Private Project

Lumière

Lumière (2023–25) operates as a transmission from the periphery of the known, treating light not as a terrestrial source of warmth, but as a cold, virtual signal emanating from a void where time is untethered from its linear construct. A sly nod to J.G. Ballard’s Crash, the visual narrative utilizes steely, ambiguous found footage and repeating circular forms to explore the friction between the biological and the infinite, inhabiting a grayscale vacuum where the local and the universal collide. Anchored by our current climatic volatility, this quasi sci-fi meditation pairs a non-narrative "exquisite corpse" aesthetic with a deep-atmosphere score by Porya Hatami, transforming the elemental force of fire into a star-bright, pixelated specter that serves as a necessary pause within a world drifting toward the great unknown.

  • TJ Norris
    Director
    auto-porto-matic (1993); Infinitus (2008)
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Music Video
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 21 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 4, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    3,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - TJ Norris

TJ Norris is an award-winning multidisciplinary conceptual artist based in Fort Worth, TX. He studied at Massachusetts College of Art and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Norris’ work explores various social complexities and stigmas around gender, the built environment, loss, and even society's love affair/disconnect between humankind and technology. These are only a few conceptual metrics expressed through a filter of wabi-sabi and/or the result of chance (ie. 'the exquisite corpse'). Norris' film work has been sparse in the past but has included: a short titled 'auto-porto-matic' which was included in DCTV's Film Fest (1993, NYC) curated by Cheryl Dunye, and 'Infinitus' (2-Channel Installation, 72 mins, 2008) recipient of the Couture Grant (New American Art Union, OR).

Over the last decade his work has been included in the Red Dot Art Festival and Aqua Miami, as well as participation in art residencies with both Caldera (Oregon) and Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center (Nebraska). Norris’ work has been reviewed in Art Ltd, Leonardo (MIT Press), Photographer’s Forum, The Oregonian, The Boston Globe and many other publications and has been featured in Tacoma Art Museum's 10th Northwest Biennial, A4 Art Museum (Chengdu, China), South Bend Museum of Art, Millepiani (Rome), CoCA Seattle, the Oregon Center on Photographic Art and many other institutions. His work explores the abstract psychology and social complexities of the urban environment. Examples of his work are held in various international private collections, as well as the Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels), Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fuller Museum of Art, the Museum de la Cuidad, Harvard University, Nike, and the RACC’s Visual Chronicle Collection. In 2018 Norris published his first monograph of photographic work titled ‘Shooting Blanks’ (2008-2013). Between the early 1990’s and 2013 he also spent years working as a freelance curator bringing shows to institutions as diverse as Tufts University Aidekman Art Center, SUNY/Binghamton Art Museum, Miller Fine Art Center, University of Oregon, Roland Dille Center for the Arts, Newspace Center for Photography, Boise State Visual Art Center and his own gallery/art space - Soundvision, among others.

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Director Statement

As the final flicker of the Fire trilogy, Lumière (2023) operates as an indirect, quasi sci-fi meditation on the suspension of existence. The film treats light not as a source of warmth, but as a cold, virtual signal—a transmission from a world where time has been untethered from its linear construct. In a sly nod to J.G. Ballard’s Crash, the visual narrative utilizes steely, ambiguous found footage and repeating circular forms to explore the eroticized friction between the biological and the mechanical. By purging the frame of color, the work inhabits a grayscale void that is intentionally devoid of a specific era, suggesting a future that is already present, or a past that refuses to end.

This cinematic drift is anchored by the climatic volatility of our current age, where the traditional alchemy of fire—once a symbol of energy and rebirth—has been stressed into a predatory force. In Lumière, the elemental meets the industrial in a non-narrative "exquisite corpse" that explores the fragile overlap between nature’s wrath and human technology. The film serves as a surreal mantra, a necessary pause to witness the shapeshifting mechanics of an ecosystem in flux, where the fire we observe is both a primitive force and a digitized, pixelated specter.

The film’s spectral atmosphere is heightened by the original score by Porya Hatami. His sonic architecture bridges the gap between the organic and the synthetic, providing a visceral, deep-atmosphere "soul" to the film’s repeating geometries. As part of the twelve-film Elemental Studies cycle, this collaboration with twenty-five international artists from eighteen countries serves as a global requiem. Together, we have constructed a sonic and visual map of a world where the only constant is change, and the only light remaining is the cold glow of a suspended reality.