Expanding cinema by means of theorizing film through contemporary art. Expanding it, that is, by theorizing-film-through something other than film itself and yet in affinity with it. The cinematic affinities in contemporary art as the occasion through which theorizing film projects itself into an expanding cinema that promises to become the theoretical apparatus par excellence of a new dispositif for its expanding theory. In expanding cinema through contemporary art the expanding theory preserves the legacy of theorizing-film-through-film by other means. The ever-expanding dispositif of theorizing-film-through-art reinstalls itself in the new installation, namely, from the cinema to the gallery. The coming attraction, or rather distraction, is no doubt the post-cinematic condition of possibility for its own projection performance: theorizing contemporary art through film. Whether the dispositif of theorizing-film-through-art takes hold of the dispositif of theorizing-artthrough- film as the uncanny shadow of its shadow is a possibility among possibilities in the throw of the thematic scope outlined in the handsomely edited volume before you. A retrospective foreword by way of a collection of aphorisms in the form of artist statements, proposals, and correspondences from our collaborative work as Gibson + Recoder registers the vertiginous twists and turns of a threading path entangled in the light spill of an expanding cinema: Theorizing Film Through Contemporary Art.

In our installation work, we use projected light to articulate space and time. Film projectors and celluloid are the material base of our constructions in light and shadow, the elemental properties of cinema. These things are deeply imbued with a history of viewership in the dark of the theatre. To remove it from darkness is to flood this history and cast a certain illumination upon it. A certain exposure. Light spills in the shifting of film from its native darkness in enclosed chambers (camera obscura) to the uncanny openness and defamiliarized illumination of installation. We are exploring the shift, elaborating the displacement, recasting the light mechanics of a peculiar estrangement of the medium. The art of cinema, yes. But more timely: the becoming cinema of art. That is the coming attraction for us.