Diana Thater’s latest film installation, Between Science and Magic, closing this Saturday, is a layered study of process in keeping with the artist’s two-decade investigation into timeless dialectics: human and animal; culture and nature; and now science and magic. The looped 12-minute projection records a projection being done at a French Rococo film palace in Los Angeles. The frame captures the ornate proscenium and the screen it encloses, which features two figures on soundstages separated by a central, white-on-white seam.
The film starts just before curtain up. Once it’s risen, the internal film begins: the left side of the screen shows an over-the-shoulder shot of a camera operator; the right, a head-on shot of a tuxedoed magician. While the camera operator records, the magician displays his tools (top hat, table, cloth) and recites the gestures that culminate in pulling a white rabbit out of his hat. He repeats the trick, and each time he begins anew, the orientation of the camera operator changes. Either side of the frame is a recording taken simultaneously from different angles. The right maintains its angle, fixed on the magician frontally, and the left orbits the scene, hitting 16 stations for the 16 repetitions of the performance. This choreography is not unlike the routes of planetary bodies. The motions are slow, certain, and difficult to grasp from a static vantage point.