Inanimation: The Film Loop Performances of Bruce McClure

Abstract

This essay focuses on the work of Bruce McClure, whose films are composed of simple patterns of black-and-white frames of 16 mm film, produced according to a numerical system. As such, they might seem to follow in the footsteps of the classical Flicker Film genre. Crucially, however, in contrast to these paradigms, McClure works with technologies that are modified to such an extent that the results are arguably not films in any usual sense. His performances are important for the way in which they probe the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as a film, through a disruptive questioning of what film movement is, via image-generated sound relations, which, though mutually dependent in a technical sense, are affectively disjunctive.