Collectable

Can you touch the light?

Anthony McCall in Visual Magazine

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Anthony McCall Line Describing a Cone 1973

Created in Barcelona during the Spanish political transition, the Film Vídeo Informació collective wanted to promote the possibilities of what were then ‘new’ audiovisual media. In their Visual magazine (1977-78), they introduced readers to key innovators of experimental cinema such as Chantal Akerman, Michael Snow and Anthony McCall.

The MACBA Collection has one of McCall’s ‘solid light films’, as he himself called them. Line Describing a Cone, from 1973, explores the properties of light and the nature of film. Screened for the first time in Fylkingen, Stockholm, on 30 August 1973, it was one of the pioneering avant-garde works blurring the boundaries between visual arts and cinema. The film installation begins as a point of light projected on a black background. For half an hour, the point moves until it draws a circle of light and, at the same time, a conical but empty form, like the surface or outer layer of a cone. As the viewer moves through the light, and their viewpoint changes, so their experience of the projection also changes. A solid beam of light that overrides the laws of physics.