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Celluloid Collage
Tim Grabham (AKA iloobia) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who has independently produced still and moving image work for over 30 years.
Comprising of short film, animation, photography and installations, as well as documentary and long-form features, his work has been presented internationally at cinemas, festivals, TV online and in galleries.
Ongoing interests in his work include hand-worked bespoke analogue processes, reconfiguring abandoned, decaying and orphaned celluloid material, the manipulation of archival and obsolete media formats and the convergence of science and art.
He has long been drawn to working with celluloid film as a material for building collages, not least because of its sheer abundance. The multitudes of reels of film scattered internationally in places such as flea markets, car boot sales, film fairs and eBay make it an enticing and relatively inexpensive artistic material. Acquiring it is like a treasure hunt. From home movies shot on super 8mm to 35mm film trailers, deteriorating educational films and odd propaganda relics from the 1970’s - unspooling a newly acquired film reel has the exciting quality of anticipation as to what one might find, and what gold, if any, lies within. Each collage contains residual traces of the material’s history.
Reconfiguring this material into new incarnations is a thoroughly hands-on and tactile process. In contrast to the sanitised process of digital image making, manipulating film is pleasingly messy and imperfect. To even touch the film leaves a mark; a fingerprint, a speck of dust or a strand of dog hair. The celluloid substrate is a versatile and robust canvas for staining, painting, scratching, puncturing, cutting, slicing, bleaching, sandpapering and whatever other interventions and acts of damage may transpire.
The collage process is not limited to using pre-existing film of course. Shooting film to chop it up and turn it into a collage can be equally as effective. However, it is also costly and there are environmental issues to be considered especially concerning the abundance of plastic waste and chemical processing. This is why he tends toward using found footage and orphan films, pre-existing material that has already been discarded and abandoned.
Criticism related to the destruction of, say, found footage or 8mm home movies, which may have historical value in the context of archival materials, is not to be discounted. However, these are objects that have been set adrift in time and space. Orphaned from their origin but enduring in stasis, until eventually chemical decay combined with time and atmospheric conditions finally fades away the printed image upon the celluloid, leaving just an abraded roll of the blank substrate. His decision to repurpose these artefacts as opposed to archiving them through some form of clean digitising process is that his interest lies in the reincarnation/ reconfiguration of cultural debris. Tapestries of moving image data, looping, repeating.
Three projects that encapsulate this process in varying ways are the shorts Films to Break Projectors (2016) and Cinegraffic Score (2022) as well as the Bas - U-Turn music video (2024). Although his primary interest is in exploring experimental processes and positioning his work as an artist moving image, it was a novel opportunity to create a music video for a mainstream commercial release by US rapper Bas. How would the technique translate to a music video normally defined by a very particular type of imagery and presentation? And what might the reception be? Shot on 35mm and 16mm by cinematographer Ryan Doubiago, it was a rare chance to apply the collage technique to such a project.
On reflection, the optimum presentation of the collage film is on the big screen, where the minutiae of the image can be best revealed. A music video nowadays is most often viewed on a tiny phone screen held in the palm of one's hand and the richness of the detail is simply too small to register. But this is the journey. Can a largely obsolete medium such as celluloid film combined with hand-crafted experimental processing have anything fresh to offer in the current creative landscape? iloobia remains hopeful that the answer is yes.
iloobia
Tim Grabham (AKA iloobia) is introduced by Yolanda Y. Liou, who is part of Münchner Kammerspiele X Der Greif: “Off to Elsewhere”.
Check out her Artist Feature Thank You For Playing With Me.