Handmade films and artist-run labs: The chemical sites of film’s counterculture

This article addresses handmade films and artist-run labs in particular as sites of hands-on film culture that reactivate moments and materials from media history. Drawing on existing research, discourses, and discussions with contemporary experimental filmmakers affiliated with labs or practicing their work in relation to film lab infrastructure, we focus on these sites of creation, preservation, and circulation of technical knowledge about analog film. But instead of reinforcing the binary of analog vs. digital, we argue that the various material practices from self-made apparatuses to photochemistry and film emulsions are ways of understanding the multiple materials and layered histories that define the post-digital culture of film. This focus links our discussion with some themes in media archaeology (experimental media archaeology as a practice) and to current discussions about labs as arts and humanities infrastructures for collective projects and practice-based methods.