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Those of us who know about these darkened rooms, and go there ... Andrew Lampert's hybrid film screening/performances give new meaning to the idea of expanded cinema. He talks with Jacob Korczynski.

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Where are the boundaries, of an expanded cinema? In his essay The Expanded Field of Cinema, or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square" (2004), Eric de Bruyn proposes that expanded cinema is typically a multimedia practice that seeks to create an immersive environment, one that envelops the viewer through an emphasis on the projected image. By making artworks that occupy the realms of film and performance simultaneously, Andrew Lampert has developed a critical perspective on this tradition. By foregrounding his role in the mediation of a work's sound and image, Lampert ultimately emphasizes his mediation of the experience of the viewer. The end result is an interdisciplinary practice that frames the cinema as an inherently social site.

This interview took place between the staging of two projects Lampert produced in 2005, The Purpose Crossed and Varieties of Slow. The title I have chosen surfaced during one of our many conversations, and refers to Lampert's description of the artists, critics, curators and viewers who engage with the cinema not as a site adjunct to the authority of the gallery, but as its own discursive exhibition space. The Purpose Crossed is a new performance that I commissioned for the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film in Durham, Ontario. The work arose out of Lampert's reluctance to restage How To Speak (See) & What To Say (Hear) (2006-07), a performance consisting of the artist giving a series of verbal instructions to Jared Abramson, that result in the continuously fluctuating construction of a cinema-like environment made up of a number of screens, gels and other ephemera. In his new performance, Lampert incorporated components of not only How To Speak (See) & What To Say (Hear), but also of a number of his earlier single-screen films and videos, which were presented alongside new audio material and served as an extended survey of his practice. His role in The Purpose Crossed was doubly inscribed: he was present not only physically but aurally as well, via the playback of a prerecorded soundtrack that acted as an extended aside to the audience. In the recording, the artist openly expresses his doubts about restaging his older work, questions the strength of his relationship to Abramson and interviews partners from past projects about the role and effect of collaboration.

Varieties of Slow is a performance in the form of an installation that was first presented as part of Day for Night, the 2006 Whitney Biennial,...