STILLFRAME CINEMA / SEANCE

Seances can take many forms — therapeutic, spiritualistic, or cinematic (une séance de cinéma). The latter can be all three at once — a moving image, a meditation, and a summoning of the spirits.

Participants typically gather in darkness, anxiously awaiting the messages the medium will convey. It’s no matter if what they experience turns out to be an illusion or truth. What matters is the séance, the hum of the equipment, the smell of hot bulbs, and the shared pursuit of light.

As the kinoMANUAL duo, we create projections made by setting individual still frames in motion. We call it StillFrame Cinema. For this, we use slide projectors of the simplest design, a modern version of the Magic Lantern. Our medium is light in motion—cinema in its elemental form. For years now, we've been seeking the emotions felt by early audiences of optical theaters and the first experiments with moving images. Back then, the eye was innocent and wide open, and the illusions were much more real than they are today.

kinoMANUAL is a small, independent audiovisual workshop from Wrocław (PL), founded by two artists: Aga Jarząb and Maciek Bączyk. Aga Jarząb creates original animated films, while Maciek Bączyk has played in the bands AGD, Robotobibok, Małe Instrumenty and Kristen, and currently records albums as part of the duo Pin Park.

Since 2014, as kinoMANUAL, they have been creating films, photographs, objects and installations, continuing the avant-garde traditions of light art, kinetic art, animation and experimental cinema. Their performances under the name StillFrame Cinema combine abstract multi-channel projection with analogue electronics in the audio layer.

kinoMANUAL’s works emphasize the physical interaction with audiovisual material and embody the sum of experiences the artists have gathered over more than 20 years. The duo collaborates with artistic collectives, independent FilmLabs and festivals across Europe. Their enthusiasm for analogue film, photography, sound and kinetic art allows their practice to be seen as an alternative to the digital standard.
https://kinomanual.pl