Dreams of a Life - A film by Carol Morley

In 2003 no one noticed that Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in London. Nearly three years later her skeletal remains were discovered, surrounded by Christmas presents and the television was still on. Very little was revealed in the article, and so, when Carol Morley read about the discovery in the newspaper, she began her own quest to discover who Joyce Vincent was. 

After years of searching for funding, conducting thorough research (the family recognise that Morley did a better job than the private detective that they hired) and demonstrating incredible dedication and perseverance, the results of Morley's quest were shared in Dreams of a Life. The documentary shifts between a range of interviews with Joyce's friends, colleagues and ex-lovers with imagined scenes of Joyce's life. Over the course of the film the camera pans across a table which reveals Morley's research process. 

This scanning shot echoes the tone of the film, it slowly and carefully unpicks different aspects of Joyce's life in a non-biased manner. It does not set out to prove anything per se, blame or accuse anyone, the result of which is that I am left with more questions than answers.

"It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love."

Unintimacy - Friday 26th April - 7pm-12am - The NewBridge Project

Unintimacy

Friday 26th April 2019

7pm-12am

The NewBridge Project

Carliol House, Market Street East, Newcastle, NE1 6NE

The launch event of the latest series of podcasts about collaboration curated by Caitlin Jean Merrett King. Episode 1 features an audio work by marginendeavour, collaborative duo David Foggo and Helen Shaddock

Join us in the foyer of Carliol House for a night of performance, film and music which has been co-produced by various artist through collaboration. These collaborations are made up of partners, friends, lovers and family, formed through both closeness and distance, admiration and mimesis, love and care, desire and lack.

Unintimacy has been co-curated by artists Caitlin Merrett King and Grace Denton. The duo will kick off the evenings events by presenting new experimental performance works made together but remotely between Glasgow, and Newcastle. The event will feature films by Harriet Plewis & Rhodri Davies | Cherry Styles & Laura Robinson | Competition & Sophie Soobramanien | Sophie Chapman & Kerri Jeffris | Alex Sarkisian & Bahar Yürükoğlu | McGilvary/White | Yeah You | Georgia Lucas-Going.

Following the screenings local radge pop band GGAllan Partridge and, NBP house DJs You F***in Wot will play a collaborative DJ set. Dancing is widely encouraged!

On Exactitude in Science by Alan Butler at BALTIC as part of Digital Citizen – The Precarious Subject

"This two screen installation is a synchronized presentation of Godfrey Reggio's 1983 experimental film Koyaanisqatsi (1982) & Alan Butler's Koyaanisgtav (2017). Butler’s work uses the virtual worlds within popular video game Grand Theft Auto to create a shot-for-shot remake of Koyaanisqatsi. Featuring renowned music by Philip Glass, the narration-less Koyaanisqatsi presents a visual essay in slow-motion and time-lapse of the many cities and natural landscapes across the United States of America."

Koyaanisqatsi is a truly mesmorising film and Butler has enhanced this by creating a virtual remake of the entire film. It was only after a while that I realised that the film on the right was digitally created as opposed to being real life footage. The editing is seamless, and the attention to detail is faultless.

http://baltic.art/whats-on/exhibitions/alan-butler-in-conversation-with-alessandro-vincentelli

New test projections at The Word

When I last visited The Word a number of days ago to investigate the technological setup, I was shown how, without appropriate masking or shaping of the video, the projection would spill onto the floor and ceiling. I was able to obtain the template used to make photographs fit the screens, and have spent the past week trying to figure out how to apply the template to videos.

 

After a few attempts that were in the right direction, but not quite right, one of the technical team at The Word discovered a fairly straightforward method to follow using Photoshop. I followed his instructions using the templates for each wall and exported 5 versions of a test video, one each for walls 1, 2 and 3, and two videos for walls 4. He kindly tried projecting the test videos in the Story World space, and sent me these photographs to confirm that applying the templates to the videos had been successful. I will follow this method when exporting my final videos.

Jasmina Cibic - THIS MACHINE BUILDS NATIONS at BALTIC

"Bringing together film, sculpture, performance and installation into multi-layered projects, the core themes of Jasmina Cibic’s practice explore how art, architecture and political rhetoric are deployed and instrumentalised in the name of the nation.

For BALTIC, Cibic has developed a site-specific installation that showcases the three films of her latest Nada trilogy presented for the first time in the UK. Setting and framing the scene, the artist has devised chambers where specific architectural components are reconfigured. These include design fragments drawn from modernist Yugoslavia’s unique synthesis of architecture, art and design, culminating in the modernist palace which housed the First Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 in Belgrade. Corridors, curtains and murals here become theatrical devices which guide the viewer through the exhibition.

Bridging the installation is the narrative trio of films that examine three of european modernism’s star architects and the role their work played in forming national representation in decisive moments of European history. These include Mies van der Rohe and his trade fair designs for Germany in the 1920s; Vjenceslav Richter’s Yugoslav Pavilion for the 1958 Brussels EXPO and Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus Town Hall finished during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

Nada, meaning hope in Croatian, gathers together these historical symbols and iconographies that stand between ideological censorship and cultural production. Cibic’s projects present a synthesis of gesture, stagecraft and re-enactment, revealing the strategies employed for the construction of national culture as well as their use on behalf of political goals. Realised in films and installations, hers is also an ongoing performative practice, an ‘enacted’ exercise in the dissection of statecraft."

I found this installation to be visually stunning and intellectually stimulating. Although Cibic's work is layered with meaning and historic references, I feel it is possible to appreciate the work without being privy to this information. Cibic's ability to compose her videos is exquisite. Mirror images, symmetry and formalism, all come into play. The initial walk through the long illuminated passageway sets the scene for what is to come. The first room shows Vjenceslav Richter's original and censored design for the Yugoslav Pavilion in Brussels reinterpreted as a musical instrument. The second film Cibc's redirection of Bela Bartok's pantomime ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. The final film features a debate staged between 3 women about what art should be. It had lots to get me thinking! 

Testing projections at The Word

On Friday I visited The Word to do some technical research in preparation towards my forthcoming exhibition in the Story World area of The Word.

Story World is a white space with four slightly curved walls and four projectors that project onto each of the four walls to create an immersive environment.

I had prepared a number of videos and still images with different aspect ratios and wanted to establish which format would be the best for the room, and whether I would need to create masks in order to avoid any of the projections bleeding onto the wall or floor.

The image above was an animation made on clear 16mm film stock. The colours were not as vibrant as I had expected, possibly because the room is not totally dark. There was some bleed on the floor, and when the projection went to the ceiling, the projector shadow was visible.

I also noticed that the edges of the shapes in the animation did not seem as crisp as they appear on the original film, but this will be because of the amount that the image has been enlarged by.

The image below shows a projection of an animation that I made using the black 16mm film strip.

The image above shows a panoramic view of the 3 walls with the same projection on.

In these images, the projections with the hexagonal patterns have been applied with a template so that the top part of the wall is not projected on. This eliminates the shadow from the projector from being in sight. The other wall with the black film image still has the bleed on the floor, but the image goes all the way to the top of the wall.

These show the projection with the template applied reducing bleed to the ceiling and floor.

My mission now is to decide what I prefer and create an appropriate template for my footage prior to creating the video file to be projected. Wish me luck!

Reading for _______ at The NewBridge Project

On Monday evening I attended Reading for _______ , a Practice Make Practice event at The NewBridge Project. It was programmed with Nathaniel Whitfield, who is currently undertaking Practice Makes Practice – A Social Residency at The NewBridge Project.

“The purpose of Art” James Baldwin wrote “is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers”.


"With the aim of provoking discussion, engagement and even disagreement with each other, we hope this space will shed light and provide us with new ways of seeing and articulating ideas."

This was the first of what is intended to be a series of sessions "where we can come together to share each other’s ideas through the texts we are reading individually."

The sessions take the following format:

• A group member brings to the session a text / essay / book / podcast / film that they are currently engaging with 

• The group member briefly presents to the group the reasons they are reading / listening / watching them and how they are finding them

• The group reads from / listens to / watches some selected sections of the item to be discussed

• The group has a discussion, shares ideas and opinions and makes suggestions of other sources that are related and could be of interest

"In listening to one another we are able to engage in a process of unlearning which opens up a space for re-articulation and re-materialization of ideas. We are 'undone' by one another, as Judith Butler would say."

Catherine Yass Artist talk

The visiting artist at Newcastle University this week was Catherine Yass, the London-based artist. Abandoned urban spaces and sites in a process of construction or deconstruction are of interest to Yass, and often feature in her work. People are usually absent from her work, but this is not the case in High Wire (2008), a multi-screen film and video installation.

High Wire (2008) was filmed at the Red Road housing estate in North Glasgow. When it was built in the early 1960s, Red Road was the highest social housing in Europe, a major achievement for the city planners who sought to rebuild the city. Yet in 2008 it was due to be demolished.

Akin to the utopian principles that were in place at the time that the Red Road housing estate was built, Yass wanted to make a work about "walking in the air, out of nothing." She advertised for a tightrope walker to walk between two of the high rise buildings at Red Road.

Yass worked with French high-wire artist Didier Pasquette. In the talk Yass spoke about her unease when Pasquette told her that he did not want to wear a safety harness. Her terror increased as Pasquette began the tightrope walk and it became clear that the weather conditions were much worse than had been forecast, and Pasquette would need to turn round. He edged his way back to the starting platform.



Yass spoke about how she considered not exhibiting the work as the intention of Pasquette walking from one building to the other had not been fulfilled. However, she began to see this as a strength of the work. I believe that it echoes the situation at the Red Road housing estate; grand ideas of what would exist turned out to be unachievable, and this adds another layer to the work.

Shame

Shame is a film directed by Steve McQueen about Brandon (played by Michael Fassbender) a successful, single, attractive executive in New York who is addicted to sex, prostitutes and porn. When his unpredictable and difficult sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), moves into his apartment, his stability is compromised and it all becomes too much for him. The relationship between Brandon and Sissy is multilayered and incredibly well portrayed by Fassbender and Mulligan. The cause of their individual struggles are never revealed, but a tough childhood is suggested.

Rather than describing the plot of the film, I want to focus on the issues at the heart of the film. Particular scenes reveal the loneliness of the two siblings. A single shot of Brandon running through the streets of New York at night in an attempt to flee from his sister's activities in his flat, is a beautiful portrayal of a man's quest for escapism. 

The film demonstrates how modern life and the technological advances that are central to how we live, inevitably have an impact on how people interact with each other and the relationships we have with one another. Brandon seems unable to trust and is unable commit to a meaningful relationship. He is desperately in need of satisfaction, a quick release, but isn't able to manage anything more.

One of the extras on the DVD is an interview with Michael Fassbender in which he talks about how he researched the character and met with sex addicts to get an insight into their situation. Fassbender comments that there was one particular addict that he learned a lot from. He remarked that rather than probe with questions in an order to be able to 'use' the material for his own gain, he tried to encourage the addict simply to tell his story. I have also found that once people are invited to tell stories, they are more open and relaxed, giving more honest and genuine responses.

There is an argument that one cannot understand how it feels to be in a particular situation e.g. be an addict, until one has a direct experience of the situation. Although I tend to agree with this, I do think it is important to have access to artforms (films, literature, art, theatre etc) that portray such situations and conditions. It is through films like Shame that people are given an insight into the complexities of things they may not otherwise witness or experience.

I, Daniel Blake - the brutal reality

I was warned that I would not feel happy as I left the cinema having watched 'I, Daniel Blake'. However, on a day that I received another message of 'your application has been unsuccessful', I departed feeling rather fortunate that, although i didn't get the job, at least I have my health and am not supporting a family.



'I, Daniel Blake' is British filmmaker Ken Loach's latest film, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Set in Newcastle, the film follows Daniel Blake, a 59 year old joiner who, after suffering from a heart attack, is told by his doctor that he should not go back to work. As he is capable of many of the tasks specified on the form for “Employment and Support Allowance”, (putting on his own jumper, for example), he does not meet the requirements to receive “Employment and Support Allowance” and he is told to apply for Jobseekers Allowance, the fund for people ready and able to work. In order to get this, Daniel has to prove that he is actively looking for work.



On one of his visits to the JobCentre he meets a single mother Katie and her two children, Dylan and Daisy, who are also struggling with poverty. I don't want to reveal any more of the plot, but the film follows the friendship between Daniel, Katie and the kids as they help each other maintain some sort of existence on a shoestring.

It saddens me deeply that this film is so true to life. Nothing is glorified or exaggerated. There is no need for obvert violence or gore, the truth of the situation is scary enough. People like you and I are experiencing this right now. That is scary. The scene in the food bank provides a startling incite into the extent to which mothers will go to in order to care for their children.

Amidst the doom and gloom there are numerous laugh out loud moments, and some characters that remind you that there genuinely care and have their eyes open to the situation that Daniel and Katie are in.

I urge you to see this film. It is rare to experience a standing ovation from the audience at the cinema, yet this is what happened at the end of the film. I was delighted to hear that the cinema had to put on extra showings in order to cater for the overwhelming demand. In times of austerity, it pleases me that people have been able to watch what should go down as one of the best films of 2016.

I just hope that the politicians see it and open their eyes to what is on our doorstep. AND TAKE ACTION.

Front Row reviews 'This is a voice'

Wednesday's edition of Front Row on BBC Radio 4 features a review of 'This is a Voice', a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London which has brought together a number of works by artists who have been inspired by the voice. 

It examines how tone, pitch and tempo can communicate meaning and emotion so effectively that words become unnecessary. Joan La Barbara, a composer known for her explorations of "extended" vocal techniques, and Imogen Stidworthy, whose video work explores how our voice affects our sense of self, respond to the exhibition and discuss why the voice is such an inspiration for them.

http://bbc.in/1MuorRO

THIS IS A VOICE

Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE

14th April - 31st July 2016

THIS IS A VOICE creates an acoustic journey through art, sound and film to capture the elusive nature of the human voice. From its origins within the body, to the sounds ringing in our heads, this exhibition celebrates the oral and the aural, with live performances in the gallery each day.

The exhibition features the work of artists and vocalists including Joan La Barbara, Imogen Stidworthy, Sam Belinfante, Enrico David, Meredith Monk, Marcus Coates, Anna Barham and Emma Smith, and visitors can add their own voices to the mix as part of an interactive new commission by electronic musician Matthew Herbert.

http://wellcomecollection.org

Film and video production workshop

Cecilia Stenbom lead a film and video production workshop which I attended today. Cecilia is a Newcastle-based artist filmmaker who is currently undertaking a PhD at Newcastle University. 

“My work is focused on media saturated, consumer driven everyday environments and how they affect human response, notions of identity, behaviour and interaction. I examine collective experiences through moving image content by reinterpretation and appropriation, using narrative and plot as tools.I examines anxieties and desires, reinterpreting scenarios within entertainment, mass media, retail, and domestic life. I work predominately with moving image content through film and installation by re-contextualize narrative for the gallery space or adapting it for the cinema screen.”

Cecilia Stenbom

The workshop covered all aspects of film and video production from preproduction, fundraising, casting, legal requirements, through the types of equipment (video cameras, microphones, lighting) and to postproduction.



Cecilia began by showing us SYSTEM, a short film shot in a shopping centre featuring two sisters, each with their own neurotic responses to everyday life. Through the experiences of these two characters, SYSTEM explores collective anxieties, irrational behaviour and the quest for control in public space. The plot is loosely based on a number of one-to-one interviews that Stenbom conducted with people about everyday behaviours and habits in communal spaces.

Throughout the workshop we referred back to the SYSTEM footage to demonstrate how certain results were achieved, or to explain a concept or technique when put in practice.

When we were discussing how to achieve the kind of image desired, Cecilia showed us a very useful diagram to illustrate the relationship between the ISO, the aperture and the shutter speed.

For more information about Cecila's practice visit 

http://www.ceciliastenbom.se/index.asp

https://systemthefilm.wordpress.com



Artist Films 2014 - Cecilia Stenbom from CVAN, North East on Vimeo.

Gareth Hudson - Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt - work II at The Globe Gallery

Following the breathtaking first part to his trio of films titled Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt,  Gareth Hudson had a hard act to follow. Part two fails to disappoint. It is visually stunning, intellectually engaging and emotionally powerful. An amazing experience.

 

Der Lauf der Dinge: The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss

The final Fine Art screening of 2015 went with a big bang - a welcome showing of the 1987 art film, Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

"Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues.

Fire, water, law of gravity as well as chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects - of things. It brings about a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and precision."

I have watched it a number of times before, but it is one of those gems that does not lose any of its charm with multiple viewings.

"The film embodies many of the qualities that make Fischli and Weiss's work among the most captivating in the world today: slapstick humour and profound insight; a forensic attention to detail; a sense of illusion and transformation; and the dynamic exchange between states of order and chaos. As everyday objects crash, scrape, slide or fly into one another with devastating, impossible and persuasive effect, viewers find themselves witnessing a spectacle that seems at once prehistoric and post-apocalyptic."

Fischli and Weiss are masters at creating suspense and tension: there are times in the film when it seems that motion has come to a stand still, but a sudden burst sparks the action again. Such changes in pace are an excellent way to sustain the attention of the audience.

This is a work that thoroughly deserves your undivided attention, so sit back, be prepared to be amazed, and enjoy!



The Way Things Go by racedaily

The Way Things Go by race daily


http://dai.ly/x2ipc2n

Visiting Artist - Melanie Manchot

This week's visiting artist was London based Melanie Manchot who works with photography, film, video and installation as part of a performative and participatory practice.

She delivered an excellent presentation, providing a good overview of the development of her work starting with Look At You Loving Me, a series of portraits of her nude mother, and ending with The Gift which is currently being exhibited at Bloomberg SPACE comprising a four-channel video, photography and a set of objects on plinths.



Look At You Loving Me, 2000, Unique Silver Gelatin Prints onto Canvas


Groups + Locations (Moscow)


‘Groups + Locations (Moscow)', is a series of photographs taken at historic sites in and around Moscow. Based on late 19th century group shots, the work refers to a moment when photography played an important role in the Russian people’s comprehension of what their vast lands and its inhabitants looked like.


Neighbours (Berlin), 2006, Six Diptych: Silver Gelatin Print/C-Print


Neighbours (Berlin) is based on a series of six postcards from 1905/06, found in a Berlin antiquarian bookshop when Manchot moved there in 2005. In the original images, a group of people is depicted standing outside the houses where they live and work. On the back of the postcards the exact addresses are given as well as the date of their production. Taking those as instructions for a new set of group portraits Manchot revisited the six locations to see how those sites exist today, one hundred years on, to which extent history has altered the infrastructure and architecture of this city. The artist then invited today’s residents to participate in a new group portrait. The resulting images are a portrait of the changes inscribed in a city, of memory and history as much as of the individuals who have agreed to participate and become part of an image with their neighbours, who most often are strangers to each other as much as to the artist. The work is presented as diptychs of the original postcard and the new photographs.



Celebration (Cyprus Street)


‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)’ is based on the rich history of public street parties in London’s East End. The film takes the viewer along the street in Bethnal Green, with the focal point being the gathering of the community for a group photograph.

Celebration (Cyprus Street)

To make ‘Celebration’, Manchot worked with the residents of Cyprus Street over a period of six months, collaborating on preparations for the party and inviting active participation in the film. The work engages with the East End as a point of arrival to the capital and to Britain. It acknowledges the waves of migration passing through East London over the last centuries and articulates the current make-up of streets as complex multicultural units.


Tracer

The film tracks the movements of a group of parkour runners as they navigate the route of the Great North Run. The structures and spaces they move through are explored in a physical manner, and a understanding of the architecture and environment is established through their direct interact with it. The film begins and ends with the group of parkourists moving as a swarm, but the main body of the film consists of a number of scenes in which a single parkourist is visible.


Twelve


Twelve is a multi channel video installation exploring the intimate stories, rituals, repetitions and ruptures of lives spent in addiction and recovery.

Over the last two years Manchot has worked in dialogue with twelve people in recent recovery from substance misuse, in rehabilitation communities in Liverpool, Oxford and London. Twelve is directly informed by their personal written and oral testimonies, creative conceptions, and performances within final works.

Single sequences are shot as continuous takes, referencing iconic scenes from the films of Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant, Bela Tarr and Chantal Akerman – a ferry journey across the Mersey, a car wash, the cutting of daisies with small scissors, the obsessive cleaning of a floor – providing the framework for reflections on remembered incidents and states of mind.

www.twelve.org.uk

Melanie spoke of the importance of working closely with the participants in order to develop an understanding and level of trust that was crucial to producing the work. I admire the way that the work does not make a judgement of the people that she works with.

For more information visit http://www.melaniemanchot.net

Henry Moore Institute - Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture

Following Leeds City Art Gallery we ventured next door to the Henry Moore Institute, and enjoyed the current exhibition, Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture

https://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/exhibitions/paul-neagu-palpable-sculpture

The exhibition includes a selection of work by Romanian born artist Paul Neagu (1938-2004) spanning 1968 to 1986, closing when 
he created 'Nine Catalytic Stations', a sculpture summarising his complex philosophical ideas. 



The exhibition includes sculptures, drawings, films, texts and archival material, much of which has never previously been exhibited.



The exhibition encompasses tactile boxes and edible sculptures, performances and fictional collaborators, objects and drawings. In his performances Neagu sought to defy gravity, while his works on paper are simultaneously preparatory works, documentation, assimilation and artworks. In his sculptures Neagu created systems of thought based on his understanding of the human body as a simple container, with his exhibitions conceived as dialogues 
and experiments.

Neagu graduated from Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Fine Arts, Bucharest in 1965, where the syllabus prioritised figurative painting over abstraction and sculpture. Soon after completing his studies he turned his attention to sculpture, making tactile objects - boxes he described as being 'strange mixed media objects'. Portable and scaled to the body, these were designed to be opened, pushed and pulled - each one demanding an active encounter.