Operation Rewrite: still testing...
	Operation Rewrite is a collaborative project by Esperanza Collado and Maximilian Le Cain. The project began in January 2011 as an online video work in which both artists posted a number of 45 second moving-image pieces according to a set of rules, most importantly that one-third of the duration of each video should be black screen. This peculiarity – the fundamental presence of blank space as an act of expropriation, displacement and projection - became the main subject of our working process, which quickly boiled over into a series of works in and outside of the moving-image medium. Operation Rewrite was designed to grow from its online embryo, identifying, expanding into and occupying other places. Our work deals with the workings of the cut, suspension and interruption as fundamental associative principles of cinema and (both its) consecutive (and preceding) matters. The concept of cinema we examine is subject to constant reassessment, embracing perception and projection technology as much as the articulation of signs; the human body as technological contraptions, domestic items as much as film materiality. As the project develops, certain objects, images and actions recur, acquiring resonance and significance, as they are re-used. Operation Rewrite occupies a zone between dream, cinema and mundane ritual.	Operation Rewrite performances usually involve the artists, as ‘scientist’ figures, interacting with elaborate film projections (Super8 and 16mm), pre-recorded and live sounds, as well as objects arranged to form mutant installations. Cut-up film noir narratives may coexist with a materialist investigation of both the artist’s body and the body of cinema. The latter is considered from an ‘amplique’ or expanded view after the achievements of Lettrism. The medium of film becomes an object, malleable and fragile, edible, destructible, and capable of measuring space and time. Projected light and its magnetic field of intermittency may bleed through a sewing machine illuminated against a corporeal screen and penetrate a blindfold. All of these actions and others, framed by a series of subtle and straightforward interruptions, make Operation Rewrite performances disturbing and humorous in equal parts. They typically feature such objects and events as 16mm and Super8 film projections, darkroom compositions, choreographed actions, diegetic sounds, tape recordings, feathers, eggs, tools, an oval mirror, a gas mask, fake blood, a pipe, a brown folder, a filmstrip, buckets of liquid, an empty cloak, an ironing board, shoulder massage, a spooky television, a bloody X, a variety of other Xs, red light, a phone conversation, a cocktail shaker, a sewing machine, light bleed, palm trees, tennis equipment, robot costumes, printed letters... A few of our performances featured Irish theatre writer, director and performer John McCarthy, a lead performer in many of Le Cain’s films.	Exhibitions : Una Pausa Para Reflexionar 18 01 - 08 06 2014 MUSAC León Spain (group) Operation Rewrite 15 05 - 16 06 2012 Cork Film Centre Gallery Cork Ireland (solo) Seeing the Light 04 - 16 11 2011 Tactic Art Gallery Cork Ireland (group) Operation Rewrite + Artists talk 29 09 - 26 10 2011 Instituto Cervantes Dublin Ireland (solo) Operation Rewrite 17 09 - 16 10 2011 LEVE León Spain (solo) Performances : Exterior, Night 24 09 2015 Lajevardi Foundation Tehran Iran A piece of Broken Mirror Suspended on a String 25 06 2014 Tabakalera CICC San Sebastian Spain While John Was Dreaming 12 09 2013 MUSAC León Spain Threaded Cocktails 11 01 2013 Xcèntric CCCB Barcelona Manila Sand Trap 07 10 2012 The Guesthouse Cork Ireland Feather Mirror 24 05 2012 Cork Film Centre Gallery Ireland The Consecutive Impostors 29 09 2011 Instituto Cervantes Dublin Ireland Other : Art Production Grant Museum of Contemporary Art of Castille Leon Spain 2011 Artist-in-residence Guesthouse Artists Collective, Cork Ireland 2012 Travel grant Culture Ireland 2013 Personal Notes on Operation Rewrite by Rouzbeh Rashidi 45:37 (online work)