Letting Decay Have its Day: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Celluloid Acetate Plastic Film
Channel: AIC & FAIC
Date: 2016-08-19

By M.M. Chandler, University of California, Irvine
From the Plastics Associated with Photographic Materials symposium

Abstract: Upon its invention in the early nineteenth century, celluloid acetate plastic film was heralded as an indestructible imaging medium that could create lasting photographic and cinematic images. By the 1950s, however, this image would be cast into doubt by the discovery of acetate’s organic decay via “the Vinegar Syndrome.” Confirmation of acetate’s impermanence led to commercial doom: acetate media products were quickly replaced, first by polyester-based film, and ultimately by digital formats. Yet, while acetate film products were hurdling towards obsolescence, their signs of material frailty would also become the source material for twentieth century avant-garde filmmakers as well as twenty-first century visual culture at large.

This paper considers how acetate decay informs the works of two materialist filmmakers: Owen Land’s 1967 film, Bardo Follies, and Luther Price’s 2013-15 series of motion picture slides, Light
Fractures and Light Windows. In these works, acetate decay is not critically demonized nor used as evidence of its failure, but rather is celebrated as a spectacular aesthetic display worthy of being witnessed and even preserved. I further argue that Land and Price lay the foundations for an emergent cultural phenomena -- what I term “obsolescence fetishism” -- which manifests in contemporary obsessions with vintage aesthetics as well as editing technology that gives digital images an analog soul by recreating projection scratches, film burns, and the same blistering pockmarks once negatively associated with the Vinegar Syndrome. Ultimately, this paper makes a case for reconsidering the history of acetate plastics and nature of decay as not leading to market failure nor ending in material ruin, but rather as achieving a second afterlife thanks to a new value system that fetishizes decay and obsolescence.

Speaker bio: M.M. Chandler holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine, and is currently an Adjunct Professor in Art History at Santa Monica College and Film Studies at Irvine Valley College. Her present work focuses on the death of Kodachrome film technology and its rebirth in contemporary visual culture, which will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Analog Sunset: On the Impending Demise of Vanishing Media.