Screening Programme
Centre for Contemporary Public Arts ELEMENTI (Macedonia)
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th 12:00-12:05
CCPA ELEMENTI is a not for profit contemporary art platform which creates a range of programmes and events in Macedonia and abroad. Through their works as artists and curators they open the specific questions of miscommunication, netting and the position of the human in the era of digital technology.
Irena Paskali
Freedom 1mins 40 secs
When I come back home I have a big wish for freedom. Getting rid of all the clothes I have been wearing during the day enables me to feel free.
Nada Prylja
West 2 mins
West is a video project that belongs to Prlja's interest in he notion of power play. This time, the power play represented in this video, is a direct illustration of the power game played out between countries, which are geographically (but also in many other ways) divided between east and west.
Videophile-Performance for Camera
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th 12:05-12:45
This programme of performance for camera work aims to give a much-ignored medium a platform to be viewed. Between video art and performance art there seems to be no place for this type of work in the eyes of arts organisations and funding bodies. Performance documentation and performance specifically 'set up' for the camera can offer a different perspective that a live work may never have facilitated. This programme demonstrates how this medium can be used in diverse and interesting ways including 'Oreet Ashery's' travel diary documentary of Palestine and Israel, Meg Tait's and Siân Robinson Davies's performance to camera and Alexandra Zierle & Paul Carter's documentation from their performance "Spillings"
Oreet Ashery
Necessary Journey 18 mins
After putting an advert on the Art School Palestine website asking to make a contact with a Palestinian artist, Ashery was approached by the Ramallah-based artist, illustrator and renowned architect Sameh Aboushi. Aboushi and Ashery sustained a long email exchange over many months, until they met at Qalandia Checkpoint and spent time together in Ramallah.
The video is a travel diary to Palestine/Israel featuring Oreet crossing Qalandia check-point and meeting with the architect Sameh Abboushi in Ramallah, a visit to the Old city with Oreet's father in search of the location of his grandfather's old shoe shop in the Muslim quarter, and a visit to Pqaain; the only indigenous village inhabited by Druze, Muslims, Christians and Jews. The travel diary is seeking to document a process of placing Oreet 's family history within the wider context of the Middle East
Meg Tait
Straight from the Horses mouth 2 mins 15 secs
Straight from the Horses mouth is a dialogue piece exploring the over-lap between the performer and the character; that ambiguity and blurred line where one becomes the other and questioning whether or not it can be defined.
Alexandra Zierle & Paul Carter
Spillings 15 mins 29 secs (Showing on TV monitor)
Spillings is a video documentation of a site-specific live performance, which took place in Buenos Aires at Plaza de Miserere. This piece was inspired by an intuitive response to the interactions we observed at our first visit to the city square, which is situated next to a railway station and well known for its drug dealings and pick pocketing. Our intent was to highlight the seemingly unnoticed ones, which live in the centre of the square on top of the monumental tomb of the first president barred off by an iron fence. We used a ritualised action, which distantly echoed an aboriginal way of making an offering to Pacha Mama (the earth) and created a trail of sustenance on unforgiving ground.
Siân Robinson Davies
Above Board 8 mins 12 secs
A minimal performance for camera, which plays with the relationship between words and objects while striving to make language visible.
Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly
Blue is the Band 10 mins
Blue is the Band is a short film that depends upon the chance encounter for its flavour, each scene documenting a single journey around the capital which captures a sort of 'expected unexpectedness' about human experience, hinting at the disingenuousness at the core of being. The film initially sets out to purposefully record what can neither be planned nor expected, but it is from the complications and contradictions inherent in this 'expected unexpectedness' that the film derives its dialogue, (which tips its hat ironically to Sartre's 'La Nausee';) the protagonist describes how this malaise has begun, the way in which it has 'come to be', and also where he and 'it' are going. The destination proves ultimately beyond individuality, a place that cannot be 'chanced upon' and which cannot be envisioned itself until individuality has been achieved and overstepped. The nausea of existence is heightened by the snare of his ' expected unexpectedness', about the impossibility of an authentic life for himself, and he seeks an exit through the nausea.
Another Roadside Attraction
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th 12:45-1:50
Another Roadside Attraction has since 2004 organised art events and exhibitions in and outside the gallery space. It organises a regular artist film screening 'PROJECT' and opened a space in April this year. For more information: www.anotherroadsideattraction.org
Camilla Robinson
Lady Jane 3 mins
Noah Angell
Imagine motion Picture 1 min 58 secs
Bram Thomas Arnold &
Elanor Wynne Davis
Exploring power to a pipe line (With sticks) 3 mins 20 secs
Dave Green
Wall Film 7 mins 21 secs
Chris Dooks
I Log 4 mins 16 secs
Dawn Woolley
Interloper 1min 10 secs
Mark Kiessling
Schiffer Klavier 5 mins 22 secs
Germaine Smith
Germaine's Paintings 5 mins 4 secs
Akiko & Masako Takada
A monthly moon 2 mins 16 secs
Ian Thorley
Road to Knowhere 6 mins 16 secs
Vague M
Boom 5 mins 5 secs
Orianna Fox
Body Hair Removal 5 mins
Vojislav Radovanovic
Picnic 3 mins
Anton Hecht
You Angel 5 mins 15 secs
Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly
Capital 7mins and 5 secs
John Fawcett
Transformer 4 mins 40 sec
Videophile-Open Submission
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th 1:50-2:50
Sam Holden
70 Still Frames and 5 Minutes 50 Seconds of Video
Using a digital SLR, image capture software and a hidden video camera '70 Still Frames and 5 Minutes and 50 Seconds of Video' highlights how much we simply don't see when encountering someone's photographic reproduction and underlines how problematic photography can be as a representative medium.
Mike Stokes
Paint Noises 2 mins 26 secs
Paint noises are a series of fast edits of traffic crossing warning stripes on an urban road. The road is shot at different angles so the stripes provide a continually shifting spatial index to accompany the sound - experiencing paint aurally as well as visually.
Romain Sein
The man from Albacete 5 mins
The man from Albacete was shot during a spring night in Paris, on a tennis court of a nice neighbourhood. The subject is an encounter with a very special tennis player who exclusively plays by night. This sportsman from Albacete explains the reason of his attraction for darkness, which takes source in the classical Spanish painting and some weird experiences. Between fiction and reality, lies and unbelievable truths, the discussion shows how the strange man has built his own game with his own rules.
Kevin Logan
Recitation 4 mins 29 secs
Recitation is an audiovisual piece examining oral traditions and their relationship with text based information and belief systems, in particular religious texts. It incorporates computer-animated text/graphics and footage capture by a mobile phone camera. Inspired by and utilising a poem by Jarmain Patrick, which was performed during a development week, which brought together visual, spoken word, and audio artists.
Anton Hect
Variations 2 mins 40 secs
Many local people from the community group aspire, with no previous musical experience, were filmed in St Michael's church in Byker Newcastle. They were filmed individually, over the course of the day, playing single notes on various instruments to create a note bank that was then used in the edit to create the music. At no time did any of the participants meet in reality, so in a sense they became part of a virtual band that only realised the music in the final edit, when they were all superimposed together.
Heidi Stokes
Diners for two in a lift 3 mins
Diners for two in a lift is about a future scenario where people meet each other in lifts, but have become disconnected and have lost sense of their feelings. The film deals with the melancholy of lost love, knowing there is emptiness and in consequence just endlessly searching.
Davinia Bye
Flesh Movement 3 mins 30 secs
Objects of art relate transient internal reasoning to the visual language of their surfaces. The human body, like art is a physical object, yet unlike art it cannot be an eternal presence. For me art cannot exist without viewer engagement, the art object is stimuli for the observer to begin inner reasoning. This may be through discourse or a more emotive incidence, the art occurs in the space between the two, just as our identity exists between bodily and thinking capacities. My work often deals with aesthetics that oscillate between desire and repulsion, which are mutable and greatly uncontrolled like our identity.
Tessa Garland
Jackie's House 45 secs
Park Life 1min 26 secs
Zombie 3 mins 20secs
Jackie's House is part of a series of works that explores the theme of suburbia.
Park Life takes a humorous look at the destruction and building process that is happening in the 2012 Olympic Park where cranes tear at pieces of buildings and the earth rattles and shakes.
This supermarket horror film is based on George Romero's 1960s cult film 'Night of the Living Dead'. In 'Zombie' an ordinary supermarket becomes a film set; where the shoppers become unsuspecting actors in a short but climatic horror sequence.
Ian Helliwell
Playing Up 3 mins 45 secs
The Atomium Age 2 mins 25 secs
Naturally decayed found footage of children's and adult's games, cut and spliced on Super 8
The silver structure of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair
Phillip Warnell
Electric Hare 2 mins
The Electric Hare is the 'lure' used in dog racing. It flees thirteen times each race night. The film, shot at race speed (55mph), provides a close-up portrait of the hare during its terrifying ordeal.
Ben Barton
Uphill for Jesus 3 mins
Filmed in Folkestone, England, 'Uphill for Jesus' is a visual poem which follows a group of evangelical Christians carrying their cross two miles uphill
Dawn Woolley
Interloper 2 1mins 11secs
In my current work I have continued to play on this illusion of reality, using video to create convincing scenes in which my cut-out becomes a credible substitute for me. This work does not recount the relationship between a man and a woman but places the viewer in direct interaction with the cut-out. The overtly sexual nature of the body compels the viewer into the position of voyeur, only to reveal itself as an inanimate object. In this short piece I aim to prolong the suspension of belief so the disjuncture between the presence and absence of the body is more pronounced.
Garrett Lynch
Between Saying and Doing 5 mins
Between Saying and Doing is a video documenting an intervention performance at Eva and Franco Mattes ( http://www.0100101110101101.org ) Synthetic Performances exhibition in Second Life on the 4th of April 2008. The aims of the Synthetic Performances were to re-enact historical 20th century performances within virtual environments effectively questioning physicality and being by creating a conflict with performances traditionally perceived role.
Between Saying and Doing takes Eva and Franco Mattes work as its starting point and relates it to the artist's ideas appropriated from Keith Arnatt in performances entitled Trouser - Word Piece. Questioning the role of the artist, identity and being, Between Saying and Doing considers in an ironic manner how new media as an environment reconfigures the artists practice, simultaneously expanding possibilities of expression and communication while undermining existing value systems.
Jon Fawcett
Transformer 4 mins 40 secs
An explosive device is detonated on the steppe near Astana, Kazakhstan. The device is held on a structure made of two steel cables stretched between four steel poles. The video runs for three minutes, thirty seconds, showing the structure and the surrounding area, it culminates after two minutes the detonation of the explosives. The film plays a simple, knowing game with the audience and their viewing of time-based art in the gallery.
Joanna Laromani
The Swing of the Lost Abuelitas 1mins 55 secs
Based on an unexhibited artwork, ('Disdress: after Fragonard, after Shonibare' by Joanna Laromani) and in response to the parliamentary abolition of British and North American slaveries, 'The Swing of the Lost Abuelitas' is a sweatshop sublime of a twist on the theme of the Empire's new clothes as a first-time grandmother sews herself free of the perennial itch that haunts her back with extraordinary but unsettling results.
The Show Metropolis Video-Dance (Chile)
Sunday 12th 4-4:30
The Show Metropolis Video-Dance is a contemporary dance choreography, which is merged with the audiovisual format in order to expand and strengthen the choreographic possibilities.
This work uses the obsession of men with power as a theme, placed in a science fiction scenario, which by means of a sarcastic language shows us how it passes and faces the different stages it has to go through; stages that are shown as icons representing the different powers mankind longs for to be able to reach the last hierarchical ranking.
The purpose is to compose, through the cinematography, the integration with other artistic disciplines in order to reach certain staging so as to allow dancing be inserted within a particular narrative language. The reflection of the work interprets how different displays of power reverberate in social inequality promoted by economy policies and how these differences are transformed into conditions, which reveal the relationship of the subject with their bodies. Thus, it shows how these social factors influence human behaviour in regards to themselves, to peers and to their environment.
videoclub : remembered/forgotten
11 October 08 at 3pm
A selection of international work from videoclub's most recent call for artists' moving image. All the works selected focus upon auto/semi/biographical content that has been made by filmmakers who are using artists' moving image to approach their subject matter, rather than straight documentary format. Fleeting glimpses, broken narratives and the use of image over language reveals the structure of memory and recall, as a fragmented and re-narrated/imagined phenomenon, as opposed to a simple narrative line.
The Chair , Grace Schwindt, 9'47", 2008 (Germany)
The Chair is about a story my grandmother told me. During the occupation of Berlin in 1945, her mother tried to keep a chair from the Russian soldiers. The soldiers were let into the city a month before the occupation system was set up. I always wondered what kind of chair she risked her life for. Only later did I find out that the chair was a substitute for another event. It turns out that whilst my great grandmother tried to save the chair, my grandmother was raped in a room next door, being one of thousands of victims.
When There Was Grass , Juliette Buss, 10'00", 2008 (UK)
A journey from the present to a post apocalyptic future, When There Was Grass is a short film that presents a series of metaphorical images of desolate landscapes. The time is vague, and the catastrophic event is unknown. The film includes an original soundtrack by musician Peter Marsh, produced as a result of an ongoing collaboration.
Transactions , Yin-Ju Chen 8' 2008 (Taiwan)
Transactions illustrates one example of how Asian parents devote themselves to their grown children. Here a mother works tirelessly for rich clients so she can send her daughter to study in the USA. The montage illustrates the detailed procedure of dressmaking, and the phone conversation covers credit card expenses, converted from US dollars to Taiwanese yuan.
Highway Home , Esther Johnson, 3'00", 2008 (UK)
Normally only glimpsed in passing, Stott Hall Farm, a cottage built in 1737, floats like an island in the middle of the M62 in West Yorkshire, whilst cars and lorries thunder past on both sides. Despite the farm seemingly being a monument to stubbornness, the urban myth being that the farmer refused to leave when the motorway was built in the 1970s, the truth of the story is that the east- and westbound carriageways could not meet due to the lie of the land, and the motorway had to be parted around the cottage to avoid landslips. Highway Home is a contemplative, static study of an unlikely landmark in an unlikely place.
The Market , Ana Husman, 9'32", 2006 (Croatia)
The Market is about buying groceries and preparing food for winter. It deals with the tendency of buyers to buy domestic products, considering them thus better than those foreign and imported, no matter the method of their cultivation. The Market explores people's behaviour during ordinary, everyday shopping on market places.
Far From Now , Aikaterini Gegisian, 7'00", 2007 (Greece)
Far From Now features footage filmed at an abandoned hotel in the Sevan Lake area of Armenia, and follows my conversation with a group of young boys. We are trying to communicate without speaking each other's languages, through their limited knowledge of a few English words, and my own knowledge of a few Armenian. Once in a while, I stop and translate what I imagine they are telling me, building a fiction at the same time as recording a reality.
Noshe-Jan (Bon Appetit) , Gazelle Samizay, 6'30", 2008 (USA)
In Noshe-Jan (Bon Appetit) the viewer is invited to witness the ritual of passing and consuming secrets within an Afghan-American family. The ritual serves as an outlet of expression for the women that bear the secrets, without violating the strict code of keeping face.
The secrets are shared in three different languages (Pashto, Dari and English), each of which signifies a different generation in the family. While the women are the main transmitters of the secrets, the impact on men must not be forgotten.
videoclub : Fragments
12 October 08 at 3pm
Fragments and distortions, filters and reappropriated imagery comprise this surprising collection of moving image works. Found footage and original recordings are dispersed with twisting narratives. Bare and latent concepts, and intertwining philosophies appear to comment on violence, consumerism, and other fragmented human actions.
Broken repetitions in The Horror and Ozymandias are unsettling whilst poetic, whereas FixC's and Nilsson's films provide us with octane-driven feasts that comment on consumerism and our fixation with popular culture.
Planet of the Apes , Seppo Renvall / FixC, 3'00", 2008 (Finland)
Experiment in montage. Based on the Planet of the Apes trailer. Three versions. Each 45 seconds in duration.
The Horror , Sandra Lim, 2'06", 2007 (Canada)
The Horror is a re-working of the iconic moment from Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now (1979). The moment is extended and corrupted in order to simultaneously reflect upon the progress and redundancy of moving image formats through the demise of the character and the decay of analogue tape.
REMAINS , Guli Silberstein, 6'00", 2008 (Israel)
Six image scenes, one minute long each, containing images collected from both mass media and private recordings. It's a grainy, saturated, dreamlike sequence accompanied by distorted Bach music, exploring the sensory powers of video image, arousing feelings of vulnerability and diffusion.
Ozymandias , Dave Griffiths, 3'20", 2006 (UK)
"Nothing beside remains." An accelerated shuffle through cinematic ends, referring to Shelley's compressed sonnet on the shattered colossus of Ramesses the II . The film splices cue-dots into a pulsating, celebratory dance routine. Glimpses survive of top-corner movie action; hats and hair-dos, curtains and lamps - an inventory of life's peripherals.
Cello and Paper Cubes , Paul Gittins, 3'02", 2007 (UK)
The cello player constructs a geometric landscape as he plays his instrument; a surveillance camera attached to a projector passes his image through a screen of paper cubes.
Undisclosed Beauty , Anders Weberg, 3'13", 2008 (Sweden)
Just because You spit in my eyes does mean that I have clear vision.
High on Diesel and Gasoline , Jonas Nilsson, 1'44", 2007 (Sweden)
The Beautiful People Syndrome is what happens when you watch too much TV. You begin to believe, or expect, regular people to act, behave, and look like television stars. Does TV imitate life, or does life imitate TV, or do both happen? Television images portray people as beautiful, smart, wealthy, quick-witted, creative, instantly compelling, and exciting. Television wouldn't be worth watching, for those who watch, if it wasn't unbelievably interesting.
videoclub is supported by Arts Council England, Brighton and Hove City Council, Lighthouse and A-N's NAN bursary scheme.