Note: Eetc will be shown at 8:30 following an intermission. Combining a stunning compositional sense and virtuoso skill with an optical printer, British artist David Larcher built an early and wild reputation around two films, Mare's Tail (1969) and Monkey's Birthday (1973-75), both screened at PFA in the seventies. A matrix of autobiography, literary text and percolating memories of light, these were indeed films in the classic experimental mode. With his latest contributions to image-making, however, Larcher has forever muddled the boundary separating film from video. Almost hermetic in its personal references, Eetc is an elliptical attempt to re-animate feelings Larcher held for his sister Elisabeth, the "E" of the title. This "feeling" is not logged as dramatic pathos, but as an evocation infecting the image-field. A densely layered reverie, the work recycles bits of home movies, photographs, quotations and fragments of music in a continual act of reinvention. Part of this reinvention takes place at the level of formal context. Larcher's palimpsest of film images is transferred to video, then further altered and reframed. Rescued from cinema, the work now resides in an electronic and intangible medium. This seems fitting, for Eetc is also grappling with an expressiveness that threatens to subside into obscurity-the wallow of memory. And it is in memory that Larcher's affection and bewilderment dwells. Eetc is finally a work about the transitory nature of remembrance and its filmic counterpart, the trace. For Larcher, these images, now electronic pulses, are the only survivors of time. With Granny's Is, Larcher now seeks in video filmic equivalents that somehow affirm the artist's hand. Through digital matting and optical effects, he again nurtures the image, reworking and layering the many strata. But to reverse the subversion, the video image takes the place of the traditional filmed image in picture frames and the viewfinder of still cameras. Self-described as a "geriatric anthro-apology," Granny's Is is an acrid portrait of Larcher's ailing grandmother. Larcher fills his home-and the frame-with a swarm of images of his infirm elder. He seems overwhelmed by her presence, as though her likeness carries a cargo of love tempered by guilt and revulsion. A subtly woven audio track of musical shards and quotations advances Larcher's exploration of time's spoils. Again the image is the vessel of memory, remarking on the fragility of the present: "Each face that we love: a mirror of the past." --Steve Seid