Both Sides Now: Queer at SPARK Festival 21 HK/UK

A person looks up facing the ceiling. The word queer in capital letters is written in the centre.
A person looks up facing the ceiling. The word queer in capital letters is written in the centre.
Matt Lambert, God is Watching, 2017 (courtesy of the artist, Tate and Random Acts)

videoclub and Videotage present Both Sides Now: Queer as part of SPARK Festival 2021, delivered by British Council Hong Kong.

Join filmmakers from the UK and Hong Kong to explore aspects of LGBTQI+ life, reflecting upon Queer identity, life and creativity.

Both Sides Now: Queer features eight short films (available to stream on-demand between 20-23 October during SPARK) and two accompanying panel talks, looking at the way in which filmmakers are exploring Queer culture, using various film and video techniques to explore aspects of Queer life in Hong Kong and the UK.

See the full programme and book talks for SPARK 2021 now on British Council’s website.

Film programme

Anson Mak, Differences Do Matter, 1998, 3 mins
Ming Wong, Learn German with Petra Von Kant, 2017, 8 mins
Jay Bernard, Something Said, 2017, 7:33 mins
Matt Lambert, God is Watching, 2017, 3:24 mins
Lucie Rachel, Where We Are Now, 2016, 9:29 mins
Rob Crosse, Dear Samuel, 2019, 9:30 mins
Nicole Pun, To be Brandon (Scene 1), 2019, 4:06 mins
Nicole Pun, To be Brandon (Scene 2), 2019, 6:58 mins

Film programme will be available to watch between 20 and 23 October. Visit the website to watch during those dates. Watch the film programme by clicking here.

Talks programme

Talks can be booked now on the British Council website by clicking here. Find out more about the speakers in the programme by clicking here.

Date and time: 22 October at 11am UK (6pm HK)

Participants: Rob Crosse (artist, UK)), Nicole Pun (artist, HK), Lucia King (moderator, UK) 

Panellists will discuss what sector support is needed and available for LGBTQ+ artists and filmmakers, and where best practice exists. Led by Lucia King (Researcher, curator and lecturer in Moving Image, University of Brighton, UK) with artists Rob Crosse (UK) and Nicole Pun (HK). Crosse and Pun took part in international exchange residencies with Both Sides Now in 2019.

Date and time: 23 October at 9am UK time (4pm HK)

Participants: Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (artist, UK), Beatrice Wong (artist, HK), Jia Tan (moderator, HK)

Panellists will discuss how Trans artists and filmmakers can be supported better, what challenges there are and what the sector needs to do to support Trans makers. Led by Jia Tan (Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong) with artists Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (UK) and Beatrice Wong (HK).

Register now on the British Council website by clicking here. Learn more about the speakers in the programme by clicking here.

Both Sides Now is a tactical program that uses film and video to explore culture and society between different nations, the UK, Hong Kong, and beyond. It is delivered annually by videoclub and Videotage. 

     

Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)          

SPARK – Both Sides Now: Queer – Panel discussions

Panellists from top left (22 Oct): Lucia King, Nicole Pun, Rob Crosse. And from bottom left (23 Oct): Jia Tan, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, Beatrice Wong.

Two panel discussions take place on 22 and 23 October, which complement the Both Sides Now: Queer film programme.

Date and time: 22 October at 11am UK (6pm HK)

Participants: Rob Crosse (artist, UK)), Nicole Pun (artist, HK), Lucia King (moderator, UK) 

Panellists will discuss what sector support is needed and available for LGBTQ+ artists and filmmakers, and where best practice exists. Led by Lucia King (Researcher, curator and lecturer in Moving Image, University of Brighton, UK) with artists Rob Crosse (UK) and Nicole Pun (HK). Crosse and Pun took part in international exchange residencies with Both Sides Now in 2019.

Register now on the British Council website by clicking here.

Rob Crosse is a filmmaker and photographer born 1985 in Hertfordshire, UK, studied Photography at the Arts University Bournemouth and completed his MFA in Fine Arts at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He was a participant in the Berlin Programme for Artists BPA from 2019 to 2020. In 2020 he was awarded the Ars Viva Prize along with Sung Tieu and Richard Sides.

His recent solo and group exhibitions include Ars Viva 2020 Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, DE, Bad Bodies at Tomorrow Maybe, Eaton, HK and Solo Presentations, Jerwood, London, UK. His films have been shown as part of Lafayette Anticipations, Foundation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris, FR; Video Art at Midnight, Babylon Cinema, Berlin, DE; Queer: Both Sides Now V, Videotage, HK; Different Ways, Lux, London, UK; and Transactions of Desire, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK, among others. He has completed residencies as part of videoclub and Videotage Both Sides Now, at Eaton, HK; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Nebraska, US; Katara Art Center, Doha, QA and Foundation Marcelino Botin, Santander, ES.

Nicole Pun is a visual artist based in Hong Kong. She uses photography, video, performance to explore queer identity, desire and female representation. She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She has a BSSc from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, with a background in Journalism and Communication. Her work has been exhibited in Circus Gallery in Los Angeles; Avenue 50 Studio in Los Angeles; SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco; McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga; “In & Out” Nicole Pun Solo Exhibition at Lumenvisum in Hong Kong. Her work is in numerous private and museum collections.  She is the recipient of several grants and awards, including Yale-China Arts Fellowship at Yale University, WMA Masters Special Mention Award.

Lucía King is a researcher and curator; and as an artist working in drawing, painting and installation. She is engaged as a researcher of artists’ moving image. King acquired a PhD from SOAS Centre for Media and Film (University of London) specialising in the creative methodologies of South Asian artists’ filmmakers and experimental documentary filmmakers. King is also curator of artists’ moving image and, in 2014, she founded VisionMix, an artist-led professional network of artists, filmmakers and curators that operates transnationally.

Date and time: 23 October at 9am UK time (4pm HK)

Participants: Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (artist, UK), Beatrice Wong (artist, HK), Jia Tan (moderator, HK)

Panellists will discuss how Trans artists and filmmakers can be supported better, what challenges there are and what the sector needs to do to support Trans makers. Led by Jia Tan (Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong) with artists Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (UK) and Beatrice Wong (HK).

Register now on the British Council website by clicking here.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley creates work that seeks to archive the Black Trans experience, “using technology to imagine our lives in environments that centre our bodies.”

They work predominantly in animation, sound, performance and video games, intertwining lived experience with fiction to record the lives of Black Trans people and imaginatively retell Black Trans stories.

Beatrice Wong, born 1980 in HK and based in HK ever since, is a transgender outsider artist with a lifelong struggle with mental issues. Wong expresses her dilemmas in life through personal creative projects and mediums including stand-up comedy. Contributing to the LGBTQ anthology ‘Intimate Strangers: True Stories from Queer Asia’, short films screened at various LGBTQIA film festivals around the globe, and recently, photography with her WMA Masters finalist work ‘No Opportunities (for Beatrice)’ being exhibited in Hong Kong City Hall. Beatrice also DJs as Misty Penguin.

Jia Tan is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her doctoral degree in critical studies of cinema and television from the University of Southern California.

Her research on digital media, feminism, queer culture. Currently, she serves as an Associate Member for Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research, Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is also on the editorial board of Communication, Culture, and Critique, one of the journals affiliated with the International Communication Association (ICA).

Find out more and register on the British Council website by clicking here.

Both Sides Now is a tactical program that uses film and video to explore culture and society between different nations, the UK, Hong Kong, and beyond. It is delivered annually by videoclub and Videotage.

     

Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)          

Reverberation – Vital Capacities’ latest exhibition

Image represents four artists work, top left: a still image from Siphenathi Mayekiso’s film Echoes of Identity, which shows a man with bare chest and arms across his face against a blue sky; top right: a still image from Rebekah Ubuntu’s film Ecologies of Belonging (a Meditation in Progress), which shows a person standing in the centre of a sandy footpath with long grass either side, in the distance to the left if the sea and clouds in the sky; bottom right: a still image from Nadine Mckenzie’s film A Will, My Wheels and a Way, which shows a young woman sat in a wheelchair reflected in a mirror, a wall of windows shows buildings and blue sky outside; bottom left picture: a dirt track footpath leads into the distance through a field, the ground is a deep red, making the grass on the sides of the path almost black in colour, trees can be seen on the horizon in the distance with clouds and a little blue sky above.
Image represents four artists work, top left: a still image from Siphenathi Mayekiso’s film Echoes of Identity, which shows a man with bare chest and arms across his face against a blue sky; top right: a still image from Rebekah Ubuntu’s film Ecologies of Belonging (a Meditation in Progress), which shows a person standing in the centre of a sandy footpath with long grass either side, in the distance to the left if the sea and clouds in the sky; bottom right: a still image from Nadine Mckenzie’s film A Will, My Wheels and a Way, which shows a young woman sat in a wheelchair reflected in a mirror, a wall of windows shows buildings and blue sky outside; bottom left picture: a dirt track footpath leads into the distance through a field, the ground is a deep red, making the grass on the sides of the path almost black in colour, trees can be seen on the horizon in the distance with clouds and a little blue sky above.
All four artists’ work, beginning bottom right clockwise: Nadine Mckenzie, A Will, My Wheels and a Way, 2021; …kruse, Directionsgreat to Storyplace, 2021; Siphenathi Mayekiso, Echoes of Identity, 2021; artwork still, Ecologies of Belonging (a Meditation in Progress) by Rebekah Ubuntu, courtesy of the Artist. Find Rebekah online @rebekahubuntu.

In August 2021, we worked with four artists-in-residence on Vital Capacities, two from South Africa, Siphenathi Mayekiso and Nadine Mckenzie, and two from the UK, …kruse and Rebekah Ubuntu. All four artists were invited to research and explore ideas, and to share them during the residency. Each artist has produced work that resonates with the work they did throughout the residency, reflecting on memory, personal narratives, experience, and movement. See the exhibition: vitalcapacities.com

Siphenathi Mayekiso has created a poetic movement storytelling film, which takes the viewer on a journey, reflecting on our perception of what we think others see when they look at us. Echoes of Identity is a personal interrogation using the body to build a dialogue about the self.

Nadine Mckenzie’s film, A Will, My Wheels and a Way is a powerful personal narrative that reflects on the car accident which led to Mckenzie being paralysed. The film brings together memories, interviews with family and friends, and interpretive dance to portray Mckenzie’s close connection to her wheelchair.

…kruse’s residency resulted in two works, Stumpsoft to Hungerdream and Directionsgreat to Storyplace, which came out of …kruse’s investigation into her relationship with paths and walking. Both works contain what …kruse describes as word drawings, poetic wanderings and meanderings over old and new paths.

Rebekah Ubuntu decided to focus on reflecting and taking pause during their residency; reading and meditating on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. Ubuntu has created Ecologies of Belonging (a Meditation in Progress) in response to their time in residence.

August’s programme was delivered in partnership with Institute for Creative Arts – University of Cape Town and Wysing Arts Centre. With support from Arts Council England.

 

Vital Capacities is an accessible, purpose-built digital residency space, that supports artists’ practice while engaging audiences with their work.

Vital Capacities has been created by videoclub in consultation with artists, digital inclusion specialist Sarah Pickthall and website designer Oli Pyle.

       

 

Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

Solo Exhibition: Hibernation Dream by Zara Sands until 30 September 21

Still from Hibernation Dream, Zara Sands, 2021 – courtesy of the artist.

An office worker attempts hibernating in a remote forest. With her eyes closed she dreams, hearing recorded sounds of wild animals. Her dream soon becomes a nightmare as she turns into a distortion of the wild animal she once dreamed of.

videoclub presents Hibernation Dream, a solo exhibition by Zara Sands during 1-30 September 21 on our website. This exhibition premieres her film, Hibernation Dream, a collaborative project with composer, Will Chaffey.

A text describing the film’s audio can be downloaded here for D/deaf and hard of hearing audiences: Downloadable description of film audio

A text visually describing the film can be downloaded here for blind and partially sighted audiences: Descriptive transcript of the film

About the film

Hibernation Dream was born out of artistic research between the film’s dancer/director and the composer, Zara Sands and Will Chaffey. The aim was to explore the use of subjective and interpretive ideas to set objective criteria. Specifically looking at the concept of what is ‘natural’ and the experience of trying to fulfil this in modern life.

The film  investigates raw and impulsive ways of expressing this through movement and sound. Sands proceeded to create a film that structured improvised movement with distorted performed sound. Through filmmaking, she sought to build a bizarre illustration of these experiences expressed using her and Chaffey’s perspectives.

Exhibition dates

Hibernation Dream will be showing between 1 Sept till 30 Sept 2021.

Online workshops

Along with the exhibition, Hibernation Dream will present two online workshops between 16-17 September. Extending from Sands’s research, the workshop explores how our idiosyncrasies and subjective experiences of the world manifest through the expression of sound and dance. Visit links below for details about the workshops.

Tickets and booking details

Descriptive Improvisation Guide

This is an accessible video which functions as an open improvisation guide, while also being interpretable as a spoken description of the performance. The text is an original score created following the project’s movement research and was used while performing in front of the camera for the film.

Before watching and responding, ensure you are fixed in a comfortable position and that there are no obstructions within your area of movement. This video can be used with the film’s sound, with your own choice of sound or your imagination. Feel free to prepare yourself with a blanket if this suits your preference.

Hibernation Dream journal

Find out about the artist’s journey in the development of Hibernation Dream: https://www.zarasands.com/hibernation-dream-journal

Feedback to the artist

Please give your feedback to the artist about her work through this feedback form: https://forms.gle/JyV4p8ui6EiMWZfk7

About the artist

Zara Sands is a London and South-East based artist working with dance, film and sound.  Having a broad spanning practice as a creative, that is informed by Sands’s research into one’s body and movement vocabularies, she is interested in using material from the body that births the thought being expressed. She enjoys using this to develop, stretch and challenge idiosyncratic movement vocabularies.

With thanks to Screen South & Jamie Wyld for their help initiating the project. Hibernation Dream is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Selected 11 – film and video programme – watch now

A young man sits in the back of a car staring downwards intently. He wears a black cap and pink hoodie. The car is grey with shimmers of green on the paint form the light outside. The street ooutside is dark, but lit by the headlights of traffic from the cars behind and the streetlights and buildings nearby.

Programme of work:

  • Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020, 9:26 mins
  • Sam GrantFinal Poetic, 2020, 1:49 mins
  • River Cao, River is My Hometown, 2021, 8:05 mins
  • Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020, 5 min
  • Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021, 12 mins
  • Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020, 13 mins

Further down the page you can watch the films individually.

Selected 11 brings together some of the best work from early career film and video artists from across the UK in a vibrant programme of recent artists’ moving image. The nominators for this year’s programme of Selected (and the artists shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2020) are: Michelle Williams Gamaker, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Jenn Nkiru, Project Art Works, Larissa Sansour and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

The artists for the 11th programme of Selected are: River Cao, Sam Grant, Aoibheann Greenan, Katayoun Jalilipour, Roxy Rezvany and Gaby Sahhar.

Screening and exhibitions of programme online

Selected 11 will be showing across the UK with partners throughout 23-29 August 2021, including online with Nottingham Contemporary, Spike Island (Bristol), Phoenix (Leicester) and a live screening at Fabrica Gallery (Brighton) on 2 September. The programme will be available on our site during 23-29 August.

In conversation with artists with Nottingham Contemporary on 25 August

An in conversation with artists Aoibheann Greenan, Katayoun Jalilipour and Roxy Rezvany talking with Ian Haydn Smith (editor of Curzon Magazine) will launch online on 25 August at 6:30pm. Watch the talk by clicking here.

In conversation with artists with Spike Island on 26 August

An in conversation with artists River Cao, Sam Grant and Gaby Sahhar talking with Ian Haydn Smith (editor of Curzon Magazine) will take place live online on 26 August at 6pm. Watch the talk by clicking here.

Book a ticket for Fabrica screening on 2 Sept

Screening at Fabrica Gallery, Brighton on 2 September at 6:30pm. Tickets are £3. To book a ticket for Fabrica, click here. Address: Fabrica Gallery, 40 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG. How to get to Fabrica.

Find out more about the artists and their work on our Meet the artists page by clicking here.

Below you can watch individual works from the Selected 11 programme.


Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020

Truth and Kinship is shot in Tower Hamlets, Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs. Steeped in history as one of the largest ports for trade in the UK this is a landscape determined by extreme wealth divides, aggressive property development and finance. Narrated by a disembodied, genderless voice that recounts memories speaking of pain, longing and desire we watch three young people from diverse backgrounds navigate this hostile space in their quest for social mobility. The main protagonist, a suited white male uses his privilege to explore his sexual identity, fetishising queerness at the expense of others. Limited by his homophobia he resumes a life of heteronormativity and access to capital having delved to far into queer subculture. The film considers the different daily realities the characters encounter in public space. Hierarchical and in a state of perpetual mutation Truth and Kinship questions how the city adapts to serve the capitalist male identity to the detriment of others.

 


Sam Grant, Final Poetic, 2020

Shot over three days in Norfolk, Final Poetic is an impressionistic moving image piece of the British north. It aims to reframe the image of the natural world away from the literality of its geography and into the subjective experience of rural England. Beyond the realms of objective representation there is an internal space that we project outward onto the canvas of the world. It is the ambition of this film to portray just one of those potentially limitless impressions.

 


River CaoRiver is My Hometown, 2021

River is My Hometown is an elegy, an elegy for Cao.

River is My Hometown is driven by a strong sense of loss. When Cao faces the loss of his hometown following the disaster of the flood and the question of his identity, he tries to build his own language space to re-translate his subjective emotions. The traditional mourning ceremony of his hometown “plead for water” becomes a key clue — an entrance into the self-language space. It substantiates his sad thoughts and returns him as a revenant to a hometown that transcends the geographic concept.

 


Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020

Dingbox by Aoibheann Greenan draws on the internet phenomenon of unboxing videos, pushing the format’s haptic qualities to elicit its strangely seductive power. Dingbox performs the unboxing dynamic as burlesque, stretching the narrative structure to its logical extreme. The film loops indefinitely, mimicking the cycle of production-consumption built on hidden labour and discarded waste.

 


Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021

Soosk explores a queer utopian rewriting of a traditional Iranian children’s story named ‘Khale Sooske’, which originally follows a female cockroach’s hunt for a husband whilst normalising domestic violence. This retelling, ‘Soosk’, follows the journey of a cockroach who survives gender-based violence and finds a queer safe haven with the help of a non-binary divine being. Very importantly, Soosk revisits the trauma that sexist and abusive rhetoric in children’s stories contribute to, especially for queer people. Soosk is a fictional fantasy about queer euphoria, and the freedom queerness offers from the struggles under hetero-patriarchy.

 


Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020

Life is lonely for young Palestinian, Shukri. He spends his days on the internet, immersed in a world where  Western popstars preach self-love and unity, and where he can forget the lack of acceptance he faces in everyday life. But a life dreaming of paradise abroad does not bode well for a teenager stuck in East Jerusalem. What he desperately wants is to connect with others like him, who feel caught between an occupation, globalisation, and the universal growing pains that come with adulthood. In this 16mm documentary film, we follow Shukri from a childhood in East Jerusalem to moving to the hillside apartments of Amman, Jordan and the sandy shores of the Dead Sea. We discover the origins of his life as the Wifi Rider, and how he channelled his frustrations into art on the internet.

 

Produced by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN). Supported by Arts Council England and Film London. 

Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network

Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) was launched in 2005 as a one-stop resource to provide artists working in the moving image with access to funding, guidance and development opportunities. Through unique commissioning funds, FLAMIN has commissioned over 150 productions, and supported the careers of countless other artists with programmes of one-to-one advice sessions, residencies and workshops.

www.filmlondon.org.uk/flamin

      

 

Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Selected 11 – UK Screenings and Exhibition

A young man sits in the back seat of a car with the window open, he wears a black cap and pink hooded sweatshirt. The car is driving down a busy street at night. Other cars follow behind with their lights on. Lit up buildings and streetlights overhead can be seen behind the car.
Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Selected brings together some of the best work from early career film and video artists from across the UK in a vibrant programme of recent artists’ moving image. 

Book a ticket for Fabrica screening on 2 Sept

Screening at Fabrica Gallery, Brighton on 2 September at 6:30pm. Tickets are £3. To book a ticket for Fabrica, click here. Address: Fabrica Gallery, 40 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG. How to get to Fabrica.

The Selected programme was established 11 years ago with the aims of supporting artist filmmakers to gain greater visibility and to bring new, diverse moving image work to audiences. Each year the artists who are shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award nominate artists who are earlier in their careers and from those nominations a programme is curated by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN).

The nominators for this year’s programme of Selected (and the artists shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2020) are: Michelle Williams Gamaker, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Jenn Nkiru, Project Art Works, Larissa Sansour and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

The artists for the 11th programme of Selected are: River Yuhao Cao, Sam Grant, Aoibheann Greenan, Katayoun Jalilipour, Roxy Rezvany and Gaby Sahhar.

Screening and exhibitions of programme online

Selected 11 was shown across the UK with partners throughout 23-29 August 2021, including online with Nottingham Contemporary, Spike Island (Bristol), Phoenix (Leicester) and a live screening at Fabrica Gallery (Brighton) on 2 September. The programme was available on our site during 23-29 August.

In conversation with artists with Nottingham Contemporary on 25 August

An in conversation with artists Aoibheann Greenan, Katayoun Jalilipour and Roxy Rezvany talking with Ian Haydn Smith (editor of Curzon Magazine) launched online on 25 August at 6:30pm. An archive of the talk can be watched. Watch the talk by clicking here.

In conversation with artists with Spike Island on 26 August

An in conversation with artists River Cao, Sam Grant and Gaby Sahhar talking with Ian Haydn Smith (editor of Curzon Magazine) took place on 26 August at 6pm. An archive of the talk can be watched. Watch the talk by clicking here.

Programme of work:

  • Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020, 9:26 mins
  • Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020, 13 mins
  • River Yuhao Cao, River is My Hometown, 2021, 8:05 mins
  • Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020, 5 min
  • Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021, 12 mins
  • Sam Grant, Final Poetic, 2020, 1:49 mins

Find out more about the artists and their work on our Meet the artists page by clicking here.

Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020

Truth and Kinship is shot in Tower Hamlets, Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs. Steeped in history as one of the largest ports for trade in the UK this is a landscape determined by extreme wealth divides, aggressive property development and finance. Narrated by a disembodied, genderless voice that recounts memories speaking of pain, longing and desire we watch three young people from diverse backgrounds navigate this hostile space in their quest for social mobility. The main protagonist, a suited white male uses his privilege to explore his sexual identity, fetishising queerness at the expense of others. Limited by his homophobia he resumes a life of heteronormativity and access to capital having delved to far into queer subculture. The film considers the different daily realities the characters encounter in public space. Hierarchical and in a state of perpetual mutation Truth and Kinship questions how the city adapts to serve the capitalist male identity to the detriment of others.

Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020

Life is lonely for young Palestinian, Shukri. He spends his days on the internet, immersed in a world where  Western popstars preach self-love and unity, and where he can forget the lack of acceptance he faces in everyday life. But a life dreaming of paradise abroad does not bode well for a teenager stuck in East Jerusalem. What he desperately wants is to connect with others like him, who feel caught between an occupation, globalisation, and the universal growing pains that come with adulthood. In this 16mm documentary film, we follow Shukri from a childhood in East Jerusalem to moving to the hillside apartments of Amman, Jordan and the sandy shores of the Dead Sea. We discover the origins of his life as the Wifi Rider, and how he channelled his frustrations into art on the internet.

River Yuhao Cao, River is My Hometown, 2021 – courtesy of the artist

River Yuhao Cao, River is My Hometown, 2021

River is My Hometown is an elegy, an elegy for Cao. 

River is My Hometown is driven by a strong sense of loss. When Cao faces the loss of his hometown following the disaster of the flood and the question of his identity, he tries to build his own language space to re-translate his subjective emotions. The traditional mourning ceremony of his hometown “plead for water” becomes a key clue — an entrance into the self-language space. It substantiates his sad thoughts and returns him as a revenant to a hometown that transcends the geographic concept. 

Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020

Dingbox by Aoibheann Greenan draws on the internet phenomenon of unboxing videos, pushing the format’s haptic qualities to elicit its strangely seductive power. Dingbox performs the unboxing dynamic as burlesque, stretching the narrative structure to its logical extreme. The film loops indefinitely, mimicking the cycle of production-consumption built on hidden labour and discarded waste.

Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021 – courtesy of the artist

Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021

Soosk explores a queer utopian rewriting of a traditional Iranian children’s story named ‘Khale Sooske’, which originally follows a female cockroach’s hunt for a husband whilst normalising domestic violence. This retelling, ‘Soosk’, follows the journey of a cockroach who survives gender-based violence and finds a queer safe haven with the help of a non-binary divine being. Very importantly, Soosk revisits the trauma that sexist and abusive rhetoric in children’s stories contribute to, especially for queer people. Soosk is a fictional fantasy about queer euphoria, and the freedom queerness offers from the struggles under hetero-patriarchy.

Sam Grant, Final Poetic, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Sam Grant, Final Poetic, 2020

Shot over three days in Norfolk, Final Poetic is an impressionistic moving image piece of the British north. It aims to reframe the image of the natural world away from the literality of its geography and into the subjective experience of rural England. Beyond the realms of objective representation there is an internal space that we project outward onto the canvas of the world. It is the ambition of this film to portray just one of those potentially limitless impressions.

Produced by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN). Supported by Arts Council England and Film London. 

Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network

Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) was launched in 2005 as a one-stop resource to provide artists working in the moving image with access to funding, guidance and development opportunities. Through unique commissioning funds, FLAMIN has commissioned over 150 productions, and supported the careers of countless other artists with programmes of one-to-one advice sessions, residencies and workshops.

www.filmlondon.org.uk/flamin

      

Selected 11 – Meet the artists

Nominated by the artists shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2020, Selected is a collection of diverse, surprising and provocative new film by early career artists from across the UK. Selected 11 includes work by: River Cao, Sam Grant, Aoibheann Greenan, Katayoun Jalilipour, Roxy Rezvany and Gaby Sahhar. Here you can read about each artists in this programme:

River Cao

River Yuhao Cao, River is My Hometown, 2021 – courtesy of the artist

River Cao is a London-based Chinese artist working with performance and moving image. He finished his MA at the Royal College of Art – CAP (Moving Image) in 2021. River’s works are deeply rooted in his environment and memories of his hometown – a small town by the river in southern China. Using mourning as a method, he creates a series of self-focused narrative spaces to rethink the emotion of grief. His work attempts to relieve his inner sense of loss, which is rooted in a desire for tranquility and fantasy.

Sam Grant

Sam Grant, Final Poetic, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Sam Grant is an artist based in Solihull, who primarily uses the mediums of photography and video to explore themes related to his own experiences with autism. His work includes abstract depictions of sensory issues, social isolation and emotional processing in the attempt to convey the feelings experienced by an individual on the spectrum to a neurotypical audience.

Aoibheann Greenan

Aoibheann Greenan, Dingbox, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Aoibheann Greenan is an Irish artist exploring the confluence of matter and psyche in the post-digital landscape. Her work has recently been selected for New Contemporaries 2021. Greenan’s work has been presented at The Starr Cinema, Tate Modern; DRAF, London; Raven Row, London; KW Institute, Berlin; Import Projects, Berlin; IMMA, Dublin; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; EVA International, Limerick; The RHA, Dublin. Greenan is co-founder of artist collective East London Cable.

Katayoun Jalilipour

Katayoun Jalilipour, Soosk, 2021 – courtesy of the artist

Katayoun Jalilipour is an Iranian born multidisciplinary artist, performer and writer based in the UK. ​ They often use their body as the subject to explore race, gender identity and sexuality, through humourous storytelling, using a variety of mediums such as digital image-making, gifs, video and live performance. ​ ​They are currently an associate lecturer on BA Performance: Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins. ​

Roxy Rezvany

Roxy Rezvany, Wifi Rider, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Roxy Rezvany is an award-winning British filmmaker whose work aims to expand perceptions of British identity, and bring marginalised narratives to the mainstream. In 2018, she was recognised by The Dots as a Creative Trailblazer, featured in It’s Nice That’s Creative Review, and was on the cover of Broadcast Magazine’s ‘Hot Shots’ magazine issue. Her debut film Little Pyongyang premiered in competition at CPH:Dox Festival, and was the recipient of awards including Best Director at Underwire Film Festival and Best Documentary at The Smalls Film Festival. She has directed films for the BBC, Victoria Miro, VICE and The Guardian.

Gaby Sahhar

Gaby Sahhar, Truth and Kinship, 2020 – courtesy of the artist

Gaby Sahhar is a French-Palestinian artist based in London, working across painting, film and installation. In 2020, their film Truth and Kinship was screened at BFI London Film Festival and DRAF, London. Their work has been exhibited at Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow; South London Gallery, London; Science Gallery, London; Almanac Projects, Turin; Arcadia Missa, London and Sweetwater, Berlin. Since 2017, they have run the LGBTQI+ project space and artist support network, Queerdirect.

Click here to read about the programme and touring dates.

Selected is produced by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), supported by Arts Council England and Film London.

      

UK & South African artists join Vital Capacities for August

Five images by resident artists form a composite - on the far left, a man painted grey with a beard wears a blue smock. Top centre a man glides horizontally above a woman sat leaning forward in a wheelchair in a dance pose. On the top right a deepinkish red swirl of absract light blends iwht black background. Bottom right a ploughed field has small plants growing in rows, path of green plants runs through the centre. Bottom centre a person with bunched up green hair and rainbow sparkly jacket stands before an audience in a gallery, a laptop open next to them.
Five images by resident artists form a composite - on the far left, a man painted grey with a beard wears a blue smock. Top centre a man glides horizontally above a woman sat leaning forward in a wheelchair in a dance pose. On the top right a deepinkish red swirl of absract light blends iwht black background. Bottom right a ploughed field has small plants growing in rows, path of green plants runs through the centre. Bottom centre a person with bunched up green hair and rainbow sparkly jacket stands before an audience in a gallery, a laptop open next to them.
Artists and their work from far left image clockwise: Siphenati Mayekiso; Nadine Mckenzie; …kruse; Artist Rebekah Ubuntu (pictured), commissioned performance at Tate Britain, image courtesy of Tate London. Find Rebekah online @rebekahubuntu

For the fifth Vital Capacities‘ residency, we partner with Institute for Creative Arts (Cape Town) and Wysing Art Centre (Cambridge) to work with artists from both South Africa and the UK. From 2 August, artists Siphenati Mayekiso, Nadine Mckenzie, Rebekah Ubuntu and …kruse will join Vital Capacities, to undertake research and develop new work. Working with our partners, they will explore and exchange new ideas using their studio spaces, and create new work throughout the residency.

The artists for August 2021’s residency are:

Siphenathi Mayekiso (SA) was born in Cape Town and grew up between the city and the rural areas of Eastern Cape. His introduction to Theatre and Performance started at the age of 13, when he was part of forming a drama youth group at IThemba Labantu Centre. His hunger for storytelling took him to UNIMASA to learn puppetry skills, and this is where his group won the Active Puppetry Competition.  Two years later he joined the Magnet Theatre training program under the direction of Jennie Reznek and Mark Fleishman. After graduating, he went on to Okiep and joined the Garage Dance Company for intense workshops under the tutelage of Alfred Hinkel. His ever-growing hunger for performance took him to an integrated dance company called Unmute Dance Company. There he started as a trainee and later outreach teacher, a facilitator, a company dance member, and a choreographer. So far, he has presented his solo work called Blood Bath under the direction of the late Standard Bank Young Artist Themba Mbuli in South Africa and Germany.

Nadine Mckenzie (SA) is a qualified integrated dance teacher, receiving training from Alito Alessi at the ImpulsTanz International festival in Vienna in 2010. In 2006 she joined  Remix Dance Company. Since then she had produced exceptional work as a  performer/ teacher in a wheelchair and has established herself as a well-recognized figure within the performing arts community both nationally and internationally.

Rebekah Ubuntu (UK) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and university lecturer. Their practice explores speculative fiction through electronic music, sound art, voice, performance, installation, text, songwriting and the moving image. Ubuntu has been commissioned and exhibited work by Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Frieze London, Barbican Centre, Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), Diametre Gallery (Paris), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), FACT (Liverpool) and London’s Serpentine Galleries.

…kruse (UK) is a neurodivergent, experimental artist and writer, whose practice includes drawing, text, storytelling and autoethnographical research. …kruse uses walking, short hikes and longer pilgrimages, to gather data and stories and explore her relationship with the Earth. She is interested in the connections between landscape, mythmaking, magic and science.

Residencies will launch on 2 August – to follow what the artists are up to join the mailing list and follow them on: vitalcapacities.com

August’s residency programme is delivered in partnership with Institute for Creative Arts and Wysing Art Centre, with support from Arts Council England.

 

Vital Capacities is an accessible, purpose-built digital residency space, that supports artists’ practice while engaging audiences with their work.

Vital Capacities has been created by videoclub in consultation with artists, digital inclusion specialist Sarah Pickthall and website designer Oli Pyle.

       

 

Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

Vital Capacities’ artist, Seo Hye Lee interviewed by Lutte Collective

Seo Hye Lee, [Sound of Subtitles], 2021
Vital Capacities resident artist, Seo Hye Lee, was interviewed by lutte collective as their featured artist for August. Lee talks about her work as a deaf artist working with sound, and her time during the residency on Vital Capacities.

Read the interview here: https://luttecollective.com/

Image: [Sounds of Subtitles] by Seo Hye Lee (2021), commissioned with University of Salford Art Collection as part of Seo Hye Lee’s residency – can now be seen on Vital Capacities’ website: vitalcapacities.com

Intertwined exhibition on Vital Capacities

Artworks from top left, clockwise: Seo Hye Lee, [Sound of Subtitles], 2021; Laura Lulika, Body Building, 2021; Linda Stupart, Watershed 2.0: Pandemic CYOA Cyberspace Edition 2021, 2021 – images courtesy of the artists.
Intertwined is our new exhibition on Vital Capacities, presenting new works by resident artists – Seo Hye Lee, Laura Lulika and Linda Stupart. The works have been commissioned in collaboration with our partners: Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), Phoenix and University of Salford Art Collection. Intertwined opens on 22 July. See the exhibition now by clicking here.

For our June 21 residency on Vital Capacities, we invited three artists from across the UK to explore and develop new work. Over the course of the month the artists did research, tested ideas and created new commissions, working with our partners, artists, web designer and digital inclusion specialist. Intertwined is an exhibition of the commissioned work resulting from June 21’s residency. 

Seo Hye Lee was co-commissioned by University of Salford Art Collection, whose experience of working with archives was especially important in contributing to Lee’s new film, [Sound of Subtitles]. Over the month, Lee researched approaches to subtitles and captioning, and how sounds are described or omitted using these tools for increasing accessibility for D/deaf and hard of hearing people. Lee worked with film archives across the country to develop a silent film that invites you, through the captions, to imagine the sounds, and the stories behind them, while provoking the viewer to question the role of captioning. 

Laura Lulika’s new work, Body Builder, was co-commissioned by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, which includes moving image, music, spoken word, performance and collage. Over the course of the residency, Lulika explored hyperability, mascot bodies, the false binary of healthy/unhealthy, and the absurdity of footballer’s fake foul dives. Lulika has created an interactive collage, combining Frankenstein mascots, pub settings and automobile bodies all with their own tales to investigate. 

During the residency, Linda Stupart continued to explore the River Cole, a process begun in 2020, resulting in the work-in-progress film, Watershed (2020). During June 21, Stupart continued to walk and map the River Cole, which has resulted in the creation of an interactive story/game, with images, texts and music; Watershed 2.0: Pandemic CYOA Cyberspace Edition 2021. Stupart’s new work has been co-commissioned by Phoenix in Leicester, who supported them to explore new game-based platforms, including Twine – a programme for making choose your own adventure (COYA) games, with which the new work has been created. 

To find out more about how the artworks came about, explore the artists’ studios, where you can see the developments which led to the new work. To see the exhibition click here

With thanks to Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, Phoenix and University of Salford Art Collection for their partnership and collaboration. Thank you to Arts Council England for their support. 


   

Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

 

Exhibition: In Search of Chemozoa by boredomresearch

In Search of Chemozoa, is a new project by boredomresearch (British artist duo Vicky Isley and Paul Smith). The project is based on their residency at Arizona Cancer Evolution Center (USA) and at Aspex Portsmouth, responding to new therapeutic approaches centred on managing rather than curing cancer. Combining computer animation with film from inside laboratories and in natural environments, boredomresearch presents ideas for an alternative cultural understanding of cancer. Informed by interviews with over 20 scientists, the film presents an original view of the relationship between the latest cancer research and developing theories about biomedical and ecological health.

‘In Search of Chemozoa’ by boredomresearch (2021)

‘For we are but a single cell’ by boredomresearch (2020)

For we are but a single cell provides an insight into the science behind the artwork, including interviews with scientists from the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center who discuss the importance of nature in cancer research. Together a bridge is formed between creative fiction and scientific insight that is changing how we respond emotionally and practically to one of the most challenging diseases for humanity.

To learn about the making of the film, click here to explore the technical animation methods used in creating In Search of Chemozoa. And try out the interactive Chemozoa mutation modeller designed by Arizona Cancer Evolution Center in response to In Search of Chemozoa

boredomresearch talk about their residency in Arizona, and their experience working with scientists and cancer research in this interview with Lucy Sabin, click here to read.

As part of the exhibition, Aspex Portsmouth has commissioned two learning resources and an animaton for younger visitors, find them by clicking here.

In Search of Chemozoa was commissioned and funded by the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at the Biodesign Institute (USA) through an award from the National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute, developed in partnership with Aspex Portsmouth (UK) and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

This online exhibition runs in parallel with a 3 channel moving image expression of the work at Aspex Portsmouth, UK – showing until 25 July 21. For details on the exhibition at Aspex click here.

About the artists

boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renowned for exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies. Becoming intimately aware of the vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth, they present a daring new vision for technological innovation, centered on reuniting the presently splintered domains of art, science and society.

Their work considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. Collaborating with world leading scientists the artists are challenging a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the dilemma of environmental crisis.

www.boredomresearch.net

     

      Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

A close up photo of a dome-like blob which is glowing with pricks of colourful light, glowing like citylights in the night. Electric blue and bright red dots cover the blob's surface, and flame-like spines grown from the surface, which are bright yellow, white and red at the base.

Making of and more: In Search of Chemozoa

A scientific panel with green and yellow sections, with options to change the environment of Chemozoa. In the centre is a picture of the Chemozoa model in yellow and green.

Making Chemozoa

Here we present boredomresearch‘s Making Chemozoa, which exposes some of the technical animation methods used in the making of In Search of Chemozoa. It also shows ways in which scientific concepts were added to the film, and how they influenced what the film looks like.

Mutate Chemozoa

Arizona Cancer Evolution Center have created an interactive model, which you can download. The model allows you to mutate Chemozoa, by changing the environment, feeding Chemozoa and altering mutagenic properties. Visit the site and download the model here.

A scientific panel with green and yellow sections, with options to change the environment of Chemozoa. In the centre is a picture of the Chemozoa model in yellow and green.

More about ‘In Search of Chemozoa’

Exploring new perspectives in response to the first study of cancer across species, boredomresearch present a poetic rendering of an in silico model organism, called Chemozoa, commissioned and created in collaboration with Arizona Cancer Evolution Center (US), the artwork responds to mythical creatures documented in scientific literature to reveal tensions and interconnections between human and planetary health. Combining computer animation, filmed environments and scientific speculation, boredomresearch weaves a poetic narrative that introduces new ideas emerging from cancer research. In Search of Chemozoa looks at the ‘fuzzy edge’ of cutting edge science where myth, fantasy and speculation encourage creativity and insight.

When in residence at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center in 2018-2019, boredomresearch witnessed the beauty of the Placozoan being studied by Dr. Angelo Fortunato who is developing novel model organisms to understand cancer across species. It was the complex web of ideas radiating from this simple organism that inspired boredomresearch’s imaginary Chemozoa; a fictional organism that experiences the same disease process that touches so many lives. With the dynamics of cancer programmed into their cells Chemozoa are designed to survive in toxic environments that act as an analogue for chemotherapy. The artwork responds to new therapeutic approaches centered on managing rather than curing cancer. The artificial physiology of Chemozoa does not differentiate between healthy and unhealthy cells and therefore no clear distinction can be made between cancer and body. As such the Chemozoan escape the existential crisis of experiencing an internal conflict between healthy and unhealthy, self and other characteristics of cancer. The Chemozoa allows us to reflect on our own relationship with conflict, foregrounding the benefits of balance in the management of singular identities made of conflicting parts. A philosophy that extends beyond the health of the individual to encompass the health of our societies and our sustaining natural environment.

Against a backdrop of anxiety over planetary and human health, boredomresearch considers the possibility of more exotic microscopic life and the insight that might otherwise never be revealed in their absence. This microcosm, in which artistic and scientific creativity become one, allows the artists to explore new ideas of balance and stability in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. The film proposes the existence of this mythical being through the form of pseudo-documentary with a narrative voiceover that introduces us to the imagined beings and their struggles in an atmospheric underwater world. 

In physical exhibition venues In Search of Chemozoa is presented as a three channel video installation, where the side screens provide a more micro and macro perspective of the Chemozoa and the central screen provides the central narrative and overarching environment context. For this online exhibition boredomresearch have created a single channel version of the work which focuses on the central narrative and incorporates some of the more detailed shots from the two side screens. 

In Search of Chemozoa offers us an opportunity to consider the increasing importance of ecological perspective in areas of research relating to human health where we are encouraged to acknowledge that  to live long healthy lives we first need to accept a fragile balance that plays out at the level of the cell. New insights benefit from acknowledging that the conflict between cells in the body, as seen in cancer, is the same as the conflict in ecosystems made from beings whose interests are not always aligned. In doing so we move from an aggressive ‘war on cancer’ dialogue to one that prioritises values of peace and stability. Nature has shown cancer researchers how to preserve health in the body. Can cancer research offer us a vision for how we can return health to a world that is becoming increasingly hostile and inhospitable?

To watch In Search of Chemozoa online, click here.

In Search of Chemozoa was commissioned and funded by the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at the Biodesign Institute (USA) through an award from the National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute, developed in partnership with Aspex Portsmouth (UK) and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

This online exhibition runs in parallel with a 3 channel moving image expression of the work at Aspex Portsmouth, UK – showing until 25 July 21. For details on the exhibition at Aspex click here.

About the artists

boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renowned for exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies. Becoming intimately aware of the vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth, they present a daring new vision for technological innovation, centered on reuniting the presently splintered domains of art, science and society.

Their work considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. Collaborating with world leading scientists the artists are challenging a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the dilemma of environmental crisis. Find out more: www.boredomresearch.net

      

      Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

 

Interview with boredomresearch by Lucy Sabin

Vicky Isley (VI) and Paul Smith (PS), aka boredomresearch, interviewed by Lucy Sabin (LS).

“You could think of it as cancer in the form of an organism”

LS:  As I understand it, this artwork was inspired by the laboratory methods at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, specifically their use of ‘model organisms’ for studying adaptations to cancer in other species. Could you describe some of the model organisms and how they inspired you? 

VI:  One of the organisms the scientists are inspired by is the saguaro cactus. It has these semantic mutations, which are like cancer. You know the cacti you get in Westerns, the stereotypical ones with the arms? When they get big, some of them mutate and develop ‘crests’. They essentially have what looks like a brassica broccoli coming out of their head. The Center actually commissioned a landscape gardener to create a cacti garden outside their laboratories – a garden of cancerous cacti! So, their approach already involved collaborations with artists before we arrived.

PS:  For In Search of Chemozoa, we took as inspiration one of the organisms that they were working with [the Placozoa], and kind of created its nemesis by literally programming the cancerous mechanic into its cells. From birth, effectively, the cells of the Chemozoa are dividing and mutating in a way that we could understand as cancerous. You could think of it as a simulation of cancer in the form of an organism. Then we have a whole universe for this organism in terms of its being and how, in its life cycle, it relates closely to the ways that the scientists are thinking about approaching cancer in humans. It’s a way of managing cancer long term so we can live long healthy lives with cancer rather than trying, and failing to cure cancer. So that’s very much the life cycle of this being. It’s trying to regulate that cancerous divergence in terms of the mutations of its cells rather than trying to remove, trying to cure.    

VI:  Inside the Chemozoa, you’ll see these red bits floating around and that’s to represent the toxic algae that they’re feeding off. And so effectively they’re giving themselves their own chemo dosage. That’s why it’s all about balance because they’re trying to balance how much they’re feeding and how much they don’t. In the Chemozoa film, as they’re feeding, they’ll grow bigger but also, you’ll see this mechanism of apoptosis where the cells basically commit suicide. Then the Chemozoa shrink. 

PS:  What they’re trying to do is manage the divergent clones. As the cells mutate, they have a population of clones that could potentially… in the case of a human tumour the risk is that they could include mutations that are quite aggressive. This could lead to cancer developing in a way that could be fatal for humans. A lot of the research just focuses on how you manage complexity in terms of that diversity and maintaining balance. 

LS:  You modelled the Chemozoa on a real marine microorganism, the enigmatic Placozoa, one of the simplest known animals on Earth that was first discovered in the late 1800s and remained forgotten by biologists for the next century. What is it about the cancer research on Placozoa that caught your attention? 

VI:  When the Center invited us to their labs, we became part of that team. We were bridging the two labs: there’s a psychology lab, which investigates cancer in terms of cooperation and conflict, then there’s the evolutionary biology lab. The dialogue between the two labs is quite fluid. One of the researchers, Dr. Angelo Fortunato, was also working across both labs. We were drawn to Angelo, who was investigating the Placozoa, because he’s so creative. With his tanks, he does these ‘plotter’ drawings where he sticks bits of acetate to the glass to plot the organism’s movement by hand. The drawings are phenomenal and he’s so immersed in that world.  

VI:  Angelo blends cancer research with evolutionary biology. It was the two-prong approach that really pulled us into his research on the Placozoa. He was working with concepts of human health while remaining profoundly thoughtful of environmental health and the fact that the two cannot be separated. That way of thinking about those two things is very in tune with how we’re approaching our work not just to think about our own survival in terms of keeping the insides of our bodies going but that we are also ourselves bodies that impact on their environment. 

 

Life is a restless balance

LS:  That holistic approach to health seems encapsulated in the title of the exhibition where you first showed this work, ‘Restless Balance’ (Arizona State University, 2020-21).  

PS:  Yes, the way that we’re showing the work in Arizona in connection with several other works, all under the umbrella of the idea of restless balance or searching for some sense of stability but recognising change and the awkwardness that that creates. When we first wrote the descriptive of the exhibition, there was a sense of it sort of forewarning the [Covid-19] situation that we’re currently living through. 

VI:  So restless balance is not only present in the cells of organisms, but also in our thinking about cooperation and conflict in environments as well. That’s why In Search of Chemozoa foregrounds the environmental setting, because we wanted to think about it not only from the organism’s perspective but from a wider perspective. One thing that Angelo [Fortunato] noticed, when he was trying to create this environment for the Placozoa to live in the lab, was that these tiny things would eat everything! And he was thinking, “Wow, this is something that no one’s really looked at before. It’s tiny and it’s hard to see in the world yet it must be having a big effect. This must be one of the architects of the environment in which it lives”.  

LS:  Of course, a new model organism can never be an abstraction; it must be considered as an integral part of the environment in which it lives and the conditions it has evolved through. The documentary that you produced to accompany In Search of Chemozoa demonstrates how the scientists did some guesswork in optimising the conditions for the Placozoa, setting up saltwater tanks with special aeration systems and even importing rocks from Egypt that contain the Goldilocks combinations of minerals and microbes (boredomresearch 2020). How does this attentiveness to simulating natural conditions in the lab translate into the setting you designed for In Search of Chemozoa? Rocks certainly seem an essential presence. 

VI:  When we were doing recces for sites for the environment footage, it was important for us to have that ruggedness with lots of barnacles and holes in the rocks made by boring clams. We liked the idea that the Chemozoa hang out in crevices. The Chemozoa rock that you see in the film exists. It’s quite polished now, because we’ve handled it quite a bit. We used photogrammetry to capture its form in three dimensions.  

PS:  A potential problem arose with the scaling of the rocks in relation to the Chemozoa. We wanted to create something that had screen presence but a maximum cell count of about a thousand cells, so the cells had to be big!  

VI:  But when we spoke to the scientists about scale, they loved it. They said it would be great if you could just go out with a snorkel to see the Placozoa. Scale makes it difficult to study these organisms in their natural environment. As you say, they try to recreate natural conditions as much as possible, but it’s not the same as observing the organism in its habitat.  

 

The language of the documentary 

LS:  Certainly, the artistic license you take with scaling up the Chemozoa’s cells allows us to see microorganisms as part of a broader environmental context. That is where your use of both location shooting for scenes above water and computer simulation for the underwater world comes into play. How did you develop this practice of compositing live action with cinematic use of a game engine? 

PS:  We’re interested in the language of documentary as a familiar language that provides a low resistance way of accessing ideas that are quite hard for a lot of people to really engage with. With a lot of our work, we think broadly about the audiences that we want to engage with. So, we became interested in the language of documentary filmmaking, and there are lots of conventions to follow, such as the establishing shot, where you establish an idea of a location and then you have a journey that takes you from an idea of a place to a particular kind of situation in that place. And it’s in a situation where we can experience a creature and have an introduction really. So, the use of landscape made itself necessary from that perspective in terms of thinking about how we create this presentation and narrative in a way that was accessible yet provided a way we can engage with the science but on our terms rather than how, you know, the scientists were engaging with that subject. So, when scripting the voice-over, which was based on interviews with scientists, we tried not to be too clinical and keep the narrative more poetic, open to interpretation.  

VI:  I think the journey was an important part of the project as well. Every camera angle transports you further in this search. We pan around a rock before we see the Chemozoa, for example. And we even experienced that searching quality when we were working on the project. The computer-generated part was built within a game engine, which the camera moves through, almost like a first-person shooter or first-person perspective anyway with key controls to navigate that space, moving the camera in a filmic way. We spawn the Chemozoa, in that program, selecting how many cells they’re going to have, and then wait for them to do their thing. The environment was set up with certain shots in mind, such as panning around a rock to see the Chemozoa. Sometimes they would disappear from the visible window, though. So, there were weird moments where we felt as though we were out in nature, trying to document these beings. We experienced this chaos even more with previous works, which used very much fixed windows. It’s only recently that we’ve started to do more camerawork where you’re taken on a journey through that world.  

 

Scientific modelling and imagined worlds 

LS:  How much of your work is about creating worlds? And I guess I mean worlds within a permanently polluted world. 

PS:  I feel that they’re all worlds created in a fictional universe. I think that’s how we understand scientific models as well. That the scientific models are in themselves fictions. They’re ways of thinking about a world. And the more and more we immersed ourselves in the worlds of scientists, we got deep into – you know – the processes, and the purposes and with the models that the scientists were creating, we found it increasingly hard to disentangle and to have that clear separation anymore. More and more we felt that the artists – sorry the scientists – the scientists, the scientists, the science-artists were almost… their ability was a creative one, but they were in the business of science. So, they must exploit that creativity in a very particular way. But funnily enough, what they’re doing is they’re creating models, they’re creating their own fictional universes where they can explore and think about the world that they find themselves in and that is a world that has its own problems. And for a lot of these problems, we’re the authors. 

LS:  Yes, and your last point could be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, ‘we’ (read: certain human societies) are the authors of environmental disruption writ large. On the other, we are also the authors of any flaws or assumptions embedded in the knowledge-making processes designed for defining and studying those problems. To what extent were you influenced, especially during your residency at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, by scientific processes for visualizing, simulating and conceptualizing problems? I imagine it was important to recognize the limitations as well as the strengths of the scientific research you were engaging with, to create a space for artistic inquiry that opens new discussions.  

PS:  One of our older projects, Afterglow (2016), an experimental film about malaria transmission, was one of our first experiences of negotiating that space with the scientists and trying to understand the models that the scientists were creating, why they were creating them, and how they were useful. How is this useful? How does it relate to an idea of truth? And what does truth mean in a scientific context? Is that the same as truth in an artistic context? We wanted to build a model that was robust in the same way their scientific model was robust but offered us something different from the science. Not, for example, extrapolating something that we could then use as an intervention, but if we’re not doing something useful from the point of view of intervening, then what are we doing? So, we were questioning, what are the limitations of a scientific model? What can’t they do? Certainly in those epidemiological models that we were interested in within the limited range that we experienced them, they were all based on creating very reduced, eloquent expressions that avoided the messy entanglement that would make them scientifically useless. Because as soon as the data passes a few levels of complexity, you can’t interpret it, you can’t make a meaningful scientific claim, you can’t say anything with any kind of certainty, or you can’t show the difference between two scenarios. We wanted to capture the truth of the visual complexity of a disease like malaria as it would exist in a landscape if we were able to see that.  

VI:  That’s why the spatial element is so important in that work. And it’s from then on that we’ve been working more spatially. Space can be difficult to convey in science models, as Paul was explaining. Scientists often need to streamline data, so a lot of complexity gets thrown out of the window. But we often look for the mess. When we’re in residence, we do what I’ve started to refer to as ‘lurking’. I’ve said this to a couple of people: “Can we just lurk in your lab for a bit?”. Because, otherwise people formalize it. 

PS:  One of the labs that we were working with for In Search of Chemozoa did a lot of abstract simulations. In a sense, the simulation that we mapped onto the body of the Chemozoa could be unwrapped onto a plane and simplified to look similar in nature to the simulations that the scientists were using as part of their research – to the untrained eye anyway! But then the scientists would map these simulations back onto the world. Scientists go out with their tools, they look at the world and capture something, call it data if you like, they deal with that in a particular way, and it affects the way they think about and understand things. The whole idea being that the model then becomes useful, that you go and apply it back to the world, you can work out how to control or calibrate something that you haven’t controlled or calibrated before. In art, the process kind of gets mapped back to the world in that other people experience the artwork and they take away something that maybe has changed their own experience of the world. But everyone has a unique impression of the work.  

I think that’s the key distinction: the language of science is very precise. If you take all the words in the dictionary, the ones that have a single meaning tend to be the scientific ones. Whereas the ones that have more value in an arts context often mean ten different things and are vague, open to interpretation. It’s that kind of difference between science and art, that science must be shared whilst remaining the same and art is something that is offered freely. We’ve made it on our terms, but you can take it on yours. 

 

 Emergence and empathy  

LS:  You’ve talked about the emergent properties of this world. You input variables into the code such as cell count but ultimately the (eco)system that emerges becomes so complex that the Chemozoa behave in ways you might not have anticipated. In a sense, this process mirrors any creative process, which might have a clear starting point to begin with but then intuition take over. Could you say a little more about the role of empathy in your work? The etymology of empathy is ‘feeling into’ if that helps.  

PS:  If you’re creating an artistic expression of something, you must feel something. So, it’s important that we find the scientists who allow us to understand how they feel about their scientific research. What we’re trying to do is translate the feeling more than the science. We don’t see ourselves as science communicators. 

VI:  We tend to refer to our work as ‘expressions’ because representation or data visualisation is not our goal. I hope that the scientists we work with see how we’ve emotionally engaged with the subject and how the work carries their emotions as well. We want it to be poetic, to create something beautiful.  

PS:  There’s also a lot of melancholy in the works we create. We’re always looking to the beauty of the system, but the melancholy comes from somewhere.  

VI:  I think it’s because we see the fragility in the systems as well. We even experience that through coding the systems, as we said before. You experience fragility when something can easily collapse or become noise. So, when we’re programming something, you see that emergent behaviour and then you kind of experience loss in a way. So that loss comes through, very often it will come through in the sound of our work. When we get to working on the sound, we often bring a very melancholy tone. 

PS:  The sound comes at the end.  We give the work the sound that sounds right for the work and by that time, it’s maybe our experiences of creating the work… we’ve lost control… we’re not really steering it, it’s just kind of happening, I think by that point.  

LS:  The sound seems like a fitting point to end on then! The voice-over harks back to the language of the documentary, yet without the master narrative one might associate with that genre. What were your intentions with the narration? 

BOREDOMRESEARCH [via email] The narration was a way of bringing in all the different angles from the two different labs we collaborated with at Biodesign – both Carlo Maley’s Cancer and Evolution Lab and Athena Aktipis’s Cooperation and Conflict Lab. Primarily, the script narrates the struggle of the small, multi-celled organisms affecting their own chemotherapeutic treatment by feeding on toxic algae but also how they help balance their own environment. The script addresses the importance of health as a holistic part of a wider philosophical awareness of the interrelatedness and symbiosis that is not just confined to looking inside an organism’s body but also how it is subject to the health of the environment outside the body and the value that flows in both directions, i.e., using nature as a point of inspiration in a biomedical context and biomedical insight into health to better understand our connection with nature outside the body.  

We endeavoured to exclude scientific language but instead adopt a suggestive poetic voice to capture some of the rich emotional value that both underlies and motivates the research. Research that informed the narration included text on harmful algae blooms, social feeding behaviour of Placozoa (the organism that inspired the Chemozoa) and cancer cell dynamics.  

 The script was written to be cyclical so the end flows into the start, so that the audience can start viewing the piece at any point.  

We wanted the piece to be performed with weariness and pausing for reflection, to be performed with natural speech, for the narrator to seem wise but without any sense of superiority, to have a touch of melancholy and fragility, at times overcome by a fascination and subtle joy with the curious nature of the world.

To watch In Search of Chemozoa online, click here.

About the artists

boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renowned for exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies. Becoming intimately aware of the vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth, they present a daring new vision for technological innovation, centered on reuniting the presently splintered domains of art, science and society.

Their work considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. Collaborating with world leading scientists the artists are challenging a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the dilemma of environmental crisis.

www.boredomresearch.net

     

      Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

Investigate and learn: In Search of Chemozoa (learning resources for children)

A close up photo of a dome-like blob which is glowing with pricks of colourful light, glowing like citylights in the night. Electric blue and bright red dots cover the blob's surface, and flame-like spines grown from the surface, which are bright yellow, white and red at the base.
A close up photo of a dome-like blob which is glowing with pricks of colourful light, glowing like citylights in the night. Electric blue and bright red dots cover the blob's surface, and flame-like spines grown from the surface, which are bright yellow, white and red at the base.
boredomresearch, In Search of Chemozoa, 2021 – courtesy of the artists

As part of the exhibition at Aspex Portsmouth, Aspex commissioned two learning resources to enable children to investigate ideas about In Search of Chemozoa. And support questions about the thoughts it might prompt for younger viewers.

Resources can be found on Aspex Portsmouth’s website by clicking here.

Inspired by In Search of Chemozoa by boredomresearch, Molly Rolfe has created an activity for people who have questions. The aim is to help you to talk more confidently about what confuses you. (A learning resource supporting the animation (below) can be found at the link above.)

In Search of Chemozoa was commissioned and funded by the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at the Biodesign Institute (USA) through an award from the National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute, developed in partnership with Aspex Portsmouth (UK) and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

This online exhibition runs in parallel with a 3 channel moving image expression of the work at Aspex Portsmouth, UK – showing until 18 July 21. For details on the exhibition at Aspex click here.

To watch In Search of Chemozoa online, click here.

About the artists

boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renowned for exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies. Becoming intimately aware of the vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth, they present a daring new vision for technological innovation, centered on reuniting the presently splintered domains of art, science and society.

Their work considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. Collaborating with world leading scientists the artists are challenging a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the dilemma of environmental crisis.

www.boredomresearch.net

      

      Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)

 

 

In Search of Chemozoa by boredomresearch – online exhibition

Colourful lights shimmer on a black background, the lights glow out from spines from an unseeable form below. The spines glow red, blue, hot orange and gold.
boredomresearch, In Search of Chemozoa, 2021 (video still) – courtesy of the artists

videoclub presents boredomresearch’s latest work, In Search of Chemozoa, showing online between 30 June and 31 August 2021. See the exhibition now by clicking here.

In Search of Chemozoa, is a new project by boredomresearch (British artist duo Vicky Isley and Paul Smith). The project is based on their residency at Arizona Cancer Evolution Center (USA) and at Aspex Portsmouth, responding to new therapeutic approaches centred on managing rather than curing cancer. Combining computer animation with film from inside laboratories and in natural environments, boredomresearch presents ideas for an alternative cultural understanding of cancer. Informed by interviews with over 20 scientists, the film presents an original view of the relationship between the latest cancer research and developing theories about biomedical and ecological health.

Exhibition dates: 30 June – 31 August 21, online – opening at 11am on 30 June.

In Search of Chemozoa was commissioned and funded by the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at the Biodesign Institute (USA) through an award from the National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute, developed in partnership with Aspex Portsmouth (UK) and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

This online exhibition runs in parallel with a 3 channel moving image expression of the work at Aspex Portsmouth, UK – showing until 18 July 21. For details on the exhibition at Aspex click here.

About the artists

boredomresearch is a collaboration between British artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, internationally renowned for exploring an understanding of the natural world through the medium of computational technologies. Becoming intimately aware of the vulnerability of complex systems, including those which support human life on earth, they present a daring new vision for technological innovation, centered on reuniting the presently splintered domains of art, science and society.

Their work considers our strategies for coping in a world increasingly destabilised by human activity. Collaborating with world leading scientists the artists are challenging a broader concern over a tendency towards increasingly complex solutions to answer the dilemma of environmental crisis.

www.boredomresearch.net

     

      Arts Council England funding logo (Lottery)