Mungo Thompson’s 16mm film is a counterproof of Paik’s Zen for Film, specifically the version transformed into Paik’s and George Maciunas’s Flux Film#1 from the Fluxfilm Anthology (1962–70). Thompson (born 1969) inverted the scratches and dust accumulated on each frame: the black flickers of dust on a white screen became converted to white specks on a black screen. Thompson’s version would then be subject to the same chance operations that impacted Paik’s Zen for Film, with new traces adding to the palimpsest, or layers, of scratches on this thrice-transformed film leader. Through this, Thompson not only underscores the structure of mutability at the heart of Zen for Film, but at the same time, he brings the materiality of the film to the fore—a strategy comparable to John Baldessari’s text paintings, Christian Marclay’s circulating records, and John Cage’s loud silences. —CA

Film: Courtesy of the artist.