Wimbledon College of Arts – Print & Time-Based Media graduation moving image show

SUBMIT, PROLUSION//NUCLEUS_2, 2020
SUBMIT, PROLUSION//NUCLEUS_2, 2020
SUBMIT (Alice Karsten), PROLUSION//NUCLEUS_2, 2020

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

Artists’ work in the exhibition:

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

 

Hara Ailamaki, Wet Land, 2020

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

Melanie Christine Amengual, BONECA MELUCCI – NOSTRILS!, 2020

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

Ellis Berwick, Concrete Island, 2020

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

Maya Gilligan, Preocular Aching, 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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

 

Alice Karsten, EXODIUM//INTROSPECTIVE_1, 2020

lcd. print ( ” PRAISE BE TO autonomous TECHNOLOGY” ); lcd. setCursor ( 255 , 0 ); lcd. print ( ” PRAISE BE TO MALFUNCTION” );

Artist Bio:

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

 

Alice Karsten, PROLUSION//NUCLEUS_2, 2020

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.

 

Alice Karsten, PROEM//POSTLUDE_3, 2020

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.)

 

Zoe Michell, Woman in the Mirror, 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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.

 

Iman Osman, Rift (Work in Progress), 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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.

 

Emel Ramiz, Screw People, 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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.

 

Pauline Rossignol, VESTIGE, 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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.

 

Toraigh Watson, Chippy: An Animation created in Isolation, 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

Vimeo: Toraigh Watson
Insta: @toraighw
FB: @ToraighW

 

Liping Zhang, WANSHAN (萬山), 2020

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.

Artist Bio:

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.

 

 

Selected X programme – individual films

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019 (courtesy of the artist)

Watch the Selected X programme of films individually.

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 AkingbadeBeverley BennettDanielle Braithwaite-ShirleyRabz LansiquotJennifer MartinSharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, Tanoa Sasraku and Rhea Storr. Read more about the artists and their films on the main Selected X page.

Film programme (in order of artists’ last names)

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

Ayo Akingbade, So They Say, 2019

 

Beverley Bennett, Amine, 2017

 

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019

 

Rabz Lansiquot, Nyansapo, 2017

 

Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019

 

Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019 – with audio description

 

Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, The Mask, 2017

 

Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019

 

Rhea Storr, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018

 

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

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.

 

          

Yu Araki’s ‘Bivalvia: Act I’ showing online with God’s House Tower

A young woman wearing a dark blue dress with flowers looks away from the camera, her lips parted mid-singing.
A painting of oysters on an orangey red tablecloth, with the words "she'll be fruitful, never fear her" written beneath in red letters.
Yu Araki, Bivalvia: Act I, 2017 (courtesy of the artist)

Yu Araki’s Bivalvia Act I showing as part of God’s House Tower’s Beside the Sea: Summer Screenings programme.

We were invited to nominate a film by God’s House Tower in Southampton as part of their Beside the Sea: Summer Screenings programme.

Throughout July, the Summer Screenings programme will explore how artists and filmmakers have been inspired by the sea and its infinite possibilities.

We nominated Japanese artist Yu Araki’s compelling film, Bivalvia: Act I, which combines a real-life story about a young couple who committed double-suicide in the sea between Japan and Korea in 1926, the legend of St. Jacob, French phonetics lesson, and various representations of oysters, a symbol for vanitas.

The film can be watched between 3 – 9 July on God’s House Tower website.

Selected X : interviews with artists

Interviews with some of the artists in Selected X appear below. If you’d like to watch the film programme, click here.

 

Beverley Bennett, Amine, 2017 (courtesy of the artist)

Beverley Bennett‘s interview (Bennett’s film Amine is in Selected X):

What was it that inspired your film?

In 2016 the pioneering writer Claudia Rankine pronounced that ‘the invisibility of black women was astonishing.’ That year I was approached to apply for a commission based on the Greek tragedy of Philomela. While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister’s husband, Tereus, obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale, a bird renowned for its song. Because of the violence associated with the myth, the song of the nightingale is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament.  In nature, the female nightingale is actually mute and only the male of the species sings. The project Philomela’s Chorus is a series of short films centring the removal of the voice namely black womxn.

What do you want viewers to take away from your film? (What do you hope audiences feel or understand – how would you like to affect an audience with your work, and in particular this film?)

I would like the audience to listen to the stories and thoughts that are being generously shared by the womxn on screen, especially the poignant moment between the two siblings. That moment highlights, and conveys, the multifaceted complexities that constitute black womxnhood today. Amine attempts to relay a truth. Paying attention to the complexities within the film allows perceptions to be shattered and the nuanced reality to replace them.

What do you think is most urgent to discuss in art and society at the moment? And do you think artists – including yourself – should be engaging in that or those subjects?

The news is more intensely, politically personal today than it has been in a long time. With the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of art in pre- and post-lockdown society, I see it as the responsibility of an artist to engage with and discuss the possibilities for future-building inherent in this moment of socio-political rupture. As a black woman in the West, I cannot separate my being in the world from this moment of turmoil. There is an air of urgency to this moment of collective grief – whether it comes from one’s normal daily routine having changed dramatically, from the pressures of working from home, from figuring out a new work / life balance to the other end of the spectrum- losing your job, your home, or watching a news report of another black person being murdered at the hands of the police. The personal grief that comes from not being around friends, from losing family members and not being able to grieve properly as we once would, is added to this. It is the artist’s duty to bear witness to this moment.

What inspirations – film, writing or other media – might be interesting for viewers to look at that have informed your work? 

I’m inspired by the other artists within the project Philomela’s Chorus – Jay Bernard, NT and Phoebe Boswell.

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019 (courtesy of the artist)

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley‘s interview (Braithwaite-Shirley’s film TRANS-PORT ME is in Selected X):

What was it that inspired your film that is in the Selected 10 programme? (Where did the idea come from, what made you want to make the film?)

At the of making this video I was dealing a lot with being and feeling unsafe in public. At the time and still now I was not at all passing. My thoughts often would dream that I would be allowed to travel in public without having to avoid the stares and insults and general graphic violence. I felt like a demon. That all the power that I had got from living my truth was something others saw as pure evil.

So, this film is part archiving my wish to empower myself while travelling as well as trying to capture what it is like to travel while looking trans.

What do you want viewers to take away from your film? (What do you hope audiences feel or understand – how would you like to affect an audience with your work, and in particular this film?)

I want my trans audience to feel like their experience is heard. So that it will not be forgotten and hopefully this film can hold on to some of it.

I am hoping the karaoke element of the film will make people think about what it means to say some of the words out loud with the identities they themselves have.

What do you think is most urgent to discuss in art and society at the moment? And do you think artists – including yourself – should be engaging in that or those subjects?

The Erasure of Black people. We owe so much of our culture to Black People; to Black women; to Black Trans bodies.

So much has been taken from us and in that processed we are removed from it.

Blackness is often something removed from the things we produced.

We need to stop erasing Black people. STOP ERASING BLACK TRANS PEOPLE. It’s not about making work about it; it’s about listening to what we need. What we say, what we have been saying.

It’s to know that you, the person reading this, has contributed to the erasure of someone else.

It’s about not thinking you can be a hero, that one good deed or thought is enough. It’s about asking what those who have been erased need and trying to help that be delivered. Sometimes that means handing over all aspects to Black People for us to run things ourselves. If you want to champion us it needs to be for us only without anyone else in that equation.

What inspirations – film, writing or other media – might be interesting for viewers to look at that have informed your work? 

The game “Magic wand” by TheCatomites

Kodak Black

Travis Alsbanza

EVAN EFEKOYA

EBUN SODIPO

ms.carriestacks

Rabz Lansiquot, Nyansapo, 2017 – courtesy of the artist

Rabz Lansiquot‘s interview (Lansiquot’s film Nyansapo is in the Selected X programme):

What was it that inspired your film? (Where did the idea come from, what made you want to make the film?)

I made Nyansapo during my MA documentary course in 2017, which was pretty fraught and left me with almost no guidance on technique, or any theory that related to Black filmmakers. Because of that I decided to just use the facilities to make something that felt useful or even just interesting to me so I decided to document my grandma teaching me to cook Jollof rice, mainly so I’d have a document of that process (it’s pretty hard to get perfect, especially for us diaspora kids) but also to ensure there was something documenting my grandma telling her story. I’d recently seen Martina Attille’s Dreaming Rivers for the first time and it inspired me to foreground the experience of a migrant Black woman, who has spent the majority of her life in this country. It just felt right to do it through food and conversation, a ritual my grandma and I used to undertake every Sunday.

What do you want viewers to take away from your film? (What do you hope audiences feel or understand – how would you like to affect an audience with your work, and in particular this film?)

I’m not sure I really had viewers in mind when I made it, but since then I’ve shown it in a number of contexts and the nicest thing has been hearing other people reflect on the legacies of their own elder family members. We so often overlook or take for granted these Black women in our lives, we forget to ask them what they think or how they feel, and we often don’t realise how much they know and have seen, so I guess I hope the film reminds people of that.

What do you think is most urgent to discuss in art and society at the moment? And do you think artists – including yourself – should be engaging in that or those subjects?

I’m profoundly uninterested in work that doesn’t acknowledge the state of our world. I don’t think there’s such thing as being apolitical so I think if artists aren’t exploring politics in some way, it’s an indication of what their politics really are. There’s so much that needs unpacking and dismantling and artists should be at the forefront of imagining and trialling new forms of thinking. My newer work confronts anti-black violence in a way that Nyansapo doesn’t, but I don’t think all artists should make work about that. I think, for some, stepping back and allowing space for other voices to be heard (and paid) is the most radical and necessary thing.

What inspirations – film, writing or other media – might be interesting for viewers to look at that have informed your work?

The writings of Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman and Dionne Brand inform my work significantly, and the films of Cauleen Smith.

Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019 – courtesy of the artist

Jennifer Martin‘s interview (Martin’s film TEETH is in the Selected X programme):

What was it that inspired your film? (Where did the idea come from, what made you want to make the film?)

Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote, ‘Illegal and would-be illegal migrants and the public…need to know that our immigration system has “teeth”.’ The letter written to the then Prime Minister Theresa May in January 2017, was leaked at the height of reporting on the Windrush Scandal in April 2018 by The Guardian. The language Rudd used seemed eerily fitting, mirroring what it can feel like to be an immigrant in the UK under a system that wants to consume you, churn you up, and spit you out, somewhere, elsewhere.

What do you want viewers to take away from your film? (What do you hope audiences feel or understand – how would you like to affect an audience with your work, and in particular this film?)

There were a lot of things I hoped would be intuited, embodied things that weren’t for every viewer to grasp. I never aim to educate or make an audience understand. One of the broad notions that the work takes as a given is that the immigration system is broken at every level. The system has been augmented in ways that unnecessarily complicate and obfuscate the process. In the case of the spousal visa, immigration ultimately becomes the entanglement of love, power, and administration.

What do you think is most urgent to discuss in art and society at the moment? And do you think artists – including yourself – should be engaging in that or those subjects?

It’s been vital for me to control and consider what framework ‘TEETH’ is included in. For many British people, Brexit was one of the most significant investments and attention paid to migration. The already broken and oppressive immigration system became increasingly unscalable and monetised under Theresa May’s helming of the Home Office from 2010. As much as ‘TEETH’ is about the UK spousal visa, it is also about the shuttering of the post-study visa during May’s tenure. I more generally seek to question citizenship and belonging through a racial lens, as we should all understand that the metric of citizenship is infinitely retractable and chimeric for Black people in particular. The attention paid to Brexit and its incorporation into art world discourse and events cycle is telling in considering how immigration/migration was present in an art context beforehand, and especially the scale of platforming immigration issues, lived impositions, and artists who experience immigration processes.

What inspirations – film, writing or other media – might be interesting for viewers to look at that have informed your work? 

The Wellcome Collection exhibition Teeth (2018) provided scope for in-depth study of the history of teeth in the UK, and encounter with the ephemera part and parcel of that history. Equally, the publication The Smile Stealers: The Fine and Foul Art of Dentistry (2017), by Richard Barnet, which inspired the Wellcome Collection exhibition, was a formative source of historical background.

In addition to exploring teeth in the context of British history and hostile policy, my research was equally concerned with the subject of love. What’s Love (or Care, Intimacy, Affection) Got to Do with It? (2017) published by e-flux journal and Sternberg Press was invaluable as a critical source covering a wide range of reflections on the subject of love. For all the variety of expressions and judgments on love, there were gaps between the love I was researched and the love platformed in the publication. I located space and tension within these gaps and to write responsively.

The choreographic process was an intense collaboration between artist/choreographer Alexandra Davenport and me. I compiled a list of choreographic numbers to focus on in terms of style, expression, gesture, and cinematography. It was an assortment of dances from the awkwardness of Save the Last Dance (2001), to the energy of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers Hellzapoppin’ (1941), the coordination of House Party (1990), and the drama of Dirty Dancing (1987)My favourites included the Top Hat (1935) dance ‘Heaven’ with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and The Band Wagon (1953) ‘Girl Hunt Ballet’ with Cyd Charisse and Astaire.

Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019 – courtesy of the artist

Tanoa Sasraku‘s interview (Sasraku’s film O’ Pierrot is in the Selected X programme):

Rhea Storr, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018 – courtesy of the artist

Rhea Storr‘s interview (Storr’s film A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message is in the Selected X programme)

What was it that inspired your film? 

A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message was produced in order to explore the political power of carnival and the way in which carnival, a representation of Black culture, circulates within the UK. Carnival is both absorbed into the cultural mainstream and is a form of resistance or affirmation of Caribbean community. I wanted to consider who has power and how forms of control play out through the aesthetics of carnival. The physical occupation of space for instance, is similar to a protest march.In addition, the film is autobiographical- I appear in a costume inspired by Junkanoo, a celebration of the Bahamas. As a mixed-race woman I wanted to question or complicate simplistic understandings of ‘identity’ or ‘Black culture.’ I was frustrated at the ease that works which commodify a monolithic viewpoint of Black culture circulate.

What do you want viewers to take away from your film? (What do you hope audiences feel or understand – how would you like to affect an audience with your work, and in particular this film?)

An open-ended conversation on Black Britishness. More specifically, that rural areas do not solely support a white population. I feature in the film in the Yorkshire countryside where I was raised. I am interested in seeing the image of Black bodies in rural spaces and that by making the film, it subverts the notion of ‘English’ Countryside as a racialised space. More broadly that speaking in terms of Black and white is useful and necessary but sometimes enforces an unhelpful binary. For instance, it is important to note that we follow Mama Dread’s Masqueraders in the film. Mama Dread’s play intensely political themes important to Black community, (here it is Windrush Bacchanal) but their membership has both Black and white members.

A line in the film ‘there is no fact of Blackness’ is a reference to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. The fifth chapter has been translated both as ‘The Lived Experience of the Black Man’ and ‘The Fact of Blackness’. I was interested in the large discrepancy between these two terms and the type of power inherent to an experience treated as fact.  In this way the film seeks to show that cultural representation and the physicality of carnival has an important political function that is lived, is experienced, is community forming.

What do you think is most urgent to discuss in art and society at the moment? And do you think artists – including yourself – should be engaging in that or those subjects?

Often the implication of questioning the usefulness or urgency of art as political instrument implies that art cannot be urgent or fulfil some other political goal. Really whether artists can engage with urgent issues depends on the context and purpose of their work. For me, asking how the ‘art world’ might change is a more directed focus.  It is important that art institutions and universities produce conditions where Black artists can thrive rather than survive. It is important that we create a discourse around filmmakers’ work whose work might otherwise be marginalised, that Black culture doesn’t take a peripheral place in an artistic canon.

What inspirations – film, writing or other media – might be interesting for viewers to look at that have informed your work?

-Frantz Fanon – Black Skins, White Masks

-Fred Moten – Black and Blur (consent not to be a single being)

-Emily Zobel Marshall, Max Farrar & Guy Farrar, Popular Political Culture and the Caribbean Carnival,

-Angela Chappell, Analysing 43 years of the Arts Council’s funding and supporting of Caribbean Carnival in England,

-Jenn Nkiru – Rebirth is Necessary

-Kevin Jerome Everson – Eerie

To watch the Selected X programme, click here.

Selected X – online programme

Still image taken from the film O'Pierrot by filmmaker Tanoa Sasraku
Still image taken from the film O'Pierrot by filmmaker Tanoa Sasraku
Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019 (film still) – courtesy of the artist

The Selected programme was established 10 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), which is – usually – shown with venues around the UK. This year the programme was shown online between 6 and 12 July; scroll down for the trailer to get a glimpse of the programme.

The nominators for this year’s programme of Selected (and the artists shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2019) are: Cécile B. Evans, Beatrice Gibson, Mikhail Karikis, Hetain Patel, Imran Perretta and Rehana Zaman.

Artists for the 10th year of Selected are: Ayo Akingbade, Beverley Bennett, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Rabz Lansiquot, Jennifer Martin, Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, Tanoa Sasraku and Rhea Storr.

Due to COVID-19 and social distancing – we showed the programme free online in 2020; the programme was available between 6 – 12 July – in the Vimeo player below. The programme was shown in partnership with Fabrica Gallery, Lighthouse, Phoenix, Spike Island and Vivid Projects.

Programme of films (running order)

Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, The Mask, 2017, 3:45 mins
Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019, 13 mins
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019, 11:49 mins
Rhea Storr, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018, 12 mins
Ayo Akingbade, So They Say, 2019, 11 mins
Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019, 18:15 mins
Rabz Lansiquot, Nyansapo, 2017, 11 mins
Beverley Bennett, Amine, 2017, 11:29 mins

Selected X trailer:

About the films and artists

Ayo Akingbade, So They Say, 2019

Set in 1985 and the present day, the film explores and reflects on the often forgotten histories of black and brown community struggle in East London. The legacy of community and activist group, Newham Monitoring Project is spotlighted.

Ayo Akingbade works predominantly with moving image, addressing notions of power, urbanism and stance. Interested in the fluid boundaries between the self and the other, she gathers local and cultural experiences in intimate and playful interpretations.

Beverley Bennett, Amine, 2017

Commissioned as part of the Philomela’s Chorus film series in 2017, Amine is best described as a tapestry of voices.  The film reveals the multi-faceted and complex experiences of what it is to be a black womxn in the UK today. Featuring testimonies from black womxn all over the country, the stories of family, friends, friends-of-friends and acquaintances from varying backgrounds and age groups are woven together, intricately. The testimonies come from a series of unstructured, conversational and kitchen table interviews organised by artist Beverley Bennett, about societal perceptions on black womxn as racialised bodies, overdetermined from without in the Fanonian sense. When seen together, the fragments of positive and negative encounters and experiences, and the rainbow of emotions expressed, create a story of vulnerability, pain and joy that is at once liberatory and heartbreaking. The film illustrates how, while the black British female experience is varied in many respects, intergenerational trauma caused by over-determination in a society whose biases are slanted against black womxn, remains a constant.

Beverley Bennett is an artist-filmmaker. Her practice revolves around the perpetual possibilities of drawing, performance and collaborative experiments with sound. Bennett’s work has been shown nationally and internationally; venues include the CinemaAfrica Film Festival, Stockholm (2018), Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol (2017), Wysing Art Centre, Cambridgeshire (2017) Spike Island (2017), New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2016), National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston (2016), Bluecoat, Liverpool, (2010). Beverley Bennett lives and works in London, and is a studio holder at Kingsgate Workshop and Trust. She received her MA in Fine Art in 2009.

Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, TRANS-PORT ME, 2019

TRANS-PORT ME is a Karaoke film about trying to remain safe while traveling and failing. It is a recording of how being demonised as a trans body makes you long for safety that always seems just out of reach. A lived experience that makes you long to be able to teleport from location to location to help preserve your life. Originally the video was going to be a film about reclaiming a demonised trans body but instead it failed to do so and fell into questions over what feeling unsafe means.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in animation, sound, performance and Video Games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the “History of Trans people both living and past” their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future.

Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences.

Danielle’s work has been shown in Science Gallery, MU, Barbican, Tate ,Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery.

Rabz Lansiquot, Nyansapo, 2017

“While teaching me how to cook Jollof Rice, my grandmother tells me about her experience back home in Ghana as it became the first African country to gain independence from colonial rule, and her life in the UK since moving to London in the 1960’s. This two-channel film explores family history, race, nation, intergenerational relationships, and the often ignored stories of the African women who have lived the majority of their lives in England.

Nyansapo is the Adinkra symbol represented by the “wisdom knot”, a symbol of wisdom, ingenuity, intelligence and patience.”

Rabz Lansiquot is a filmmaker, programmer, curator, and DJ. Alongside Imani Robinson, they are a member of the artistic and curatorial duo Languid Hands who are currently the Cubitt Curatorial Fellows for 2020-21.  They were a leading member of sorryyoufeeluncomfortable (SYFU) collective from its inception in 2014. Rabz was Curator In Residence at LUX Moving Image in 2019, developing a public and educational programme around Black liberatory cinema. Their first solo exhibition where did we land, an experimental visual essay exploring the use of images of anti-black violence in film and media, was on view at LUX in Summer 2019, presented alongside a programme of screenings and a study day. They have put together film programmes at the ICA, SQIFF, Berwick Film & Media Festival and were a programme advisor for London Film Festival’s Experimenta strand in 2019 and are on the selection committee for Sheffield Doc Fest 2020. Rabz is also training to deliver workshops in working with Super 8 and eco-processing at not.nowhere, and is a board member at City Projects.

Jennifer Martin, TEETH, 2019

In ‘TEETH’ an eager couple, Charlotte and Myles are interrogated by two Home Office agents about their spousal visa application. They endure a series of assessments that become progressively performative to attest to the legitimacy and acceptability of their relationship.

‘TEETH’ addresses the entanglement of love, power, and administration in the UK spousal visa process. In January 2017, former Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote, ‘illegal and would-be illegal migrants and the public…need to know that our immigration system has “teeth”’. Her letter, written to then Prime Minister Theresa May, was leaked in April 2018 amid reporting on the Windrush Scandal. Teeth are the bite of the UK immigration system, its violence and desirous devouring.

Jennifer Martin lives and works in London, UK. Martin’s practice spans artists moving image, photography, and installation. Ongoing themes include the performativity of belonging and the instability of images. Recent solo exhibitions and commissions include TEETH, Primary, Nottingham (2019-20); Channel 6, Turf Projects, London (2019); and Britain Been Rotten, Cypher Billboards, London (2019). Recent screenings include 36 Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel (2019); B3 Biennial, Frankfurt (2019); EMAF No. 32, Osnabrück (2019). She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2018) and Slade School of Fine Art (2013). Martin was selected for the 2018 Stuart Croft Foundation Education Award, FLAMIN Fellowship 2019/20, was artist-in-residence at Kingsgate Workshops and selected for Hospitalfield’s Residency 2020. She is a co-director of not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative run by Black artists and artists of colour, focusing on photochemical film, audio, and digital practices.

Sharif Persaud & Tim Corrigan, The Mask, 2017

The Mask is a short film about autism and identity featuring writer and director Sharif Persaud. As he journeys along a coastal footpath, Sharif describes what it means to have autism while all the time wearing his favourite celebrity mask. He finally arrives at his destination where he comes face to face with his alter-ego.

Sharif Persaud has a long association with Project Art Works and has been a key contributor to much of PAW’s recent output, including several film projects. Placing himself at the centre of his work Sharif uses different art forms; video, photography, drawing, painting and printing, to reflect the narrative of his life. Through his work we see the world from his idiosyncratic perspective, the different forces that have impacted him in the past and how these shape his thinking about the future.

Tanoa Sasraku, O’ Pierrot, 2019

Employing the narrative of Pierrot the Clown and the aesthetic of Kenneth Anger’s pioneering avant-garde, queer film Rabbit’s MoonO’ Pierrot explores the quest for British identity from a lesbian, mixed-race, British perspective.

The life goal of Pierrot Mulatto (played by the artist) is to catch a giant sycamore seed that spins down every day from the arms of Harlequin Jack, a crazed black man in whiteface, driven mad by his own quest for British acceptance. Jack toys with Pierrot throughout the story, performing a satirical essence of white British sensibility whilst referencing early minstrel troupes’ caricatures of the post-slavery, black populace. Mixed-race Pierrot is encouraged to strive for her ‘white potential’ whilst battling rejection, rage, and the bending of time amidst the English countryside.

The story of the black, British experience: one driven by misplaced loyalty, melancholy, and historical reprise stands as a mirror to the traditional tale of Pierrot’s existence under Harlequin’s thumb. This forms the narrative pillar for Sasraku’s semi-autobiographical fairytale, shot on 8mm film, whilst the script is built upon a colliding of verses from the Jim Crow-era song ‘Jump Jim Crow’ and lesser-known passages from the British National Anthem.

Tanoa Sasraku works with themes examining the intersections of her identity as a young, mixed-race, gay woman and the endeavour to draw these senses of self together as one in 21st century England.

Sasraku is based in London, England and her practice shifts between filmmaking and flag-making.

Rhea Storr, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018

Celebration is protest at Leeds West Indian Carnival. A look at forms of authority, A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message questions who performs, who spectates and the power dynamics therein. Following Mama Dread’s, a troupe whose carnival theme is Caribbean immigration to the UK, we are asked to consider the visibility of Black bodies, particularly in rural spaces.

Rhea Storr is an artist filmmaker who explores the representation of Black and mixed race cultures. Masquerade as a site of protest or subversion is an ongoing theme in her work. So too, is the effect of place or space on cultural representation. On occasion she draws on her own rural upbringing, and British Bahamian identity. Rhea Storr often works in 16mm film; she considers that analogue film might be useful to Black artists, both in the aesthetics it creates and the production models it facilitates. She considers the ways in which images fail us or are resistive.

Recent screenings include Filmforum MOCA, Los Angeles, Chicago Underground Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Berwick Film and Media Artist Festival, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Kassel Doc Fest, Alchemy Film and Media Art Festival (programmer) and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Recent exhibitions include Somerset House and Artist Film International (including Whitechapel Gallery London, Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden and Istanbul Modern).She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020 and the inaugural Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize.

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

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.

          

Digital residency + space development

Joey Holder, ‘Semelparous’, 2020. Photo: Damian Griffiths
More info: https://www.joeyholder.com/semelparous

Thanks to support from Arts Council England, we now have the resources to support four artists to participate in building a digital residency space with us.

Over the next five months we’re going to develop an accessible, purpose-built digital residency platform, collaborating with four artists to create a space that supports their practice, while engaging audiences with their work.

The aims of the residency space are to provide an accessible space for artists and audiences who may be limited by resources or physical barriers from participating; to support artists to make new work and to engage with audiences (through talks, workshops, events); to produce a platform that reflects the opportunities provided by a physical residency – skills sharing, new contacts, critical development, space; and to offer an exhibition platform for artists’ work in the UK and internationally.

To do this we’ll be building the residency space with artists, a web developer and an access specialist, reviewing and reflecting on the space as it is developed.

The resident artists who’ll be working with us are:

Seecum Cheung current work is an ongoing series of films based upon interviews and encounters initiated by the artist with leading specialists in the field of right-wing radicalism, human rights and activist groups, politicians, and affected citizens. Her films include collaborations and commissions by NHS England, brap human rights equality charity, and SBS Public Broadcasters.

Joey Holder‘s work raises philosophical questions of our universe and things yet unknown, regarding the future of science, medicine, biology and human-machine interactions. Working with scientific and technical experts she makes immersive, multimedia installations that explore the limits of the human and how we experience non-human, natural and technological forms.

Daniel Locke is an artist and graphic novelist based in Brighton, UK. Since 2013 much of his work has been informed and shaped by the discoveries of contemporary science. He’s worked with Nobrow, Arts Council England, The Wellcome Trust and The National Trust.

Romily Alice Walden is a transdisciplinary artist whose work centres a queer, disabled perspective on the fragility of the body. Their practice spans sculpture, installation, video, curation and printed matter, all of which is undertaken with a socially engaged and research-led working methodology. Recent work has shown at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: Newcastle, Hebel Am Uffer: Berlin, SOHO20: New York and Tate Exchange: Tate Modern: London. In 2019 Walden was a Shandaken Storm King resident, and will be resident at Wysing Arts Centre in 2020. They work both individually and collectively as a member of Sickness Affinity Group; a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability.

We are aiming to have a prototype space by the end of July/early August; how this will be and look, we’re not sure yet. Join our mailing list to keep up to date or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Film & Audio commissions – call for applications

Over the past three rounds of New Creatives, videoclub’s director, Jamie Wyld, has been working as Development Executive on the New Creatives programme with Screen South, to review applications, interview applicants and provide development support.

New Creatives is a vital programme that is supporting young, talented artists who want to explore and experiment, and develop their knowledge and skills. If you’re between 16 and 30 and have an exciting, novel idea for a film or audio work, then you should apply.

The fourth and final call-out for New Creatives for film and audio applications is now open with a deadline of 6 July at 5pm. Find out more below or go to the Screen South site for more information.

Details about the scheme from Screen South:

Screen South, in collaboration with the BBC and Arts Council England, are excited to announce Film and Audio applications are open for the groundbreaking New Creatives scheme.

We are inviting creatives aged 16-30 based in the South East (from Norwich down to Kent) to apply for a commission to develop a new and exciting idea to be aired on the BBC. We’re looking for creative and thought provoking ideas for new works that are fresh and innovative proposals for short films, audio projects.

Successful applicants will be provided with full support by Screen South to develop their idea into an audio or film piece. New Creatives can come from any artistic discipline including: Animation, Dance, Performance, Comedy, Poetry, Spoken-word, Music, Rap, Writing, Film, Art, Visual Art, Storytelling, Game Design and more! At this time you might also be thinking about finding innovative ways around the challenges of physical production and new ways working remotely.

We will be running webinars where potential applicants can find out more, sign up via eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-creatives-call-4-webinar-what-is-new-creatives-and-how-do-i-apply-tickets-106078906866

New Creatives is a national talent development scheme that will nurture and showcase new emerging creative voices. Screen South has 100 commissions to give out across Film, Audio and Interactive spanning 4 calls in 2 years. This is our final call for Film & Audio with project budgets from £4000-£5000 available.

You can find out more about our New Creatives scheme here, view all of the works currently available from past rounds here, or read the audio and film briefs.

You can read all about the scheme and what it has achieved so far at the following link: BBC Arts and Arts Council England announce first New Creatives commissions: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/new-creatives

All the New Creatives content from the five Network Centres will be appearing here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bbc-introducing-arts, the new work of the next generation of Film, Audio and Interactive creatives from across the country via the BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

Selected history + highlights

It’s 10 years since we did the first Selected programme, an idea conjured by Ben Rivers and myself as we talked about ideas for how to curate a new videoclub programme. Simply, Ben had been shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award (2010), and he suggested we ask the other shortlisted artists to nominate artists who were earlier in their careers and/or who deserved greater recognition. That process of nomination has been central to the project ever since. Following that discussion, I met with Rose Cupit (Senior Manager, Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network) on a sunny day in Brighton’s Pavilion Gardens. And after some discussion with the FLAMIN team we agreed to set up Selected together.

Over the past nine programmes we’ve shown work by 88 artists, with programmes being shown across the UK, at spaces including Whitechapel Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary and CCA Glasgow, plus internationally at venues in USA, China and Taiwan including at ATA Space (San Francisco), Echo Park Film Centre (Los Angeles), Shenzhen New Media Arts Festival and OSMOSIS Audiovisual Media Festival (Taipei).

Since being part of Selected, artists’ careers have evolved, with several going on to be shortlisted or even winning the Jarman Award, including Sebastian Buerkner, Benedict Drew, Adham Faramawy, Mikhail Karikis, Imran Perretta, Heather Phillipson, Charlotte Prodger and Marianna Simnett.

This year we’re excited to be working with the artists who were shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2019; Cécile B. Evans, Beatrice Gibson, Mikhail Karikis, Hetain Patel, Imran Perretta and Rehana Zaman, who are nominating artists they believe should be represented by Selected in 2020. This new programme will be shown on our site in June.

In celebration of 10 years of Selected, we’ve chosen a collection of works, one from each year, which shows a variety of styles and talent across the decade. We’ve included links to artists’ sites and to excerpts of work available online. Enjoy.

– Jamie Wyld, director, videoclub

Selected 1 (2011)

Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, AHistory of Mutual Respect, 2010 (see an excerpt here and the film’s trailer here)

Golden Leopard winner of Locarno 2010 and Best Portuguese Short Film Award at IndieLisboa 2010, A History of Mutual Respect is a philosophical and sensual existential journey, “an unclassifiable eccentric and political film, reminding of the most daring works of Glauber Rocha. The two protagonists (played by the two authors) go to Latin America in search of third-world exoticism and of a “pure” and “clean” sexuality. During this metaphorical journey, a universe of lost innocence and disenchantment takes shape, where no revolutionary or humanist utopia is allowed. The Western European heroes’ cynicism mirrors the phantasm of wealth and comfort of the beautiful Brazilian girl they meet and try to seduce in the jungle.” – Cahiers du Cinema, Ariel Schweitzer.

Selected 2 (2012)

Alexis Milne, The Delinquents Part 1 (Jobseekers), 2010 (see an excerpt here)

The video Jobseekers is part one of The Delinquents, a series examining subcultures and their fractious relationship with parent/dominant culture. Jobseekers samples Tim Roth’s skinhead nihilistic rage in Alan Clarke’s 1980’s film, ‘Made in Britain’. By situating himself within the projected representation and through a process of re-projection, layered sampling and physical screen manipulation Milne creates an abstracted fragmentary regurgitation of Roth’s nihilistic gestures. A month after finishing the final edit of Jobseekers, London witnessed a city wide spontaneous outburst of rioting reminiscent of civil unrest from previous decades, fueled by similar themes of police brutality and disenfranchised frustration.

Selected 3 (2013)

Edward Thomasson, Just About Managing, 2012 (see an excerpt here)

In Just About Managing a group of actors and non-actors assemble in various spaces to enact a blackly comic story concerning a man who is good at pretending. Set in and around a primary school at the end of a summer term, the video sees a pupil read a composition aloud to his teacher while staff members participate in an elaborate group activity to celebrate the end of a difficult term. Elsewhere, a lone performer appears to be getting on with some home improvement. The video employs original spoken word, song and dance to explore the difference between what actually is and what appears to be.

Selected 4 (2014)

Heather Phillipson, Splashy Phasings, 2013 (see an excerpt here)

Shot and composed by the artist within a painted set, Splashy Phasings is a plunge into a deluged universe: information, news items and emotions overflow. Wet mouths, eyeballs and swimming goggles expel and suck up fluids. Colours, tears and responsibilities leak. The interior has a lid that doesn’t close properly.

Selected 5 (2015)

Min-Wei Ting, You’re Dead to Me, 2014 (see an excerpt here)

You’re Dead to Me takes us to Singapore, into a tranquil cemetery sprawled across a dense, unruly tropical forest. We encounter a solitary, anonymous figure who sleeps on graves and wanders through the lush forest as if in search of something. The lone, mysterious character marks a sense of isolation and his movements signal a final communion with the forest and the dead before they vanish.

Selected 6 (2016)

Megan Broadmeadow, A Corruption of Mass, 2015 (see an excerpt here)

Bismuth, when ingested can cure an upset stomach.

It can kill too, having now replaced lead in bullet manufacture.

More curiously, it has uniquely strong diamagnetic properties, and is a valued shamanic tool offering insight into other realms. It was also discovered at Roswell, and might possibly provide the answer to unlocking the mystery of alien space travel.

In A Corruption of Mass, Broadmeadow has choreographed movements for a female dancer in response to Bismuth’s uniquely complex fractalesque characteristics. The core of the film alludes to the other worldliness this element evokes, whilst simultaneously tracing its chemical journey from ingot to crystal.

Selected 7 (2017)

Adham Faramawy, Janus Collapse, 2016 (see an excerpt here)

In the making of Janus Collapse, originally commissioned for a recent solo show at Bluecoat in Liverpool, Faramawy draws on the language of advertising, co-opting the special effects used to evoke desire for people, things and experiences. The artist combines these seductive devices of lustre, slipperiness, morphing and repetition with his own interest in the transgressive aesthetics of ‘body horror’, found in manga and anime, as well as Cronenberg’s cult classic Videodrome (1983) and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis science fiction trilogy.

Selected 8 (2018)

Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Gaby, 2018

“In Gaby, a new video work named for the duo’s best friend, the artists present three vignettes highlighting intersections of gay culture (its iconography, politics and relationships) and the police (their tactics and their personnel). The vignettes include: a montage of found video clips where active police dance to Y.M.C.A. at pride parades, often joined by celebrating paraders; an animatics sequence of a 1977 issue of Christopher Street magazine, extolling (white, male) gay communities’ propensity to rejuvenate disregarded neighbourhoods and “save” Manhattan from the “slums”; and a recounting by the eponymous Gaby of his brief relationship as an eighteen-year-old with a straight-presenting gay cop.” – Taken from press release for Queer Thoughts.

Selected 9 (2019)

Sarah Cockings & Harriet Fleuriot, Plasma Vista, 2016 (see an excerpt here)

Plasma Vista began as a promotional film for a new business concept of the same name that creatively showcased episodical art, design products, furnishings and clothing. Everything featured in the frame would be available to purchase. After two years of development, the promo morphed from a strategic investment into a collaborative, expressive work.

The film manifested a disobedient breakdown that rejected the original brief. Hijacking the commercial framework and seizing the business name for its own, Plasma Vista moulded itself around ideas that explored utility, economics, production, creativity and aesthetics. The promotional concept had eaten itself, pushed back, self-rendered dysfunctional and reformed within an independent experimental piece of moving image.

Displaced Belongings – Online programme

The Glamorous Boys of Tang (1985, Chui Kang-Chien), Su Hui-Yu, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

In collaboration with Platform Asia, we are presenting Displaced Belongings online 8 May till 30 May 20. The programme can be watched at any time over this period, just click here to watch the films.

Displaced Belongings presents six recent film and video works by Asian artists that explore the complex nature of identity. Artists respond to personal and global experiences, such as war and memory, ejection from home and expression of sexual identity to inform their filmmaking. Drawing a dialogue through themes such as gender, race, class and self-image, artists express their identities, uncovering and recovering memories to analyse daily life. See below for the trailer, or follow this link to watch the full programme

Programme:

At Home But Not at Home, Suneil Sanzgiri (US), 2019, 10:43 mins (UK premiere)
Salt House, Bella Riza (UK), 2017, 12:39 mins
Action, Almost Unable to Think, Mao Haonan (China), 2018, 11:20 mins (UK premiere)
Dreams, Butterfly Boy Dreams (Genesis), Mathis Zhang (China), 2019, 7:13 mins
The Glamorous Boys of Tang (1985, Chui Kang-Chien), Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan), 2018, 15 mins
A Private Collection, Wu Chi-Yu (Taiwan), 2016, 13:33mins

(Age 18+)

Click here to watch Displaced Belongings now

Displaced Belongings is curated by Moritz Cheung for Platform Asia & videoclub. Delivered in association with videoclub and supported by Arts Council England. 

Displaced Belongings – UK screening tour – CANCELLED due to Covid-19 (now online)

Still from Action, Almost Unable to Think by Mao Haonan, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Platform Asia presents Displaced Belongings – a touring screening programme across the UK in association with videoclub.

Displaced Belongings presents six recent film and video works by Asian artists that explore the complex nature of identity. Artists respond to personal and global experiences, such as war and memory, ejection from home and expression of sexual identity to inform their filmmaking. Drawing a dialogue through themes such as gender, race, class and self-image, artists express their identities, uncovering and recovering memories to analyse daily life.

Films by artists Suneil Sanzgiri and Bella Riza explore the emotional diasporic memories of their families; from the colonial history of India to the ongoing dispute between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Mao Haonan’s film, Action, Almost Unable to Think tells the life story of a soldier from his personal perspective after death.

Matthis Zhang and Su Hui-Yu’s work show the possibilities and beauty of queerness, and in contrast, the harshness of civic and social oppression. And in A Private Collection by Wu Chi-Yu, the artist reveals a migrant couple’s passion for their pirate DVD collection, which reminds us that the impact of a film can go far beyond the screen, and provide a new understanding of the world.

Artists in the programme include: Mao Haonan (China), Bella Riza (UK), Suneil Sanzgiri (US), Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan), Wu Chi-Yu (Taiwan) and Mathis Zhang (China). Action, Almost Unable to Think by Mao Haonan (2018) and At Home But Not at Home by Suneil Sanzgiri (2019) have not been shown in the UK before.

Programme:

At Home But Not at HomeSuneil Sanzgiri (US), 2019, 10:43 mins (UK premiere)
Salt HouseBella Riza (UK), 2017, 12:39 mins
Action, Almost Unable to ThinkMao Haonan (China), 2018, 11:20 mins (UK premiere)
Dreams, Butterfly Boy Dreams (Genesis)Mathis Zhang (China), 2019, 7:13 mins
The Glamorous Boys of Tang(1985, Chui Kang-Chien)Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan), 2018, 15 mins
A Private CollectionWu Chi-Yu (Taiwan), 2016, 13:33mins

(Age 15+)

Venue dates and details

BACKLIT, Nottingham 
Date: 19 Mar 2020
Time: 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Address: BACKLIT, 3rd Floor (Gallery), Alfred House, Ashley Street, Nottingham, NG3 1JG
Free entry: Book your tickets now

Royal College of Art, London
Date: 31 Mar 2020
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Address: Gorvy Lecture Theatre, RCA Dyson Building, Riverside, 1 Hester Rd, London SW11 4AN
Book tickets here
Free Entry
*Pre-book tickets to guarantee entry*

Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre, Leicester
Date: 24 April 2020
Time: 8pm – 9:30pm, following with Q&A
Address: 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG
Tickets: TBA
Web / contact: www.phoenix.org.uk

More touring venues and dates coming soon.

Displaced Belongings is curated by Moritz Cheung for Platform Asia. Delivered in association with videoclub and supported by Arts Council England.