itself and how we use it. I find it interesting to explore ideas of how my trans identity and experience informs the way in which I process information and how it affects my aesthetic sensibility and the overall imagery of my work. For me it feels that "normal” filmic forms--i.e. mainstream or even narrative forms of film--just don't do it for me in terms of capturing the whole "what it's like to be alive" thing. For me a lot of attempts at presenting life experiences on film are just too concrete, stifling in their declarativeness. I find a good majority of experimental films to be stifling in their specificity when they address issues of gender and sexuality; it puzzles me the extent to which people feel that these issues can be easily translated into information that can be processed. I try to let things speak for themselves in my work. And while I find it hard to articulate the queer elements of my work, they are there.
AM: With regards to your transgender identity, do you see the struggle you have with identifying the queer elements of your work possibly due to the lack of a recognized/universal language with which to address these questions?
LK: Yeah, I do feel there is definitely lacking a way to approach films that deal with queer subject matter in a rather implicit, more subtle way. It seems easier for people to recognize queer subject matter, but when it's more of an aesthetic sensibility or autobiographical approach to one's work, people are quite reluctant to locate it. It seems that people take the easy way out and try to ignore it and place the work in a very hetero-normative context. This has certainly brought to light the way in which people approach my films.
AM: Could this tension be the driving force behind your work? Is your work an attempt to invent this language?
LK: Yes, I do feel that in my work there has been a strong drive to invent and find an appropriate filmic language. One that, to a certain extent, correlates with my experience of the world. Right now I feel rather comfortable in my current style. Looking back at my previous work, which dealt with much more abstract imagery, I feel that I have achieved a pretty good balance between abstract and documentary imagery.
Four years pass
AM: It has been a while Lee--what have you been up to lately?
LK: The film that I am currently working on is entitled Tableaux Vivant, which is French for group tableaux. It was a random dictionary fortune that I received on my birthday quite some time ago. I've exhibited the filmstrips from this body of work in my installation of the same name. It's a work in progress that is still in the shooting phase. In terms of content, the film is a return to the landscape imagery of my previous work, and in a sense is expanding the notion of portraiture in my work. In this film I am interested in working with imagery that explores the relationship between self and place. My work is getting more and more autobiographical in a sense, and I find expressing that desire is why I gravitate toward the landscape imagery.
AM: In your earlier portrait works, this self/place idea is also very present. Could you talk a bit about this autobiographical approach?
LK: I view all art as autobiographical regardless of its subject matter, so for me the question that I continually face is what approach to take to best achieve the level of autobiography that I want the piece to have. It's something that continually shifts in my work. In the case of landscapes, my primary focus is to meditatively engage with spaces of great beauty. This provides me with endless fuel to go through the rest of life that isn't as sweet. When I work in portraiture it's more of an exercise in self-forgetting, stumbling attempts to relate to people through my work.
AM: And what has interested you most with your recent gallery installation approach to exhibition?
LK: The film installation Tableaux Vivant arose out of wanting to show my friends in Portland, Oregon what I was working on, but not being able to project the work for them. I was offered the space and opportunity to do a film installation in town. I wanted to show people how I work with film mainly as a transparency--I rarely project my work while creating it, I generally view it by hanging it in front of my windows. So the installation is a recreation of my experience with the film. It is very basic, just filmstrips hanging from a pole illuminated by film projectors that play a loop of a black flicker. So when you view the filmstrips there is this black flicker in the background, replicating the moment of blackness that occurs in film projection, but also referencing memory and the idea that these images come out of the blackness of memory.
AM: I know you are planning to optically print some of your past works so that they can be presented on conventional 35mm projection equipment (i.e. not hand-cranked). Has the in-person presentation of your work become less of a priority?
LK: As an artist I'm trying to do new things with my work, and to be honest, I'm tired of hand-cranking my films--lugging myself around the country, the technical hassles of working with a non-standard projector… I'm tired of the obscurity my work has because I can't engage in the same channels of exhibition as other experimental filmmakers. I want to do new things and I don't feel that desire conflicts with the aesthetics of my past work.
The Big Film series is in a slow but steady conclusion. While I am still exhibiting the work, in terms of production I just have to finish up one or two portraits that have been lying undone over the years. The performative aspect of the screenings are part blessing and part hardship, as with most things in life. And part of my intent with step-printing the work and making duplicate prints comes from the desire to not be limited in how I present my work. It would be nice to be able to get to a point where I don't have to always hand-crank my films, but could do so out of choice.
AM: As serendipity and chance inevitably play into the presentation of “live” work, what will determine your choices in the step-printing process?
LK: I have not begun to step-print my work yet. When I reach that part of the process, I think my main challenge will be the replication of motion and how to accurately reproduce the colour and texture of the hand-processing. I don't feel as though it's a compromise, because I think of it as documenting my work. While the prints will have a life of their own and will not be exact replicas of the originals, I look forward to the opportunity to creatively fashion the material in a new form. My ideas on how this will be achieved will become more apparent once I start the process and explore the tools of my trade. That said, I don't think anything could be as sacred as the originals. At this preliminary stage the aspect that I find the most exciting is finally being able to watch my work projected on a big screen.
AM: We had spoken in the past of the ephemeral nature of this work, the fact that originals are being projected and decomposing in the process--with this move to duplicate prints, has your interest in legacy and/or preservation shifted?
LK: The idea to duplicate my work came about through an offer from LIFT to use their newly acquired Oxberry camera. Up until that point, the execution of such a project was not on my horizon--because I didn’t have or fathom access to equipment that would allow me to preserve my work. I don't feel that it is a shift in my work, since I still work in and project reversal films. Ever since I began making films, my primary focus was to create a working method that would allow me to make films without any financial restrictions. As an artist, when I confront the choice of what film stock and processing method to use, I am continually drawn to the reversal process. I feel that the quality of reversal stock is unparalleled and, compared to negative, I just enjoy processing reversal more. So I don’t see that changing in the future.

Filmography:
Tableaux Vivant, 300 ft., 35mm, colour, work in progress
Tableaux Vivant (installation), 69 ft by 29 ft., 16mm & 35mm, 2003
1083, 80 ft., 35mm, colour, 2003
The Finer Shades of Exertion, 100 ft, 35mm, B&W, 2001
Huh, 80 ft., 35mm, colour, 2000
Killer Diamonds, 60 ft., 35mm, colour, 2000
The Portland Movie, 7 min., 16mm, colour, silent, 2000
Pea Green, 80 ft., 35mm, colour, 1999
Self-Portrait, 45 ft., 35mm, B&W, 1999
Susannah, 70 ft., 35mm, B&W, 1999
Twoness, 200 ft., 35mm, B&W, silent, 1998
Willa, 100 ft., 35mm, B&W, silent, 1998
August 1997, Greenpoint, NY, 8 min., 16mm, B&W, silent, 1998
Grieg Farm, Red Hook, NY, 9 min., 16mm, B&W, silent, 1997

Alex MacKenzie is a curator and media artist based in Vancouver, and was founder and curator of the now retired Blinding Light!! Cinema and Vancouver Underground Film Festival (1998-2003, RIP). He is currently creating both media installations and an expanded cinema performance piece set to tour in the fall of 2004.