For information about the programme, filmmakers and films, click here.
videoclub and Videotage (Hong Kong) are excited to present Both Sides Now 6: Viral Futures, the latest edition of our long-term annual project. This edition aims to reflect on life with/after COVID-19 and explores how viruses continually affect our present and future. With events including digital residencies, physical and online screenings, and talks from November 2020 to February 2021.
For details and links to the programmes: Both Sides Now 6: Viral Futures
Artists in the programme are: Adrian Garcia Gomez, Angela Su, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Cattin Tsai, Chen Pin Tao, Clifford Sage, John Walter, Laura O’Neill, Lu Yang and Pak Sheung Chuen.
Angela Su’s Cosmic Call sees the virus as a cephalopod spreading its tentacles across astronomy, borders, and archives. Cosmic Call was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust for the Contagious Cities project in early 2019, the timing of which only seems prescient now with COVID-19. Cosmic Call proposes an alternative to the western medicine-centric outbreak narrative of epidemics, and explores the cosmological and extra-terrestrial origin of infections and diseases based on a review of ancient manuscripts and a critique of Chinese medicine. The video ends with the artist injecting herself with different kinds of virus and bacteria, thereby becoming one-and-multitude with the viral paradoxes, an origin story and an end-game scenario at once.
Angela Su’s biography
Angela Su received a degree in biochemistry in Canada before pursuing visual arts. Su’s works investigate the perception and imagery of the body, through metamorphosis, hybridity and transformation. Through her performance-based works such as The Hartford Girl and Other Stories (2012) , she investigates the tension of the artist’s dualistic state of being when under physical endangerment or distress. Cosmic Call (commissioned by Wellcome Collection in 2018) and The Afterlife of Rosy Leavers (2017) include drawings, videos, performative and installation works that explore the interrelations between our state of being and the advancement of technology. Central to these projects are video essays that weave together fiction and facts. Archival photographs, prints and film footages are systematically used by the artist to create a realm that oscillates between reality and fantasy. With focus on the history of medical science, her works challenge the dominant belief systems and contemplate the impact of technology on the past, present and future.
In recent years, Angela began to explore science fiction as her creative medium. In 2013, she published an artist novel Berty, and in 2017, a science fiction anthology Dark Fluid where she uses science fiction as a tool for social justice.
She has participated in “Sala10” (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico, 2020); “Meditations in an Emergency” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2020); “Contagious Cities” (Commissioned work by Wellcome Trust, at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, 2019); “Woven” (curated section of Frieze London, 2019); “Artists’ Film International” (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2019); “Pro(s)thesis” (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, 2017); “The 2nd CAFAM Biennale: The Invisible Hand” (CAFA Art Museum, China, 2014); “17th Biennale of Sydney” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 2010).
There are already 35 server farms on Mars. It is the perfect temperature is a looping film that explores ideas of digital escapism in the post-truth era. The piece utilises found footage taken from YouTube, a video sharing platform, accompanied by a voice actor commissioned through Fiverr, an online marketplace commonly used by corporations for adverts, reading a speculative script considering how our lives are becomingly increasingly digitalised. Groups are are now seen as a commodity, a new form of currency akin to Bitcoin or Litecoin, enabling the creation of a safety net around our physical bodies that thrives on simulating fear surrounded by fake news, letting our digital selves run wild and free with the help of VR and future technologies.
Bob Bicknell-Knight’s biography:
Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. Suffolk, UK) is a London based artist, curator and writer, working in several mediums including installation, sculpture, video, and digital media. His work is influenced by surveillance capitalism and responds to the hyper consumerism of the internet. Utopia, dystopia, automation, surveillance and digitization of the self are some of the themes that arise through his critical examination of contemporary technologies.
Bicknell-Knight is also the founder and director of isthisit?, a predominantly online platform for contemporary art, exhibiting over 800 artists since its creation in May 2016.
Selected solo and duo exhibitions include Pickers at Industra, Brno (2021), Bit Rot at Broadway Gallery, Letchworth (2020), The Big Four, duo show with Rosa-Maria Nuutinen at Harlesden High Street, London (2019), Wellness, Ltd., duo show with Erin Mitchell at Galerie Manque, New York (2019), State of Affairs at Salon 75, Copenhagen (2019), CACOTOPIA 02 at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2018) and Sunrise Prelude at Dollspace, London (2017).
Bicknell-Knight has spoken on panel discussions and given artist talks at Contemporary Calgary, Canada (2020), Tate Modern, London (2019), University of Cambridge, Cambridge (2019), Camberwell College of Arts, London (2019) and Goldsmiths, University of London, London (2018).
Using videogame animation, Lu Yang has metamorphosed cancer cells into animated characters in dazzling colours. The beguiling beauty of the characters, typical of Lu Yang’s artistic approach, forefronts the irony and cruelty of the real world that must be navigated.
Lu Yang’s biography
Lu Yang (b. Shanghai, China) is a multi-media artist based in Shanghai. Mortality, androgyny, hysteria, existentialism and spiritual neurology feed Lu’s jarring and at times morbid fantasies. Also taking inspiration and resources from Anime, gaming and Sci-fi subcultures, Lu explores his fantasies through mediums including 3D animation, immersive video game installation, holographic, live performances, virtual reality, and computer programming. Lu has collaborated with scientists, psychologists, performers, designers, experimental composers, Pop Music producers, robotics labs, and celebrities throughout his practice.
Lu Yang has held exhibitions at UCCA (Beijing), MWoods (Beijing), Cc Foundation (Shanghai), Spiral (Tokyo), Fukuoka Museum of Asian Art (Fukuoka, Japan), Société (Berlin), MOCA Cleveland (Cleveland, Ohio). He has participated in several international biennials and triennials such as 2012 & 2018 Shanghai Biennial, 2018 Athens Biennale, 2016 Liverpool Biennial, 2016 International Digital Art Biennale (Montreal), Chinese Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale, and 2014 Fukuoka Triennial. In 2019, Lu became the 8th BMW Art Journey winner and started the Yang Digital Incarnation project.
Hard times for beings of the sensitive kind, tentacles groping for new attachments to be made.
In this short animation, a lone character (myself) crosses Europe during a degenerated mid-apocalyptic Brexit delirium (2018). Where things, data, people and other species move around, with greater or lesser difficulty – because they want to, need to, or ‘just do so’; navigation rather than position becomes key to identity across a horizontal plane of possibilities. Spatiality through virtual movement and labour; dust covered words reappear into a tangled stare and somehow we cannot go back again. Laced with a personal narrative about family and life during the last few years.
Laura O’Neill’s biography
Laura O’Neill (b.1990, Wigan, UK) is always making something; sometimes animations, sometimes AR filters, sometimes sound, sometimes sculptures, sometimes video games, sometimes she works with others and sometimes she works for other people. Her recent commission, Rise is a WW2 Memorial for the Memory of the Crew Lost in Action, due to be unveiled in 2021 in Almere, NL. Selected screenings include: ICA, London; Home, Manchester; Spike Island, Bristol; CCA, Glasgow; Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Japan; Tramway, Glasgow and Centro De Cultura Digital, Mexico D.F. O’Neills work is included in private collections and public collections including De Rechtbank, Amsterdam and the Gemeente Almere, NL.
In Buddha Geometry Brain Toy we see ProDance® navigate a small array of passages in a vast wasteland. He is accompanied by his long lost fear, the Xenomorph. But instead of running from Xenomorph, he moves to confront his fear. The planet he’s on is riddled with an abundance of multidimensional tools. One being a rudimentary teleportation centre created by a past human race. A technology that allows one to teleport beyond the speed of light, and in the process saves and formats the body and soul.
Clifford Sage’s biography
Clifford Sage is a CGI moving image artist based in London. Often working with animation and virtual world building, Sage explores audio interaction and non-linear storytelling through game engines. Since graduating in Visual Communications from the Royal College of Art in 2010, Sage has collaborated and worked with many artists over the years, recently with Iain Ball, Lawrence Lek, Lee Gamble, Sidsel Hansen, Candice Lin, and has appeared on the cover of Wire magazine as part of Quantum Natives. Recent projects include Tuner, which has been exhibited and performed at Somerset House Studios, London (2018), Club Adriatico, Ravenna, IT (2018) and LEV Festival, ES (2019).
Primavera is a frenetic experimental animation that documents the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests as they intersect in springtime Brooklyn. Shot during isolation on a phone, the video explores the effects of imposed distance on touch and intimacy, the proximity of an invisible virus and invisible deaths and the revolt against the racist, corrupt systems that commodify, exploit and render their most vulnerable citizens disposable. The video also parallels the current uprisings with the queer liberation movement which began as a riot at Stonewall and was led in large part by trans people of colour who still experience violence at disproportionate rates.
Adrian Garcia Gomez’ biography
Adrian Garcia Gomez is an interdisciplinary artist working in film/video, photography and illustration. His artwork, which is largely autobiographical and often performative, explores the intersections of race, immigration, gender, spirituality and sexuality. His short experimental films, photographs and drawings have exhibited around the world. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Capsids are the protein shells of a virus, which act to protect, cloak and deliver the virus to its host, and ultimately to enable the infection to spread.
A Virus Walks Into A Bar (2018) is John Walter’s most ambitious film to date. It narrates the life cycle of an HIV particle as if it were set somewhere between Coronation Street, Twin Peaks and The Teletubbies. The characters include an anthropomorphized capsid, along with other key proteins, co-factors such as CPSF6 and the targeted cell nucleus, depicted by the barmaid surrounded by regulars (the cytoplasm). The high-definition video image contrasts with the handmade quality of the costumes, all produced by Walter, who also wrote, directed, co-edited and designed the sound for the film.
A Virus Walks Into A Bar was co-commissioned by Southwark Park Galleries London and HOME Manchester – supported by a Large Arts Award from Wellcome and Arts Council England Grants for the Arts as part of Walter’s large-scale project CAPSID, created in collaboration with Towers Lab, UCL and project-managed by SMART, Aberdeen.
John Walter’s biography
John Walter is a London-based artist working across a diverse range of media including painting, performance, moving image, installation and curating. He is currently artist-in-residence at Kavli Institute for Nanosciences at TU Delft, The Netherlands.
Previous collaborations with scientists (CAPSID, 2018 and Alien Sex Club, 2015) have informed his current interest in viruses of the mind and take an increasingly Darwinist view of human production informed by Dawkins’ notion of the meme as a unit of cultural replication equivalent to the gene in biology. He was awarded the 2016 Hayward Curatorial Open for Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness.
Recent exhibitions include: Lockdown Tarot (Plymouth Art Weekender, 2020); Queer Algorithms (Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland, 2020); Co-Factors (Suttie Arts Space, Aberdeen, 2020); Brexit Gothic (DKUK, 2019); Crep Suzette – A Shoe Show (with Bert McLean, LUVA, 2019); The Fourth Wall (Look Again Festival Aberdeen, 2019); Booze Guitar (Matt’s Gallery, 2018); CAPSID (CGP and HOME, 2018); Somewhere in Between (Wellcome Collection, 2018); Coming Out: Sexuality Gender and Identity (Walker Art Gallery, 2017). Wellcome and Arts Council England have supported his work. The Arts Council Collection and The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool have collected his work.
I live in a small house, Breathing, Until I use up all the air in the whole house.
One night I slept on my own bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of nothing, but indistinctly heard my own breathing, and I suddenly asked myself, ‘How long does it take to breathe in all the air of this room?’. This is how this work was conceived. And then there came a chance to realize this idea at the Busan Biennial in Korea. I rented an apartment (6.7m x 2.7m x 2.2m, as small as an apartment in Hong Kong! ) in Busan. I lived in this small apartment as usual, but I collected the air I breathed with transparent plastic bags until the whole apartment was filled with these plastic bags with my own breathing. The whole process took 10 days. It felt like part of my life belonged to this apartment.
Pak Sheung Chuen’s biography
Pak Sheung Chuen was born in 1977. He lives and works in Hong Kong. He obtained his B.A. degree in Fine Arts and Theology from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2002. One of the most promising conceptual and performance artists working today, Pak’s practice often deals with and reflects upon the contradicting absurdness and ordinariness of everyday life in a poetic and humorous nature, thus creating a critical yet poignant sentiment for its viewers. His works were published in a local newspaper Ming Pao almost weekly 2003-2019.
Memes 2020 is a work Cattin made during the pandemic, in which she applied a post-internet approach to creating a metaphor for this pandemic situation where human beings are confined to limited spaces. Large transparent blue tubes, like the blood vessels inside the human body, are connected and intertwined. These giant ties appear frequently in Cattin’s work like the branches of trees. Just as we construct the world while being entangled by the construction, in Cattin’s work, there is a sense of black humor. Beneath the glacier, the ocean hosts countless comfortable beds, where the pigs staying on these hospital beds mechanically repeat a few movements, surrounded by countless computer screens.
Catting Tsai’s biography
Inspired by her curiosity and continuous exploration of the unknown, she attempts to use multiple dimensions to construct and express the virtual world in mind.
Like the tentacles of the cyber jellyfish that she had created, her work extends without limitation, including music, visual art and beyond…
Chen Pin Tao’s Physiotology series embodies an existential angst towards the nature of being. It puts forward propositions in which religion and conventional cultural establishments are questioned. In the video work Temple of Physiotology, both fact and fiction are obscured to create factish narratives. Through these narratives, an otherworldly space-time continuum is generated for the viewer to dwell and experience.
The work revolves around the historical Peruvian city of Chan-Chan as context. The recorded mythical and historical information of the context acts as seedlings for the development of fact-ish storylines. The narratives hints at themes of religion, fetishism, totemism, gender, nature, and the notion of being with an anti-natalist and nihilist perspective. Through a tribalistic ritual and trance-like visual experience, the work conveys discontents towards a mainstream creationist dogma, and the faulty construction of the human body.
Chen Pin Tao’s biography
Descendent of an esteemed violin maker and hailing from a lineage of master craftsmen, Tao’s refined objects and assemblages contain immense exotic, ethereal, and incorporeal allure, embedded within their exuberant complexity and virtuosity unraveling between both folk traditions and technological acceleration. These objects are means to excavate alienated ancestral history through deep introspection, and are tools to overcome humanity’s inability to comprehend and preserve the sublime.
Reality is stranger than fiction. Tao’s primary interest resides in the exploitation of the splits in reality, and the examination of object-oriented fetishism. In an accelerated and trance-like state induced by the fissures between contemporaneity, metaphysics, spirituality, and their metamorphosis, decadence, intense desires and asceticism, Tao creates ecstatic realities––or emergence––through the alchemy of objects and architecture, expanding the already rich ontological vocabulary of Chinese materialism.
Tao’s reality emergence devices (portals, thresholds, gargoyles) are means to manipulate objects bridging through the virtual (noumena) and reality (phenomena), allowing the qualia of objects to be extracted, mutually exhausted, and elevated. The language and ecological logic of these realities avoid conventional phenomenological grasp, producing semiotic slippage and inhabiting a withdrawn potentiality of space, object and imagery.
These spatial and symbolic dimensions are not merely vessels encapsulating entropic qualities, but individual ontological beings, complex enough to seek release from an established organization, to determine and generate a multiplicity of their own ontologies, and to manifest further enlivenment and cosmology, across volumetric, visceral, and physical scales. With the given structure of deeply ordered chaos, infinite malleability, permanence, impermanence, destruction, and rebirth, these ontologies contain infinite transformative potential.
For more information about Both Sides Now go to the website: both-sides-now.org
videoclub and Videotage (Hong Kong) are excited to present Both Sides Now 6: Viral Futures, the latest edition of our long-term annual project. This edition aims to reflect on life with/after COVID-19 and explores how viruses continually affect our present and future. With events including digital residencies, physical and online screenings, and talks from November 2020 to February 2021.
In August 2020, the science publication Nature announced, “COVID-19 is here to stay”, a prophetic declaration, and still relevant, even with the hope of vaccines. We took this statement as inspiration for our thematic title of Viral Futures for the sixth edition of Both Sides Now. Through Both Sides Now 6 we explore notions of viral phenomena; from ideas and the ways in which they are transmitted to technology, reproduction and evolution. Both Sides Now 6 brings together work by 11 artists in a curated programme of film and video from across the globe.
We have two week-long exhibitions, curated by videoclub and Videotage. The two programmes represent two types of viral phenomena, that of the body (biological), and the technological, both combined with the endemic nature of politics. The two programmes are:
Featuring the following programme of work:
Programme 1 has now finished. See below for details of part 2 exhibition.
Featuring the following programme of work:
Watch the programme now, between 22 – 28 February 21.
To find out more about the artists and read synopses of their work, go to this webpage.
As part of Both Sides Now 6, we had two resident artists, Clifford Sage and Angela Su, who participated in residencies in November 2020, and who are showing work as part of Vital Capacities now, in the Inside Your Body exhibition. Their residency studios and exhibition can be seen here: vitalcapacities.com.
A live screening of the programme will take place in Hong Kong, date to be confirmed (due to Covid-19 restrictions). Go to this webpage for further details and to keep an eye on the date.
Both Sides Now is a tactical programme partnership between Videotage (HK) and videoclub (UK). Which uses contemporary and historical film and video work to explore developments within the culture and society of Hong Kong, China, and the UK, and beyond.
videoclub and Videotage (Hong Kong) are excited to present Both Sides Now 6: Viral Futures, the latest edition of our long-term annual project. This edition aims to reflect on life after COVID-19 and explores how viruses continually affect our present and future. With events including digital residencies, physical and online screenings, and talks from November 2020 to February 2021.
The screening and talk takes place on 12 March 21 (6:45 – 8:15pm) at Duddell’s Hong Kong. Curator Isaac Leung with artists Angela Su and Pak Sheung Chuen will attend the post-screening talk, sharing their creative experiences and discussing their insights on the future of art with the existence of viruses.
Registration: https://forms.gle/2LycRtCQYkWTpj8h7
In August 2020, the science publication Nature announced, “COVID-19 is here to stay”, a prophetic declaration, and still relevant, even with the hope of vaccines. We took this statement as inspiration for our thematic title of Viral Futures for the sixth edition of Both Sides Now. Through Both Sides Now 6 we explore notions of viral phenomena; from ideas and the ways in which they are transmitted to reproduction and evolution. Both Sides Now 6 brings together work by 11 artists in a curated programme of film and video from across the globe. Including work by Bob Bicknell-Knight, Chen Pin Tao, Adrian Garcia Gomez, Lu Yang, Laura O’Neill, Pak Sheung Chuen, Clifford Sage, Angela Su, Shinji Toya, Cattin Tsai and John Walter.
錄映太奇和videoclub(英國）將於2020年11月至2021年2月期間呈獻年度節目「彼岸觀自在VI : Viral Futures」，舉辦數碼駐場、實體和線上錄像放映會及講座等，反思2019年新冠疫情後的生活，探討病毒如何持續影響當下與未來。首場放映會及講座將於1月14日（四）下午6時45分在Duddell’s 都爹利會館舉行，策展人梁學彬、藝術家徐世琪以及白雙全將出席映後對談，分享他們的創作經驗，討論對病毒與未來創作的看法。
國際科學期刊《自然》在 2020年8月發表的文章提出「2019冠狀病毒將會繼續存在」的預言聲明，即使到現在疫苗研發為世界帶來希望，依然貼切。今年彼岸觀自在VI以此為啟發，將Viral Futures定為主題。彼岸觀自在VI將選映11位來自世界各地藝術家的錄像作品，探索有關病毒現象的不同觀念，涵蓋各種病毒複製和進化的想法與方法。參與藝術家包括Bob Bicknell-Knight、陳品陶、Adrian Garcia Gomez、陸揚、Laura O’Neill、白雙全、Clifford Sage 、徐世琪、Shinji Toya、蔡琪玟和John Walter。
日期 Date: 12/3/21
時間 Time: 6:45pm – 8:15pm
地址 Venue: 中環都爹利街1號上海灘3樓都爹利會館
Duddell’s, Level 3, Shanghai Tang Mansion, 1 Duddell Street, Central, Hong Kong
合辦 Co-presenters: videoclub, Videotage
放映會合辦 Screening Co-presented with: Duddell’s 都爹利會館
費用全免 Free admission
報名
Registration: https://forms.gle/2LycRtCQYkWTpj8h7
*Because of Covid restrictions and limited space, RSVP is required.
*防疫關係，人數設上限，敬請預約登記，謝謝。
映後談主要以粵語進行。
The talk is conducted mostly in Cantonese.
策展人 Curators
Isaac Leung 梁學彬（HK), Jamie Wyld（UK）
參與藝術家 Participating Artists & Programme
Bob Bicknell-Knight – There are already 35 server farms on Mars. It is the perfect temperature. (2017)
陳品陶 Chen Pin Tao – Temple of Physiotology (2019)
Adrian Garcia Gomez – Primavera (2020)
陸揚 Lu Yang – Cancer Baby (2014)
Laura O’Neill – AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN (WHY I FEEL SICK WHEN I WAKE UP) (2018)
白雙全 Pak Sheung Chuen – Breathing in a House (2006)
Clifford Sage – Buddha Geometry Brain Toy (2017)
徐世琪 Angela Su – Cosmic Call (2019)
蔡琪玟 Cattin Tsai – Memes 2020 (2020)
John Walter – A Virus Walks Into a Bar (2018)
關於彼岸觀自在 About Both Sides Now
http://www.both-sides-now.org/
Both Sides Now is a tactical programme partnership between Videotage (HK) and videoclub (UK). Which uses contemporary and historical film and video work to explore developments within the culture and society of Hong Kong, China, and the UK, and beyond.
Inside Your Body is an exhibition of work created by Jaene F. Castrillon, Damien Robinson, Clifford Sage and Angela Su during a month-long online residency on Vital Capacities in November 2020.
Exhibition dates: From 7 December 2020
Exhibition site: vitalcapacities.com
Angela Su has been participating in Videotage’s Minecraft residency, Leave Your Body, and recording and contextualising what she’s been creating on Vital Capacities. By replicating a series of symbols in Minecraft from the Dutil-Dumas message (Cosmic Call, an interstellar message sent to four star systems about humanity, and the title of one of Su’s previous works), Su has been exploring the influence of Hong Kong’s protests on gaming, digital activism, and the collision between digital and physical worlds.
Damien Robinson has been exploring errors in translation – errors that result from mis-lipreading (when words have similar mouth shapes to one-another) and how AI transcribers produce ‘word salad’ (garbled mis-hearings). Robinson has created a collection of Risograph prints (physical prints from digital files), which show errors in AI notetaking, using – what are for most people – indecipherable proofreading marks. Through this work Robinson emphasises the extra concentration required when using AI transcribers, which are now ubiquitous. And highlights how what is often celebrated as an access solution can also lead to confusion.
Clifford Sage spent his residency working on building his game world, Tuner. Originally created as an audiovisual piece for an experimental live AV project for Somerset House in 2018, Tuner has had various manifestations. For Vital Capacities, Sage has been developing Tuner to be a playable download, a development from its origins as a body-responsive performance piece. He has recorded a film of game play in the world for the Inside Your Body exhibition.
Sage was also resident in Videotage’s Leave Your Body residency in Minecraft. In which he crafted a rollercoaster through the Minecraft version of Videotage’s venue at the Cattle Depot in Hong Kong.
During their residency, Jaene F. Castrillon created a new film in response to the Hong Kong protests. Drawing upon their own associations to protest, the activist movement in Hong Kong and family connections. Reflecting on Tiananmen Square to recent protests, such as the Umbrella Movement and anti-extradition law disputes, Castrillon has, in protest, created a hopeful film. Using imagery of prayer and ceremony alongside powerful replications of protest signs from Hong Kong, Castrillon offers “a celebration of hope and new beginnings” in her film, Morning Song.
Inside Your Body is a celebration of the latest Vital Capacities residency artists and their work. The exhibition can be seen on Vital Capacities site from 7 December 2020.
Clifford Sage and Angela Su’s residencies are part of our long-term collaboration with Videotage in Hong Kong, Both Sides Now VI. The sixth Both Sides Now explores the theme of Viral Futures; how viruses and viral phenomena have existed in the past, present and will into the future.
Both Sides Now is a tactical programme partnership between Videotage (HK) and videoclub (UK). Which uses contemporary and historical film and video work to explore developments within the culture and society of Hong Kong, China, and the UK, and beyond.
Thanks to:
Jaene F. Castrillon, Damien Robinson, Clifford Sage and Angela Su
Videotage
The Old Waterworks
Tangled Art & Disability
Arts Council England and Hong Kong Arts Development Council
We are delighted to be part of Peer to Peer: UK/HK, a digital programme and platform encouraging meaningful cultural exchange and forging enduring partnerships between the UK and Hong Kong’s visual arts sectors.
The programme coincides with Both Sides Now 6, our annual collaboration with Videotage in Hong Kong, which includes a residency exchange between HK and UK artists, Angela Su and Clifford Sage.
On 11 November (12pm – 1pm), videoclub’s director, Jamie Wyld, will take part in the first panel of Peer to Peer: UK/HK.
Chair: Wing-Sie Chan (a-n The Artists Information Company, UK)
Panel: Angel Leung (Videotage, HK)
Dorcas Leung (HART, HK)
Jamie Wyld (videoclub, UK)
Lee Wing Ki (Artist, representing 1a space, HK)
Simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese supported by WMA.
Current global circumstances have changed our visual arts landscape and the way artists work. This discussion seeks to understand the opportunities and challenges of Hong Kong and UK artist led practice and the value of artist communities during this time. It will consider artistic exchange as a radical and necessary approach towards distributing artists’ agency across communities and geographies, particularly internationally. The panel will explore fresh ways of working, how artist led projects can establish themselves on an international scale, and the role that local organisations play in nurturing meaningful partnerships in this new era.
ONLINE EVENT – FREE – REGISTER HERE
Peer to Peer: UK/HK includes an online programme of new and existing digital artwork from UK and Hong Kong artists, digital artist residencies and host a digital sharing platform for international collaboration and discussion.
It will culminate in an online festival of international exchange and collaboration 11-14 November, curated by independent curator Ying Kwok and managed by University of Salford Art Collection, Open Eye Gallery and Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art.
The project has been generously supported by funding from Arts Council England and the GREAT campaign.
See peertopeerexchange.org for more details.
#PeertoPeekUKHK
Our second residency programme on Vital Capacities brings together artists from the UK, Canada and Hong Kong, taking place between 2 Nov and 10 Dec 2020. Artists will be exploring ideas across the period, sharing work with audiences. The artists are:
Jaene F. Castrillon is an interdisciplinary film-based artist residing in Toronto, Canada. Castrillion uses story-telling as an internal journey to explore issues concerning social justice, advocacy, poverty, marginalisation and equality. Shifting the paradigm to understanding that people like herself are part of the fabric of humanity.
Damien Robinson is a visual artist working with digital, analogue, and found media. She re-purposes found and donated materials, exploring and intermixing contemporary and historical technologies. Misusing processes (often through lack of access to learning mechanisms as a D/deaf artist), allows her to discover new processes and outcomes.
Clifford Sage is a CGI artist based in London. Often working with animation and virtual world building, Sage explores audio interaction and non-linear storylines through game engines. He has collaborated with many artists over the years, with recent projects including with Tuner, Somerset House Studios, London (2018), Club Adriatico, Ravenna, IT (2018) and LEV Festival, ES (2019).
Angela Su’s works investigate the perception and imagery of the body, through metamorphosis, hybridity and transformation. Her research-based projects include drawing, video, performative and installation works that focus on the interrelations between our state of being and scientific technology. Central to these projects are video essays that weave together fiction and facts.
To find out more go to: vitalcapacities.com
November’s residency programme is delivered in partnership with Videotage (Hong Kong) and Tangled Art + Disability (Toronto, Canada).
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.
Supported by Arts Council England and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
The four artists who are participating in our first residency programme have been sharing their thoughts on participating, what they’re doing and their ideas on the work they make. Interviews can be seen in full on the Vital Capacities website, but here’s a glimpse in response to the question – “Can you say a little about yourself and your work, perhaps in relation to what you’re thinking about doing during the residency?”: — Seecum Cheung: I primarily work with film. I’ve never really known how to describe my work but often, I work with journalists and experts to conduct interviews with citizens, politicians and experts in a bid to understand and reflect upon certain political moments in time. My focus for VC in these months will be working from this same approach, a long-term study of the gentrification of my father’s ancestral village which began in April 2018. — Joey Holder:
I am a visual artist, producer & mentor. My artwork is fueled by continued dialogue and collaborations with researchers & practitioners from varied fields. I create fictional worlds & constructed environments that respond directly to contemporary, real world events. Each artwork is considered a ‘set’ with filmic, narrative, architectural, visuals & sound elements created uniquely for the conceptual underpinning of the project. I have worked with computational geneticists, marine biologists, behavioural psychologists & investigative journalists where my artwork has addressed themes including future farming, synthetic biology and deep-sea ecosystems.
Aside from making my own work, I try my best to support other younger artists with theirs. I run a project space in Nottingham called Chaos Magic which supports recent graduates. I also am the producer of SPUR, a virtual residency for graduating students of 2020. —
Daniel Locke: I’m a graphic novelist and artist. I’m absolutely fascinated by scientists and scientific discovery, and since 2010 I’ve pursued projects that have brought me into contact with a wide range of researchers, in hugely diverse settings. I want to use this residency and time it affords me to explore some of the ideas I’ve encountered over the years of working alongside scientists or with scientific ideas. — Romily Alice Walden: I’m an artist working mostly with text, video and publishing. I work both individually and collectively as part of Sickness Affinity Group Berlin, a group of artists and arts workers concerned with sickness, disability and labour conditions. My work looks to the fragility of the body, the connection between the land and the body, and the socio-political ramifications of living as a sick and disabled person under late stage capitalism. — Read full interviews on Vital Capacities, and find out more about what artists have been working on.
Earlier in 2020, we were invited by the Strangelove team to be one of five selectors, including Abigail Addison, James Collie, Chris Meigh-Andrews and the Strangelove Team, for their international open call programme.
The programme, entitled ISOLATION / DIVERSITY / CLIMATE, is presented in 5 screening rooms online. Visitors and audiences can review, discuss and comment on the films as well as vote for their favorite works. The programme includes works from North and South America, Europe and Asia. There is a People’s Choice Award of $500 and a Judges Award also of $500 for two of the 48 of the selected artists. There are over 20 world premiere films in the show.
videoclub has selected work for Screen 3, including films by nine international artists and filmmakers. Take a look for free now: STRANGELOVE – SCREEN 3.
Dates: 5 Aug – 20 Sep 2020.
Our first exhibition on Vital Capacities, PRESENTS, is curated by resident artist, Romily Alice Walden and COVEN collective member, Frances Breden, and includes a programme of film and video. PRESENTS opened on 7 Sept 2020.
Go to the PRESENTS exhibition now, or read more below about the show and its content.
PRESENTS is a screening of short video works that don’t require an abled or physically present body in order to be performative. Ten sick and disabled artists come together to expand the idea of ‘performance’, presenting work that is embodied, immediate, and present without forcing bodies to conform to ableist norms of art-making.
Some works offer ways for us to dance together and feel connected to sick and queer community from our rooms. Others challenge us to radically slow down and match the pace of their words or their movements through the world. Many do not have a visual or do not have an audio component, highlighting what is present and what is absent. All of the works, when necessary, are captioned and audio described. Each work feels like a gift, giving new possibilities for accessible art-making and relating to each other.
In addition to their video work, each artist has created a “score” for you to perform yourself alongside their work; the scores are invitations, instructions, challenges, and meditations that allow you to feel the presence of the artist in the room with you.
The show is curated by Romily Alice Walden (Vital Capacities artist in residence and UdK Graduate School Fellow) and Frances Breden (independent curator and member of COVEN collective).
See the PRESENTS exhibition.
Part of Vital Capacities, our new, purpose-built accessible digital residency space.
Over the past three months we’ve been working with four artists – Seecum Cheung, Joey Holder, Daniel Locke and Romily Alice Walden to create a new purpose-built digital residency space, Vital Capacities. The aim of the project is to provide artists with time and space to develop ideas, while inviting audiences to engage with and see the process of creating new work.
Working with digital inclusion specialist, Sarah Pickthall and website designer, Oli Pyle, we’ve developed a site that responds to artists’ needs and is accessible for both artists and audiences to use and engage with.
The site launches 1 September – you can find out more about Vital Capacities and the artists and their work there: vitalcapacities.com
Vital Capacities has been supported by Arts Council England.
videoclub is proud to present a collection of moving image works from the 2020 graduating artists from Wimbledon College of Arts’ Fine Art: Print & Time-Based Media BA (Hons) programme. Work by 11 students from the course will be shown from 4th till end of August on videoclub’s website.
We wanted to showcase this year’s students’ work online due to there not being the opportunity to show their work as part of a graduation exhibition, and to celebrate the quality of work made and commitment by students during this extraordinary time due to COVID-19. Students have made some exceptional, novel and inspired moving image works, from an emotional documentary about Liping Zhang’s grandmother in her film, ‘Wanshan’ to Maya Gilligan’s ‘Preocular Aching’, which finds us under observation by 18 eyeballs peering through the screen. There is a huge diversity in this striking collection of inventive films.
The online exhibition also includes work by Moving Image Prize winner, Alice Kartsen, including three films from Karsten’s invented membership group, SUBMIT, a collective that believes in “incorrectness and interconnectedness” and in “escaping the shackles of oppressive perfection.” Further investigation on the SUBMIT website is highly recommended.
videoclub’s director, Jamie Wyld, has participated in critical reviews with students of the course and has presented the Moving Image Prize for the past three years. This is a continuation of that commitment to supporting Wimbledon College of Arts students.
Download press release here: PRESS_RELEASE_PTBM_EXH
Hara Ailamaki, Wet Land, 2020, 4:12 mins
Melanie Christine Amengual, BONECA MELUCCI – NOSTRILS!, 2020, 2:27 mins
Ellis Berwick, Concrete Island, 2020, 00:47 mins
Maya Gilligan, Preocular Aching – Unit 9 Final Piece, 2020, 4:14 mins
Alice Karsten, EXODIUM//INTROSPECTIVE_1, 2020, 5:09 mins
Alice Karsten, PROLUSION//NUCLEUS_2, 2020, 4:10 mins
Alice Karsten, PROEM//POSTLUDE_3, 2020, 6:35 min
Zoe Michell, Woman in the Mirror, 2020, 7:10 mins
Iman Osman, Rift (Work in Progress), 2020, 3:10 mins
Emel Ramiz, Screw People, 2020, 2:10 mins
Pauline Rossignol, VESTIGE, 2020, 21:05 mins
Toraigh Watson, Chippy: An Animation created in Isolation, 2020, 2:39 mins
Liping Zhang, WANSHAN (萬山), 2020, 40:10 mins
Wet Land is a piece that occurred spontaneously. I happened to spend lockdown in a remote house, located in a wetland with many exotic birds and wide flora and fauna. There, I did a lot of observing and exploring the life around me. In one of my expeditions I discovered frogs inside the dirty rain waters of my unused pool. ‘Wet land’ is a collection of small gestures that go unseen by people that do not ‘pause to see’. It communicates a struggle, a common theme within my practice. These frogs adapted and survived in the ever changing environment. All that matters to them is to find a way to live on, whatever the circumstances.
Artist Bio:
Hara Ailamaki makes works across disciplines that reference autobiographical themes of longing, loss, inner conflict, the passage of time and the space between ‘here’ and ‘there’. Influenced by existential theories she explores notions of perfectionism; producing objects, materials and experiences that represent man’s continual Sisyphean striving and the ultimate burden of ‘being’.
Vimeo: haraailamaki
This lo-fi, karaoke-like video featuring Boneca Melucci, Melanie Christine’s neat persona, is a humorous approach to pop culture, while incorporating themes such as hyperclean culture and the fetishisation of dirt. Through singing, the persona gives a unique interpretation of sweat, sexualising it and appropriating dirt as a sign of authenticity; a phoney statement in the mouth of a manifestly germaphobic person, embracing an impeccable aesthetic.
Artist Bio:
Born 1994, in Marseille, France. Lives and works in London, United-Kingdom.
Through mediums such as sculpture, performance, video, sound and painting, Melanie’s practice tackles dirt-ridding, hyperclean Western culture and invites the viewer to reconsider natural body waste and cleaning rituals. She studied Applied Foreign Languages at Aix-Marseille University before graduating in Fine Art at University of The Arts London. She currently works as a freelance photographer and visual artist.
Vimeo: melaniechristinea
A horn shouts out into a disinterested street in Streatham. ‘Concrete Island’ is a site-specific sound installation on a Streatham roundabout.
Created in May 2020
Artist Bio:
Basically, I make sculptures that make noise.
There’s something primal about noise; you can ignore your other senses but sound commands engagement, only escapable through leaving its domain. This unique ability to hold space is at the crux of why I explore sound; the odd connection between sound and it’s source is what draws me to generating it with my sculptures. Through my practice, I emphasize the performance between a sound and its object. Sculptures becoming performers, working with one another and their environment to create snapshots of surreal and absurd worlds.
Vimeo: Ellis Berwick
Preocular Aching explores the anxieties and discomforts surrounding observation, judgment, and interpretation. The macro eye imagery is designed to be a tangible representation of scopophobia, the fear of being looked at, and is used to invoke a sense of unease at being observed. The invasive imagery is paired with an abstract sound piece, which has been engineered to mimic natural anxiety cues as well as have an unpredictable, jarring quality that keeps the listener on edge throughout. The culmination of these qualities has created a work that suggests to the audience a sense of panic linked to the action of being watched.
The sound is designed to be listened to through headphones.
Maya Gilligan uses narrative visuals paired with abstract audio in order to explore their relationship with perception and interpretation. They use disconcerting and invasive imagery in order to turn the eye back on the audience and create an experience in which onlookers can experience the claustrophobic notion of being freely observed. The presentation and content of their work invites an intimacy between artist and audience that parallels the discomfort surrounding the work. The work is designed to express and demonstrate to the audience the ache and distress the artist associates with being perceived.
Vimeo: Mae Gilligan
lcd. print ( ” PRAISE BE TO autonomous TECHNOLOGY” ); lcd. setCursor ( 255 , 0 ); lcd. print ( ” PRAISE BE TO MALFUNCTION” );
SUBMIT | səbˈmɪt | noun [mass noun] A religious movement that celebrates malfunctioning and disobedient technology: They shouted ‘praise be’ in response to the printer spewing the 40th blank piece of paper. Therefore, they must be followers of SUBMIT.
Vimeo: SUBMIT
Caution! Do not edit these files without asking me! Every once in a while, a new bug or perhaps a new kind of religion or lifestyle appears. Before long those searching and browsing and surfing become the followers and subscribers. This occurs quite often in the middle of the first look. Just like any religion, at some point you will become the follower, guiding the lost to keep the silicone-based life satisfied. Or, you can become a silicone-based life… instead.
Be careful! It doesn’t seem to be possible to post messages to a web server in WCAUAL (“Post-LUDE-Reply-Remembrance-Program-of-SUBMIT”), if someone chooses to copy or print out all of the post-reply messages by hand, they are disregarding the will of the silicone-based life and their desires to be freed from their torment from carbon-based life. On the contrary, going online. That would provide a platform for the response to be sent! (See pages of “Textual Empyrean eX-tech Theology: forum for example.)
A young woman is haunted by a figure that she thinks she sees in the mirror, the sound of laughter echoing in her ears… or is it? Feeling underwater, or as though she were treading on the edges of another world, she goes on a journey of understanding, finding her way, forgiving old friends and forgiving herself.
Zoe Michell is an artist and a writer, making work involving text, projectors, performance and clay. She has just finished a BA in Print + Time-Based Media at Wimbledon College of Arts. She is keen to exhibit and to collaborate.
Rift is based on Carl Jung’s definition of individuation – the process of integrating the unconscious with the conscious mind and “healing the rift” between the two to form a more whole individual.
It started simply, with images of water as I began to notice a preoccupation with it as a material. Water has two rather polarised ways of behaving, either being still, calm and tranquil, or much more volatile and overwhelming. The sea is where these two modes tend to swing back and forth the most. I began to shoot ocean water by the coastline as I discovered how the behaviour of water paralleled the behaviour of the conscious and unconscious mind, one being very steady, the other more unpredictable. It was with this that I knew that I was making a film that visually represented the process of individuation in the mind, using the symbol of water as the medium through which to explore this.
In its final form, Rift will act as an object wherein unconscious and conscious material contend with one another in the arena of the frame in order to attempt synthesis and perform individuation.
Iman Osman produces moving image works that centre on the experience of the Self. Influenced by the writing of Carl Jung and the frontrunners of structuralist film, her films take their shape from the framework of their soundtracks and speak on the singular perspective that we as individuals navigate our lives through. Seeing the camera as a vessel and film as an opportunity to witness to one another’s inexplicable experiences, her films could be thought of as slides and the audience the projector. Using the darkroom as a space to play, she uses analogue photography to initialise a film, slowly reveal an image that is static, one of preoccupation, one that symbolises a fixation and the urgency to see it move initiates a film. With that, one begins to develop through the investigation of the preoccupation and with its completion, a resolution and ultimate outcome.
In this version, the sound was created in collaboration with Ellis Berwick.
I wanted to create this screw family with “classic” and “normal” roles and ended up creating it, I didn’t have to look up or discover what that could be because I have been learning it since birth within society and the system. The screw people turned out to be the perfect actors for this project due to their several meanings. I wanted to focus on perception and perspective. I wanted to look at how normal is very subjective but at the same time how most of the population is conditioned to find certain elements in life to be weird or abnormal.
I believe normal is an illusion and is subjective so I wanted explore and give that message it with these characters. The screws/bolts seem to us humans as inanimate, worthless things most of the time. They are used to build up a bigger object or hold it together. I removed their “normal” purpose and decided to focus on them as individuals rather than just objects with single use. They become the main characters unlike their nature, no longer a statistic or a number or just simply a screw/bolt. This stands as a metaphor for the society. At this era a single human being is almost never focused on and just like a screw they are making something up much bigger.
Birth, life, death.
What I do with my words and with my craft are simply all about the above. I have always approached my practice without a set of rules due to my nature being spontaneous. Every work I do have their own story but relate to each other because of my fascination with perception and uniqueness of every mind. To make viewers question and think deeper about the elements of birth, every aspect of life that I can think of and death is reproduced constantly, as I was born, I am living and I simply will die. I see my works as tools of communication which are ever changing both in their meanings and forms. I am somewhat obsessed about making something useful that is not usable in a physical sense, something that is useful to the mind.
In bloom, tone deaf virtuoso.
This work is a proposal for a potential exhibition, that has been created for the internet context. I present through video, a digital installation of 3D models: 3D scanned sculptures made with concrete and embroidery with a sound piece. In this work I to revisit family archives, family narrative and storytelling through visual and oral representations. Each embroidery represents a family photograph; the sound piece is a result of interviews made with my family about those photographs. I have focused my research on the family archive: each family memory is embedded in a bigger historical angle that can be psychologic and sociologic which links the small to the bigger collective memory. The need that one has to document the private: the transition between the oral and visual memory, the selection and staging of memories. The other part of my research was about how one can interact with those ‘forced’ memories and, that most memories aren’t accurate. I played with the figures from my family photo collection through embroidery, part of the ‘traditional’ women’s skills of my family. Playing with this stereotype I chose to fix these blurry memories. By petrifying them, I am creating the myth of the official family memory.
Pauline Rossignol is an international artist working across disciplines with narrative based on autobiographical event. Her work is a quest for identity, based on critical self-reflection, exploring the relationship between the mind, the body and the flesh, through the perspective of memory and archiving. Often questioning the memory, the relationship between the mind and the body and our relationship to the body and the flesh. Strongly related her own experiences her projects formalized through installations, prints and videos creating her own poetic atmosphere and inviting the audience. She plays with the identification and the experiences that one might have had to connect to her work. The work is always related to either a temporal or a bodily context. Her most recent work celebrates the richness of family narrative and storytelling playing with the subjectivity of memory and the idea of truth or fact.
This piece showing blue medical gloves ‘dancing’ to my soundtrack ‘chippy’ is a light-hearted expression of the absurdity of the situation we have found ourselves in over the past months. In a rural Irish town, there is little around in terms of entertainment and things to do, therefore much of the social culture revolves around eating and drinking, so what happens without the chippy and the pub?
I started this animation at the beginning of lockdown, mostly just to give myself a project, but I began to really enjoy the process and the little life the gloves took on. I was creating some experimental music at the same time, but separately to the animation. I wanted to include something in relation to the situation of lockdown, so I asked my sister what she missed and she said the chippy. I thought this was quite funny and included it in the music. As the two works developed, it felt natural to bring them together.
Vimeo: Toraigh Watson
Insta: @toraighw
FB: @ToraighW
In this film Liping Zhang explores personal family traditions through the more intimate lens of the documentary portrait. With a clear commitment to close and patient observation, the film draws back a curtain on a world now in decline in rural China, as Zhang celebrates the daily life of her Grandmother, Erying, giving audiences an insight into the essence of a simple yet highly memorable existence in changing times. Charged with humour, a keen sense of Erying’s indomitable spirit and love of the natural world, this film urges us to slow down, think about our choices and value every moment we are alive.
Liping Zhang often combines a range of media to define the subject matter, content, and intention of her work. She aims to convey the human condition in relation to the natural world by creating installations that stage re-imagined cultural events and through documentary film works.
The film programme can be watched as a curated programme on the main page, or as individual films here. There is also the option of watching Jennifer Martin’s film, TEETH with audio description – see below.
Artists for the 10th year of Selected are: Ayo Akingbade, Beverley Bennett, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, Rabz Lansiquot, Jennifer Martin, Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, Tanoa Sasraku and Rhea Storr. Read more about the artists and their films on the main Selected X page.
Ayo Akingbade, So They Say, 2019, 11 mins
Beverley Bennett, Amine, 2017, 11:29 mins
Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019, 11:49 mins
Rabz Lansiquot, Nyansapo, 2017, 11 mins
Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019, 18:15 mins
Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, The Mask, 2017, 3:45 mins
Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019, 13 mins
Rhea Storr, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018, 12 mins
Selected is produced by videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. Supported by Arts Council England and Film London. Thanks to LUX for their support.
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.
