Ari Shaffir: Double Negative / 2017

Wry yet thoughtful, comedian Ari Shaffir brings his edgy humor to two fast-paced stand-up specials about children and adulthood.

Double Negative / 2016

Two 16mm films simultaneously project images of Le Corbusier’s iconic white Villa Savoye outside Paris, and its doppelgänger, a black copy located in Canberra, Australia. Each film has been printed on 16mm stock as a negative image, or polarity print, thus reversing light and dark. The Antipodean black Villa Savoye is, in fact, an ethnographic institute, dedicated now to the digital duplication of its extensive collections of anthropological films, photographs, slides and sound recordings, as Siegel reveals in a high definition colour video. The work enacts the infinite loop of recorded artefacts—the urgency to document and record “vanishing” rituals and cultural practices becomes instead the contemporary archival impulse to copy vanishing media formats to digital. These concatenated elements extend the artist’s engagement with architecture as a foil, enacting and revealing across constellation-like works, layered sociological and aesthetic concerns.

Double Negative / 1985

Horror film director must plot to steal the negative of his film in order to save it from being destroyed in an insurance scam cooked up by his sleazy producers.

Double Negative / 1980

Mentally tortured photojournalist attempts to track down his wife's murderer.

Double Negative

Double Negative / 2015

A tough grade school English teacher on a rock-bottom bender finds unexpected redemption when she meets an even tougher ten year old boy with whom she shares more than either of them realize.

Double Negative / 2010

David Reeves is no one special. A mundane job as an accountant and an empty house comprise his life. Day in and day out, he goes through the same routine he has for the past five years. He feels hollow and alone. He is... nobody. Until one day a chance encounter changes everything. Now as he evades capture by the powers that be, he must fight to uncover a terrifying secret buried deep within the walls of the Pentagon and the confines of his own mind. Only after a helping hand reaches out from the shadows does David learn that his success or failure will ultimately affect the lives of hundreds.

Double Negative / 2005

Double Negative offers a reflexive take on the rather spurious effect of 'video negative'. The piece was made by re-videoing the live output from the camera as it was displayed on a monitor, creating feedback. In using the negative video effect, a flicker of alternating positive and negative imagery is produced and various fluctuating microtonal elements in the picture plane are revealed.

Double Negatives / 2013

Two men meet on a beach and watch the sea.