Matters of Photochemical Alchemy/Chymistry: On Contemporary Handmade Filmmaking

Since at least the works of the Schmelzdahin collective in the 1980s, the idea of the “alchemist” filmmaker has referred to those, often associated with the artist-run film lab movement, who make films which foreground material photochemical practices. The reason that “alchemy” is used as a reference point for these kinds of films is often quite vague, conjuring notions of solitary work in dimly lit laboratories, ungodly mixtures leading to transmutations of matter. In this article, I interrogate the metaphor of alchemical film, attempting to question what these photochemical practices have in common with actual alchemical thought and practices. In so doing, I show that perhaps another term, chymistry (proposed by historians of alchemy William R. Newman and Lawrence Principe), less associated with a transcendental aesthetics but instead carrying with it more immanent and materialist implications, would be more appropriate. In part because of the vitalist/materialist conceptions of matter that these practices seem to conjure up, but also because it allows us to more precisely resituate these practices, associated with what Jürgen Reble calls the “après-garde” in their specific historical context.