(Full venue dates and details below the programme)
26 April, Fabrica, Brighton
01 May, CCA Glasgow
24 May, Whitechapel Gallery, London
27 June, Exeter Phoenix
26 July, Spike Island, Bristol
31 July, Nottingham Contemporary
Selected is a new collection of diverse artists’ film and video touring the UK in April-July 2018, taking place at some of the UK’s leading venues for showcasing artists’ film and video.
Nominated by the artists shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award 2017, Selected brings together some of the best work from early career film and video artists from the UK in a vibrant programme of recent artists’ moving image.
Shortlisted artists for the 2017 Film London Jarman Award – Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Oreet Ashery, Adham Faramawy, Melanie Manchot, Charlotte Prodger and Marianna Simnett – have nominated work by up-and-coming filmmaking talent, to develop an invigorating new programme of work. The screening will be followed by an in conversation with some of the artists.
Afro-Glitch, Kamile Ofoeme, 2017, 6:50 mins Gaby, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, 2018, 8 mins The Blushing Valley, Gery Georgieva, 2018, 4 mins Oh Leander!, Jala Wahid, 2017, 4:15 mins People say it’s fireworks, Tim Bowditch, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau and Sybella Perry, 2017, 13:45 mins brother to brother, Imran Perretta, 2017, 6:36 mins Prime Time, Rob Crosse, 2017, 20 mins
Venue dates and details
Fabrica
Date and time: Thursday, 26 April – 7pm doors and bar, 7:30pm screening
Price: £3
Address: Fabrica, Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG
Web / contact: www.fabrica.org.uk / 01273 778646 /BOOK TICKETS
CCA Glasgow
Date and time: Tuesday, 01 May – 6:30pm
Price: FREE – SEE DETAILS
Address: CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD
To book tickets (tickets also on door): www.cca-glasgow.com / 0141 352 4900
Whitechapel Gallery
Date and time: Thursday, 24 May – 5pm
Price: £5 / £3.50 concessions
Address: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Web / tickets / contact: www.whitechapelgallery.org / 020 7522 78889 / BOOK TICKETS
Exeter Phoenix
Date and time: 27 June – 6:30pm
Price: £3
Address: Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS
Web / contact / tickets: www.exeterphoenix.org.uk / 01392 667080
Spike Island
Date and time: Thursday, 26 July – 6:30pm
Price: FREE
Address: 133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX
Web / contact: www.spikeisland.org.uk / 0117 929 2266
Nottingham Contemporary
Date and time: Tuesday, 31 July – 6:30pm
Price: FREE
Address: Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB
Web / contact: www.nottinghamcontemporary.org / 0115 948 9750 / BOOK TICKETS
Produced by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. Supported by Arts Council England and Film London.
Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network
Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) supports London-based artists working in moving image, working in partnership to deliver a comprehensive programme including production award schemes, regular screenings, talks and events, as well as the prestigious annual Film London Jarman Award. www.filmlondon.org.uk/flamin
In its fourth year, Both Sides Now examines new models of making moving image influenced by internet and videogame culture. Showing work made in the past four years, the programme explores new aesthetics, visual languages and digital forms that are native to the internet, and that comment upon local and global politics, society, globalisation and science.
Both Sides Now presents contemporary and historical film and video work from the UK, Hong Kong and China, curated by Isaac Leung of Videotage and Jamie Wyld of videoclub. The films explore developments within the culture and society of Hong Kong and China over the past three decades, including work which reflects on the ongoing dynamics of cultures in Hong Kong, China, and the UK.
Film programme
Play Station, Lawrence Lek, 2017, 7’45” Selachimorpha, Joey Holder, 2017, 5’10” AfterGlow (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered), boredomresearch, 2016, 4’36” Divisional Articulations, Max Hattler, 2017, 4’33” Weresheglanspertheere, Sebastian Buerkner, 2014, 5’06” The Afterlife of Rosy Leavers, Angela Su, 2017, 14’35” Another Day of Depression in Kowloon, IP Yuk-Yui, 2012, 15’03” KungFU Disco New, Jeff Lee, 2016, 1’39” Copy is Right!, Joseph Chen, 2016, 3’27” Windows on the World (Part 1), Ming Wong, 2014, 3’02”
Event and venue details
HOME Manchester
Date and time: Saturday, 2 December 2017 at 1pm
Price: FREE
Address:HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester M15 4FN
SOAS, University of London
Date and time: Friday, 9 March 2018 at 5pm
Price: FREE – University of London students only
Address: Bloomsbury, London WC1H 0XG
Fabrica
Date and time: Tuesday, 27 March 2018 at 6:30pm doors and bar, 7pm start
Price: £3
Address: Fabrica, 40 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG
To book tickets: www.fabrica.org.uk / 01273 778646
Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre
Date and time: Thursday, 29 March 2018 at 8:30pm
Price: FREE
Address: 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG
Web / contact / tickets: www.phoenix.org.uk / 0116 242 2800
About Videotage
Videotage is a leading non-profit organisation in Hong Kong focusing on the presentation, promotion, production and preservation of video and media art, serving artists in the expanding technological art and culture network. Since 1986, Videotage has developed itself from an umbrella for media artists, to a network of media art and culture for cross-disciplinary cultural productions, and platform to facilitate international exchange.
Both Sides Now 4 has been supported by Arts Council England and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
December 11, 2017A Ripe Volcano, Taiki Sakpisit, 2011
videoclub’s assistant curator Moritz Cheung writes about how he chose the works in Ritual – a programme of artists’ film and video from South East Asia showing in the UK Nov-Dec 2018.
As curator, I wanted to bring together a programme that would invite audiences to walk through the mystical aspects of SE Asia; through its collective memories and histories, to a world where there is no identifying line between reality and belief.
Ritual begins with Vietnamese artist Pham Ngoc Lân’s The Story of Ones. This documentary-like film combines the sound of local radio and scenes from everyday life. Jumping through and between radio stations, content varies between propaganda to gossip; it draws a contrast, where people appear to be unaware that they are part of the story themselves.
This is followed by Taiki Sakpisit’s in depth study of life from the perspective of a Bangkokian in A Ripe Volcano, which explores the psychic scars left on the city. These two films leave us questioning what is exposed and what is still hidden in the lives of SE Asian people.
In Paradise under Construction Krisna Murti demonstrates the beauty of harmony in traditional dance and Indonesia’s natural environment. Murti is a pioneering artist in the use of moving image as a media of creation in the region; in his work he explores the possibility of using both natural and man-made elements from Indonesia. His work has also become a way of opening a world of fantasy to us.
Au Sow Yee’s Sow Kancil, Hang Tuah, Raja Bersiong, Bomoh, the Missing Jet and Others is the second instalment in her project, The Mengkerang Project. The story is based on an imaginary location called Mengkerang. Being in a multi-racial nation, Au witnessed the unequal situation of being an ‘outsider’ because of racial background, in Malay or Malaysia. She then collected a series of folktales from different ethnicities living in Malaysia, to create a mythical, coherent future for the country and its population.
In contrast, Shireen Seno’s 16mm film, Shotgun Tuding takes us back in time to late 1940s Philippines. The film is a tribute to pancit Western films (Filipino Spaghetti Westerns). As a rising star working in experimental film, her maturing skills are recognisable, both in the work’s direction, and her ability to merge Filipino humour with a comical Western-style narrative.
December 3, 2017And if in a Thousand Years, Patrick Hough, 2017
VIDEOCLUB AT ART KAOHSIUNG
videoclub has been invited to participate in Art Kaohsiung, an art fair that takes place in Taiwan’s second largest city. We will be showing four films by artists Patrick Hough and Karen Kramer inside two shipping containers at the art fair. The programme is showing as part of Art Kaohsiung’s public programme, and will be freely accessible to visitors to the art fair between 8 and 10 December 2017.
Venue: The PIER-2 ART CENTER, Dayong Warehouse, No. 1 Dayong Rd, Yancheng District, Kaohsiung City, 803, Taiwan.
Dates: 8-10 December 2017
Friday, 8 December 2017, 11am – 7pm
Saturday, 9 December 2017, 11am – 7pm
Sunday, 10 December 2017, 11am – 6pm
For ticket details and purchase, visit the Art Kaohsiung website.
ARTWORKS
And if in a Thousand Years, Patrick Hough, 2017, 22:14 mins
When the film-set for Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments had had its day, it was, like the biblical civilisation it evoked, lost to the sands of time – in its case, deliberately buried, in an act of money-saving expediency, under the dunes of the Southern California desert where the movie was shot. Over the years, though, those shifting sands have gradually exposed this piece of epic landfill, bringing souvenir hunters to gather where archaeologists (or Egyptologists) used to tread.
In Patrick Hough’s video, shot on location at the site, it is not just fake fragments of the past that are disinterred. What hovers over the place is a spirit of uncertainty; one that questions bedrock values like ‘originality’ and ‘authenticity’ and dusts them with other layers of meaning: the extraordinary ease of reproducibility, the spray-on glamour of cinematic semi-celebrity. This spirit of uncertainty is encapsulated by the figure of a sphinx – once part of the décor of the majestic film-set, now wandering in ghostly limbo; haunting the nearby town like a wildcat on the prowl. The sphinx’s hybrid form and cryptic, enigmatic presence is also a symbol of a blurring between the material and the virtual that Hough’s video not only proposes but visibly enacts, using sophisticated digital scanning techniques to suggest the outline of a new technological horizon that is, even as we look back nostalgically at the remnants of earlier eras, writing its own name upon the sand.
And If In A Thousand Years was commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards: Neither One Thing or Another, a collaboration between Jerwood Charitable Foundation and FVU. FVU is supported by Arts Council England.
The Hills Have Eyes, Patrick Hough, 2011, 11:03 mins
The Hills Have Eyes explores the fabricated space of the film set whereby the iconic architecture of the American south west has been displaced from its original context and imposed on the Moroccan landscape near the town of Ouarzazate. Footage of a film set is shown here juxtaposed with the stage directions of the original film script as inter-titles. In the artificial construct of the set, the script writer’s original vision is unintentionally repeated each day in an unending loop, though the film crew are long gone. An old man lives in the set, and still sits on the porch of the old gas station, plastic rifle in hand, in a strange echo of the script writers directions. The act of creating fiction has inadvertently created a new reality. This piece attempts to reveal the disrupting power of fiction in the Moroccan landscape, bearing witness to the way in which reality mirrors the fiction of the film.
The eye that articulates belongs on land, Karen Kramer, 2016, 23mins
The eye that articulates belongs on land is a single channel film installation with stereo sound. It was jointly commissioned by Jerwood Charitable Trust and Film Video Umbrella and premiered at Jerwood space, London in March 2016. It was partly shot on location in Japan, specifically in areas affected by the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and the subsequent meltdown of the reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The conceptual dichotomy between ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’ disaster had been the focus of my practice for some time when I made this film, which takes its title from an essay by landscape architects Dilip Da Cunha and Anuradha Mathur on the topic of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It allowed me to respond artistically to my research on human habitation on land in violent collision with the instability of bodies of water.
The narrative of the film has a folkloric and fantastical quality – the quality of a fable, weird tale or myth. It is narrated in monologue by a mummified Hokkaido fox named Sasaki, voiced by the actor Togo Igawa. Sasaki represents an emissary between alternate worlds, both spatial and temporal, and spends much of the film reflecting mournfully upon cataclysmic consequences of absolute division between land and sea. A substantial part of Sasaki’s monologue is lifted from eyewitness accounts of survivors of both the Tōhoku earthquake/tsunami and of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The monologue is uninterrupted until Sasaki’s descent into a black void where he is taunted by entities called the forecasters – represented as animated, highly stylised of water molecules – and by Urania, muse of astronomy – the namesake of Uranium.
LIMULUS, Karen Kramer, 2013, 11:45 mins
LIMULUS is a film and speculative fiction about the encounter between a piece of ocean debris (a discarded mylar balloon), a horseshoe crab and a 1974 Seeburg ‘Olympian’ jukebox. It addresses two kinds of obsolescence – one, a redundant music machine, the other the once indispensable horseshoe crab whose extinction by over-fishing has been stayed so it’s blood can be harvested for a clotting agent with widespread pharmaceutical use. With synthetic alternatives available the horseshoe crab’s protection is at risk, but the contrasting timescales of the two – one machine-made history in decades, the other under threat after 450 million years on this earth – gives pause for thought; both about our relationship with the non-human and of our own finitude as a species.Further to addressing the act of storytelling and formal categories like the allegory or the fable, Limulus, reflects pressing ecological realities and the way that conceptions of the ‘natural world,’ elemental force and deep time are affected by them.
Focusing on oceanic life and the demands on it of human industries, it highlights the interface between scientific fact and mythic fiction in human understanding of the world. This is especially prescient where the sea is concerned as it’s perils (uninhabitable, unpredictable, frighteningly vast it is an eternal menace) and importance as a fundamental condition of all life and much surplus activity on dry land make it one of the ageless subjects of imaginary narrative.A note on sound: The narrator’s voice was made possible by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who provided vocalisation of 15 different marine animals, which were spliced together to make an ethereal, multi-tonal and multi-species voice.
For enquiries about the artworks, please contact Jamie Wyld, Director of videoclub: jamie@videoclub.org.uk / +44(0)7813 118570.
November 24, 2017AfterGlow (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered), boredomresearch, 2016
Both Sides Now 4
In its fourth year, Both Sides Now examines new models of making moving image influenced by internet and videogame culture. Showing work made in the past four years, the programme explores new aesthetics, visual languages and digital forms that are native to the internet, and that comment upon local and global politics, society, globalisation and science.
Both Sides Now presents contemporary and historical film and video work from the UK, Hong Kong and China, curated by Isaac Leung of Videotage and Jamie Wyld of videoclub. The films explore developments within the culture and society of Hong Kong and China over the past three decades, including work which reflects on the ongoing dynamics of cultures in Hong Kong, China, and the UK.
Venue: HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester M15 4FN Date and time: Saturday, 2 December 2017 at 1pm Web / contact / tickets:homemcr.org / box office tel: 0161 200 1500 / BOOK TICKETS
FILM PROGRAMME
Welcome to Play Station, Lawrence Lek, 2017, 2’40”
Farsight Corporate Promo, Lawrence Lek, 2017, 5’05”
November 23, 2017Reading List by Wu Chi-Yu, commissioned by videoclub & Phoenix Leicester 2017
‘Digital Break’ is a series of screenings bringing contemporary Taiwanese film and video to cities around the UK. Curated by videoclub; a platform for artists’ film, video and moving image based in Brighton, the selection bursts with poetic narratives that are both universal and specific to the Asian context. The pieces were curated from OSMOSIS, Taiwan’s leading film, video and music festival.
The intention of ‘Digital Break’ is to place Taiwanese video art in a European context and widen the reception for their subject matter, process and techniques; it’s fair to say that this is a welcome yet uncommon occurrence. The exhibition at the Pheonix, Leicester, exhibits Wu Chi-Yu’s Reading List alongside a host of contemporary artists all with a subtle commentary on the human experience. For the screening Wu Chi-Yu’s work sits alongside duo Chen Yin-Ju and James T. Hong, Fan Chih Ming, Lin Shih Chieh, Niu Jun-Qiang, Hsu Che-Y and Wu Tzu-an.
In a conversational documentary style Zaidi Musa and Ezzmer Daruh, two charismatic bookshop owners from the Northeastern region of Malaysia, recount the origins of their devotion to the production, acquisition and distribution of printed literature of various kinds. The film entitled Reading List by Wu Chi-Yu is a candid account of knowledge sharing, particularly through print, and the way in which this fuels the transmission of ideas across generations and place. In his fluid speech Zaidi Musa, owner of a weekly bookshop in the market called Kedai Hitam Putih, positions himself in a local history of upsurge and decline in the output of independent publishers from the 1930s to 1970s. He speaks modestly about his DIY revival of printed literature, relaying his onus within the community to invigorate an essential part of it. Zaidi places the duty upon himself as both the keeper and teller of local and international histories. His role could be downplayed in a European context where censorship is rarely spoken of beyond dystopian reading circles. On the contrary, the realities of surveillance and policing of bodies and books in Asia is still apparent in certain parts of the continent, and his revival of the cultural of information sharing is a continual expression and carving of what can be considered a simple freedom. Wu Chi-Yu’s work is an exciting examination of seemingly ordinary act of reading.
Modern surveillance feeds into a societal desire to always know, be it a governments investigation of the individual or vice versa, the non-stop and infinite news outlets feed into our constant scrutiny of one another. Niu Jun-Qiang’s When I’m Getting Older With You is a somewhat comedic comment on the 24-hour investigation and reporting of ‘news’. Within the domestic environment and a disused office space the news continues without an audience and questions the appropriateness and value of information where it fails to speak to anyone (literally and metaphorically). Is this style of reporting wasteful and hysteria driving? The image of the world presented through this news anchor is one with constant happenings, whilst en masse this may be true, that is far-fetched from the banality and silence of everyday life depicted.
The film closes with the same journalist reporting the break down of her car; a comedic ending that puts the production of news into focus. Niu Jun-Qiang’s well positioned revelation leaves the viewer with a host of questions surrounding the validity of the news presented throughout the piece, a topical issue in the an age of fake news. Again, the tone is not overpowering, the subject creeps up on the viewer and hangs over our heads, a weighty suspense that Niu Jun-Qiang executes well to make the point.
Against the backdrop of homogenous products and indistinguishable consumer goods in the market, Chi-Yu speaks of the way that Zaida would suggest books for customers to read on the basis of their interests, like a pharmacist administering the right medicine. The exchange is personal and intimate like the reading experience itself. Zaidi studies the customer and interprets their desired text on the basis of his knowledge of books he’s read. The title of the video seems most fitting. Both bookshop owners speak in almost philosophical fashion as is offering a lecture to friends and appear to hold the self appointed position of academic with information to satisfy some kind of self led education. The artist focuses on the Gall-Peter map that visually differs from common representations of the world. It brings into question how our depiction of the world impacts our understanding of it; a sentiment the artist appears to share. Wu Chi-Yu toys visually with the possibilities of differing scale of countries and distance between them, offering the viewer a literal and simplistic illustration of the power of perception. There are no limits to the methods used by the artist to emphasise his point, he elevates a usual element and challenges the audience to interrogate the sources and production of information.
The visually captivating work of Fan Chih-Ming’s In the Fog – Abandoned City, is a split screen depiction of a post-war city using a video game system. The empty streets are towered by both completely and semi-obliterated buildings, placing this somewhat apocalyptic cityscape as one existing in the aftermath of extreme violence. The shots swim flawlessly through buildings accompanied by a sea of ambient sound that blankets the video in an air of stillness. Were it not for the rain that beings to fall, the video would be devoid of any evidence of life and completely silent, a depressing realisation. End Transmission is similarly ominous and works with bleak urban space. Chen Yin-Ju and James T. Hong’s slide through and sporadic shots of known ephemeral spaces; tunnels, roads and well lit highways punctuated with a slightly authoritarian voice alerting the viewer of an imminent invasion that materialises by the end of the film.
The collection currently touring the UK is a testament to the vivacious nature of contemporary art in Taiwan. The political overtone is not avoided but subtly introduced to the viewer in the same way that it permeates our lives.
Written by Samra Mayanja, art critic, October 2017.
ON AIR launches as part of our international showcasing programme, Viewfinder, in Shanghai over 10 till 18 November, alongside the West Bund Art Fair. ON AIR is a collaboration with Shanghai-based International Art and Science Research Institute (AS), which organises interdisciplinary programmes and projects in and beyond China.
As part of the ON AIR programme we’re bringing seven artists with us to connect them with local contacts in Shanghai, and to show their work as part of a series of screenings, events and talks in Shanghai. The artists in the programme are Anne Haaning, Joey Holder, Patrick Hough, Shona Illingworth, Karen Kramer, Torsten Lauschmann and Lawrence Lek.
Programme in Shanghai
>>Friday, 10 Nov 17 – Shanghai Vancouver Film School: talks by Anne Haaning and Torsten Lauschmann
17:00 – 17:15: Welcome by curators and representative from Shanghai Vancouver Film School
17:15 – 18:30: Artist talk by Torsten Lauschmann
18:30 – 18:45: Break
18:45 – 20:00: Artist talk by Anne Haaning
>>Saturday, 11 Nov 17 – Aurora Museum: screening of work by Patrick Hough, Shona Illingworth and Karen Kramer
13:30 – 14:00: Guests arrive and audience registration
14:00 – 14:15: Introductions from Aurora Museum and programme curators
14:15 – 14:45: Three artists introduce themselves and their work
14:45 – 16:00: Screening programme:
Shona Illingworth, Time Present, 2016
Patrick Hough, And If In A Thousand Years, 2017
Karen Kramer, The Eye that Articulates Belongs on Land, 2016
A Night on Air will be an opportunity to see work by the artists, and for audiences and artists to meet and share an evening talking to one-another, over a glass of wine.
Venue address: 3F, No.3, Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, Shanghai
>>Sunday, 12 Nov 2017 – Chronus Art Center: screening of Joey Holder’s work
13:oo – Screening programme:
Selachimorpha, 2017, 5’01”
Ophiucus, 2016, 3’40”
Ophiux, 2017, 21’32”
13:30 – Artist talk/introduction to practice
13:50 – Q&A with audience
14:10 – Finish
16:00 – 16:10: Welcome and arrival
16:10 – 16:15: Introduction to programme from curators
16:15 – 17:15: Artist introductions to work – all seven artists
17:15 – 17:30: Informal networking
Venue address: West Bund Art Center, 2555 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District, Shanghai
>>Saturday, 18 Nov 2017 – Chronus Art Center: screening of Lawrence Lek’s work
15:00 – 16:30: Programme of selected films by Lawrence Lek, to be followed by Q&A with the artist.
videoclub has been awarded funding for Viewfinder from Arts Council England and Creative Scotland to deliver a series of visits across E Asia with artists who work with moving image. This is with the aim of promoting those artists to local audiences and to enable artists to gain contacts, which can lead to earning income, through such as sales, commissions, exhibitions, screenings and residencies. We will be visiting cities across China, Taiwan and S Korea throughout 2017 and 18.
ON AIR Project
ON AIR is a long-term cultural exchange programme that Viewfinder will be part of over the next two years, enabling exchange internationally between artists from the UK, China and other countries. It is a project established by videoclub and International Art & Science Research Institute.
International Art & Science Research Institute (AS)
International Art & Science Research Institute is a non-profit research organisation based in Shanghai and Hong Kong, focused on art and scientific development internationally. This is to encourage interaction between art and science organisations, and to promote research in this field.
It aims to promote the creation and development of new art and interdisciplinary studies; professional art curation and management; international projects, and bridging disciplines through alliances and networks.
Funded by Arts Council England and Creative Scotland.
October 23, 2017Krisna Murti, Paradise Under Construction, 2014
Ritual: Artists’ film and video from SE Asia
Ritual presents recent work by artist filmmakers from Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, giving a brief glimpse into moving image practices from SE Asia. From Shireen Seno’s humour to Taiki Sakpisit’s darkness, through the metaphors of Au Sow Yee’s folk stories, Ritual explores our emotional inner world and life’s illusions.
As the first UK-touring programme dedicated to SE Asian moving image arts, this programme includes Krisna Murti, who is the pioneer of video art in the region, and rising filmmaking talent from several SE Asian countries, including: Au Sow Yee, Shireen Seno, Phạm Ngọc Lân and Taiki Sakpisit.
Curated by Moritz Cheung for videoclub.
Screening Programme
The Story of Ones, Phạm Ngọc Lân (Vietnam), 2011, 10 mins A Ripe Volcano, Taiki Sakpisit (Thailand), 2011, 15 mins Paradise Under Construction, Krisna Murti (Indonesia), 2014, 4 mins Sang Kancil, Hang Tuah, Raja Bersiong, Bomoh, the Missing Jet and Others, Au Sow Yee (Malaysia), 2015, 18 mins Shotgun Tuding, Shireen Seno (Philippines), 2014, 16 mins
Venues and dates
Fabrica
Date and time: Thursday, 02 November 2017 – doors and bar 7pm, event starts 7:30pm
Price: £3
Address: Fabrica, Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG
Web / contact / tickets: www.fabrica.org.uk / 01273 778646 / BOOK TICKETS
Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre
Date and time: Wednesday, 6 December 2017 at 6:30pm
Price: FREE – TICKETS CAN BE RESERVED
Address: 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG
Web / contact / tickets: www.phoenix.org.uk / 0116 242 2800 / No booking needed
Reading Listis a newly commissioned work by Taiwanese artist Wu Chi-Yu, premiering at Phoenix in Leicester on 5 October.
The film was made in three Malaysian cities – George Town, Tanah Merah and Kota Bharu. During his journey, the artist interviewed local communities, documenting their reactions/interactions with books, articles and literature forbidden in northern Malaysia. Interviews were taken with booksellers about the trading and trafficking of such books, underground reading networks, and investigations into books banned for relating to “problematic” racial and religious ideologies.
Reading List opens alongside a screening programme of work from Taiwan, including artists Chen Yin-Ju, Fan Chih-Ming, Hsu Che-Yu, Lin Shih-Chieh, Niu Jun-Qiang, Wu Tzu-An and Wu Chi-Yu.
Exhibition details
Venue: Phoenix, 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG Opening date and time: 5 Oct, 6pm-7:30pm – followed by screening of Taiwanese films (free) at 7:30pm Exhibition dates: 5 Oct – 13 Nov 17 Web / phone:www.phoenix.org.uk / 0116 242 2800
Reading List is a new commission by videoclub, Phoenix and OSMOSIS Audiovisual Media Festival. Supported by Arts Council England and Taiwan Ministry of Culture.
Viewfinder is a collection of artists’ film and video, exhibiting at OSMOSIS Audiovisual Media Festival in Taipei, which includes an exhibition, two screenings and a performance.
Viewfinder brings together a collection of diverse film and video artists working with diverse subjects, including gender, sexuality, class and race. All the artists ask and challenge us to face our social conditioning and what society tries to convince us to believe what is normal. This includes challenging the media’s role in showing us how to react and obey, what to consume and what to look like. And to contest our acceptance of the media and social conditioning’s roles in shaping us; examining how the public impacts upon the personal.
Exhibition details
地點 / Location：台電板橋新民大樓2樓 / 2 Floor – Shin Min building, No.1, Sec. 2, Xianmin Blvd., Banqiao Dist., New Taipei City, Taiwan (MRT Banqiao station Exit 2)
Artists in the exhibition include: Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Adham Faramawy, Evan Ifekoya, Lucie Rachel, Patrick Staff, xname (Eleonora Oreggia) and Zarina Muhammad. Full exhibition programme details on OSMOSIS website.
Screening details
地點 / Location： 西門 Woolloomooloo Moonshiner, No. 2, Lane 120, Section 2, Wuchang St, Wanhua District, Taipei City, Taiwan 108
Date and times: 27日 August月 (SUN) 14:00 – 18:00/ 現場售票 (Price: 單場180 / 套票300 TWD)
Estate a Reverie, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 83′, 2015
短片單元 / Short film programme:
Janus Collapse, Adham Faramawy, 09’51”, 2016 The Gender Song, Evan Ifekoya, 02’25”, 2016 Let Us Let Go, Lucie Rachel, 09’29”, 2016 The Foundation, Patrick Staff, 28’00”, 2015 Who is La Mariée, xname, 03’52”, 2014 JOI BANGLA, Zarina Muhammad, 10’17”, 2016
Viewfinder is supported by Arts Council England’s International Showcasing fund, Creative Scotland and Taiwan Ministry of Culture, via OSMOSIS.
It’s a lazy Sunday morning and you’re reading the news in bed. Or perhaps it’s Wednesday afternoon and you’re hurriedly scoffing away lunch in order to get back to the office in time for the next meeting. Little do you know, the world is about to change. Machines, household appliances and gadgets across the planet are becoming sentient and they intend to overthrow human civilisation. This is the premise for Stephen King’s cult movie Maximum Overdrive, from which Southend’s Focal Point Gallery departs in its latest exhibition. Released in 1986, King’s movie tapped into a cultural fear of emerging technologies, that, following the subsequent three decades appears to be returning in full swing. Focal Point Gallery’s exhibition asks us to draw parallels with this earlier time, and challenges how technological innovation is both perceived and utilised in our most precarious present.
Though there are five artists that make up the show, for the sake of brevity I will not attempt to address them all individually. Instead I will focus on Thomas Lock’s film Within, 2017 and part of the exhibition’s outreach programme.
Lock’s film is a four-channel floor to ceiling projection whose arresting animation recalls the work of Pipilotti Rist. In an alternate future, intergalactic sentient beings have visited earth. Like an anthropologist conducting field research they have studied humanity and concluded that though we are an intelligent race, that intelligence is misused in the reinforcement of hierarchy. The aliens propose swapping genetics in order to save humanity from itself. Whether the aliens’ intentions are sincere, or they are hiding some ulterior motive is unclear, yet it raises pressing questions about how humanity might survive in an ecologically, politically and economically unstable future. In a perverted way, perhaps it’s somewhat comforting to imagine our paradigm of humanity does not stand alone in its relentless pursuit of self-destruction. For now I’m left awaiting our own aliens with open arms!
However, before encountering any of the artworks in the gallery, one is greeted with a large wooden flower bed in the lobby. Inside the flower bed are growing an array of different vegetables, their growth monitored by sensors and cameras. When the soil becomes too dry, the gallery attendant is alerted. As Maximum Overdrive draws to a close in early September, Focal Point Gallery intends to take the produce grown in this flower bed throughout the duration of the exhibition and host a meal open to the public of Southend. Some might see this as no different to the relational aesthetics work of artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, yet unlike New York (where Tiravanija originally exhibited), Southend is largely a working class town with little engagement in contemporary art. When I visited Focal Point Gallery, I must admit I was perplexed about the conceptual entanglement between the works on show and the emphasis on community engagement. I couldn’t separate Maximum Overdrive from the myriad of other exhibitions that have been staged on technology which never breached the walls of the gallery.
Artists are imperative to the ever-changing discourse surrounding technology, yet so often in cities such as London, New York, and Berlin these debates are confined to extraordinarily small circles considering the global scope of the subject. More than anything else, Maximum Overdrive is therefore a stark reminder that contemporary art must go beyond its traditional modes of dissemination in order to tease out its emancipatory potential.
Maximum Overdrive is on at Focal Point until 10 September 2017.
Written by Louie Young, videoclub intern, July 2017.
August 14, 2017Brighton is Our Playground, Choi Sai Ho, 2016 (footage from Screen Archive South East)
An interview with Choi Sai Ho following his residency in Brighton in August 2016, and the making of his work Brighton is Our Playground, commissioned by videoclub and Royal Pavilion & Museums, for the exhibition Experimental Motion. Brighton is Our Playground was created using found footage from Screen Archive South East.
To start off with, can you tell us a little about the work you make, and what inspires you to make it?
In regard to found footage, it really depends on what found footage you’ve got. The structure I was editing, in fact, involved a very primitive “story” or “narrative” structure – a man goes to the car, then car journey, Brighton, introducing people at the beach, and so on. I started thinking about what musical style would fit the work while watching the footage.
Your work often involves a combination of visuals and sound – is either more important to you? How do you decide what kind of visuals go with what sounds?
In making this work, I treated it as making a film. Both visuals and sound are important to me. While I was watching the found footage (most of it is silent film), I had some ideas about music genres such as Triphop, Downtempo, Ambient, etc. within Electronica style, and that it should not be too complicated, and should not have too many instruments for the soundtrack.
After building a very rough piece of music, I edited the footage following the beats and rhythms of the music piece. The music always decides the tempo and rhythm of the film. So it makes easier for editing. The good thing about being a composer and filmmaker is I can make changes immediately during the creative process if the footage does not match with the music or vice versa. I can change either one of these in order to fit with the other. When I watched the old footage, I found that the beach footage was so beautiful, basically this old footage was so beautiful, and they were real and existed – the people at the beach [Father Neptune Ceremony on Brighton Beach, 1951, Roger Dunford], the young couple, the cameraman and the director inside the film [Local News in Brighton & Hove, 1951]… I knew I had to include this footage to show these beautiful images. And I needed the beautiful melodies to match with this footage so I composed it and put it to this film artwork.
In August, you took part in a residency in Brighton with videoclub, and worked with Screen Archive South East to produce a new work for Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton is Our Playground. Can you tell us a little about the film, and how you decided on which archive films to include in your final film?
I saw that so much footage was from car driver seats, train windows, trams or other transportation in UK. I’ve always liked the point-of-view shot from driver’s seats. I wanted the audience to also experience what it was like a few decades ago journeying in a car or train. A bit like music structure, the beginning and the ending is the same or similar, so you would see the POV shots were used at the beginning and the ending of my film artwork here. Furthermore, I tried to include different eras of Brighton and UK while deciding upon the archive films.
What was it like working with the Screen Archive?
They were so helpful and they manage the archive and access to footage very well. Normally the general public may not be interested in watching these films unless you are film scholars, film lovers, researchers or artists, etc. It is a very good way for the public to watch the footage through my work. I guess it is also a kind of cultural preservation, preserving the old films and cultural activity as well. I hope my work can bring this old footage to life again, showing the beautiful things that exist in history.
The soundtrack to Brighton is Our Playground is quite fast-paced, quite in contrast to what people think of a soundtrack to archival films, why did you decide to compose this type of music?
To me, making music is similar to editing films. Practically, electronic music is more convenient for me to work on. The spectrum of electronic music is so wide. I hope people have a different perception about electronic music after watching my work. It can be fast-paced and soft downtempo too. For the beginning of my work, you would hear my own field recordings of Brighton beach. The contemporary electronic music mixing or colliding with old film footages may be a good mixture here. Making artworks always involves experiments. Creators are always trying different combinations to see if it works or not.
A new collection of artists’ film and video curated from OSMOSIS, Taiwan’s leading film, video and music festival. A varied collection of film and video by some of Taiwan’s cutting edge artists working with moving image and creative technology.
All the artists grew up in the digital era, and their works respond to an age obsessed with digital culture and imagery, creating dialogues between technology, film and video art.
The programme will contain the premiere of a new commission by Taiwanese artist, Wu Chi-Yu, entitled Reading List. The film has been made in three Malaysian cities – George Town, Tanah Merah and Kota Bharu. During his journey, the artist interviewed local communities, documenting their reactions/interactions with books, articles and literature forbidden in northern Malaysia. Interviews were taken with booksellers about the trading and trafficking of such books, underground reading networks, and investigations into books banned for relating to “problematic” racial and religious ideologies.
Some of the artists from Taiwan and OSMOSIS’ curator will be at screenings to introduce the programme and talk to the audience.
Screening programme
CHEN Yin-Ju & James T. HONG End Transmission, 2010, 15 min 40 sec
FAN Chih-Ming, In the Fog – Abandoned City, 2016, 7 min 34 sec
LIN Shih-Chieh, A Short History of Decay, 2014, 5 min 45 sec NIU Jun-Qiang, When I’m Getting Older With You, 2009, 5 min 10 sec
HSU Che-Yu, Microphone Test: A Letter to Huang Guo-Jun, 2015, 25 min 18 sec WU Tzu-An, Stargazing, 2017, 2 min 48 sec WU Chi-Yu, Reading List, 2017, approx. 20 min (in post-production) – in exhibition at Phoenix in Leicester, screened at all other venues
WU Chi-Yu, A Private Collection, 2016, 13 min 33 sec – screening only at Phoenix, Leicester
Event dates and venues
Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre
Date and time: Thursday, 5 October 2017 at 7:30pm (proceeding exhibition opening at 6pm)
Price: FREE
Address: 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG
Web / contact / tickets: www.phoenix.org.uk / 0116 242 2800 / No booking needed
Exeter Phoenix
Date and time: 10 October 2017 at 5:30pm
Price: FREE
Address: Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS
Web / contact / tickets: www.exeterphoenix.org.uk / 01392 667080 / FREE – PLEASE BOOK HERE
Fabrica
Date and time: Wednesday, 11 October 2017 – doors and bar 7pm, event starts 7:15pm
Price: £3
Address: Fabrica, Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG
Web / contact / tickets: www.fabrica.org.uk / 01273 778646
Backlit Gallery
Date and time: Thursday, 12 October 2017 – doors and bar 6:30pm, event starts 7pm
Price: £2
Address: Backlit Gallery, Alfred House, Ashley Street, Nottingham , NG3 1JG
Web / contact / tickets: http://backlit.org.uk / 0115 8372426 / BOOK TICKETS
CCA Glasgow
Date and time: Monday, 16 October 2017, 7pm
Price: £2
Address: CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD
To book tickets (tickets also on door): www.cca-glasgow.com / 0141 352 4900 / BOOK TICKETS
