many ways in which to love

a film and light installation in several versions by preston swirnoff

version 1 opens 12 december 2024 cinemateca do MAM rio de janeiro brazil

16mm film, 35mm & medium format photos, digital video and stills, various lights and filters

Over the past two years, I have amassed a collection of moving and still images from various creative projects in my studio, out in the wild, and in performance. I began working with them using 16mm film projectors, gobo lights, color filters, and other projection tools. Working with light, installation materials, and the images projected in different spaces, the piece began to take form as a way to make a living diary of my work that would become a work in its own right. I have decided to be patient with this unfolding and release several successive versions of ‘many ways…’. More to say about the title later, for now the less the better.

The films will include my work with plants, light, textiles, natural materials, papers, glass & ceramic vessels, intimate performance, site-specific elements and other materials I may find along the way. An ongoing project exploring the ‘many ways…’ allows me to use duration with visual art in a way I’ve previously only been able to achieve with sound. The installation versions will encompass subtle changes occurring over days and weeks that are not repeated. Each moment of viewing will become a unique experience with the work that may not be seen again. ‘Many ways…’ will be shown in many ways: standalone film, site-specific installation, combination of film/installation, and other orientations I may not have imagined yet.

many ways in which to love, selected reading list:

the meaning of love by vladimir solovyov

agua viva by clarice lispector

on elegance while sleeping by viscount lascano tegui

the song of songs

diotima’s ladder of love in the symposium (210a-212c) by plato

ascetic of love by nun gavrilia

jakob von gunten by robert walser

blinding by mircea catarescu

insatiability by witkacy

the writing of stones by roger caillois

the invention of morel by adolfo bioy casares

the children’s crusade by marcel schwob

gates of paradise by jerzy andrzejewski

dialogues of love by judah leon abravanel

wounded by love by saint porphyrios bairaktaris

the desperate man by leon bloy

the gospel of thomas

sculpting in time by andrei tarkovsky

beneath the underdog by charles mingus

the world of silence by max picard

duties of the heart by bahya ibn paquda

four centuries on love by saint maximus the confessor

pandora’s box by dora and erwin panofsky

pyrrhus and cineas & eye for an eye by simone de beauvoir

the collected poems by odysseus elytis

a stranger to heaven and earth by anna akhmatova

a statement of principles by maya deren

the pillar and ground of the truth by pavel florensky

gravity and grace by simone weil

arabian love poems by nizar qabbani

extracting the stone of madness by alejandra pizarnik

…more soon…