STOCKHOLM.- Moderna Museet and Xposeptember jointly present a unique opportunity on 15 January to see a film performance by and with American experimental film-maker Ken Jacobs, a legend and pioneer on the experimental film scene.

In conjunction with the exhibition Image at Work, currently at the Romanian Cultural Institute, Ken Jacobs is coming to Sweden for the first time to stage a film performance at Moderna Museet.

In Time Squared Jacobs focuses on experiments with projected light. Jacobs based this work on a technique using a simple analogue apparatus, The Nervous Magic Lantern, to manipulate the beam of the film projector, using the onlooker’s own perception to make stills appear to move, in a stroboscopic image flow that generates a form of optical illusion.

“Ken Jacobs’ art seems to be put the images themselves to work – in the stroboscopic light the originally intended image is succeeded by another. These works are painful on several levels, the images swerve and pulsate and appear laboriously to produce a new meaning. A social and political context is revealed,” says Helena Holmberg, curator of the exhibition Image at Work.

A seminal figure of American avant-garde film, Ken Jacobs (b. 1933) has worked incessantly with film, video and moving images for over 50 years. His more famous productions include Blonde Cobra (1963) and Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son (1969). His films CAPITALISM: Slavery (2006) and CAPITALISM: Child Labor (2006) are featured in Image at Work, shown at the Romanian Cultural Institute from 26 October, 2010, to 19 February, 2011. Both these works are based on digitally updated versions of the artist’s well-known film performances.

Image at Work is a project initiated by Xposeptember and was produced jointly with the BAC, Iaspis, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Moderna Museet and the Romanian Cultural Institute.