December 2020
Guy Sherwin - At The Academy
Guy Shwerin on Annabel Nicholson’s ‘Reel Time’
Reel Time 1973 performance by Annabel Nicolson: for sewing machine, 16mm projector with film loop, slide projector, performer (Annabel), two texts, two voices. There are many things that influenced me, but certainly the performance Reel Time by Annabel Nicolson is one of them. I’m sure it was an inspiration for my own performances such as Man with Mirror, which I made a few years later.
Annabel doesn’t perform it any more and it was never properly recorded. There are only a few photographs and written records.
In 1973 we invited Annabel to North-East London Polytechnic where I was teaching. The main photograph shown here, taken by Ian Kerr, is from that performance. It needs describing.
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Towards the bottom right Annabel sits at a sewing machine (the long shutter-time of the camera has captured its intermittent mechanism). You can see the shadow of the sewing machine on the screen in the centre of the picture, along with part of Annabel’s shadow - cast by a slide projector used as a light source. On the main screen, to the left of the picture, is another shadow of Annabel, this time cast by a 16mm projector, and on the screen you can make out a few moon-like shapes. These shapes are from holes punched through the 16mm film as it passes through the sewing machine on its way to the projector, from where it travels back to the sewing machine in a long loop. The film depicts Annabel sitting at a sewing machine (not visible here); thus in the performance Annabel is perforating her own image. The performance ends when the loop eventually breaks.
Throughout the performance two people are reading (they sit beyond the edge of the picture, to left and right). One reads from an instruction manual on how to thread a sewing machine, the other from an instruction manual on how to thread a projector.
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The second photograph, of Annabel at her sewing machine, was made directly from a scrap of the film loop left on the floor after the performance. In addition to the holes made by the sewing machine you can see how the sprocket holes (that help transport the film through the projector) have been torn. This is caused by varying tensions in the film loop as it passed through the projector.