by Mariangela Pluchino & Helena Aleksandrova
2023-2024, 16mm
CAKE DISCHARGE
The work is made by Pluchino & Aleksandrova as a result the month residency at Filmverkstaden, Vaasa, Finland in March 2023.
During the residency they have been exploring the building of former Sugar Factory, speculating on sugary and nicotine addictions and experimenting in the dark lab with hand development and processing of the film creating a red solarization effect. In the work they casted a filmmaker who was at the residency at the same time Etienne Caire (aka Riojim), one of the co-founders of Atelier MTK in Grenoble, France where he teaches DIY film processing, contact and optical printing and editing. This collaboration resulted in learning about analogue film as well.
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The work was exhibited at Asbestos Art Space in June 2024 as part of Film Tonight!’s exhibtion ‘On Film’. In the final work we presented a false narrative pof finding the rolls of film in Sugar Factory in Vaasa and developing them at Filmverkstaden. Here is the except of the text from the work and exhibtion:
Mariangela and Helen found 2 undeveloped rolls of 16mm in an office drawer on the premises of the abandoned Sugar factory in Vaasa, Finland during their Analogue Adventure Residency hosted by Filmverkstaden in 2016. The Vaasa Sugar Factory operated from the end of 1880’s, when in 1897 the sugar import duty enabled a profitable Sugar Industry. The factory closed its operations in 1987 permanently.
Helen and Mariangela had a different plan for the residency, but decided to develop the images of the film. The work also is accompanied by the International Sugar Journal, a magazine they found next to the diary of the Sugar Factory Office. They believe the diary’s entries were written by the person on the screen, an ex-worker of the Sugar Factory, who was fired due to cuts of the sugar tax law.
The specifications of the filmstock was unknown to us, therefore we were forced to experiment with the chemicals to develop it. A strange solarization effect came up, as if a sugar coat would invade the pellicule of the film. Extremely strange effect. Nobody from the laboratory of Filmverkstaden could explain how this solarization effect on the images happened. It must have been something related to the sugar condensed in the air and from the years of this film material being stored under this same air.