Date: January 21st 2010
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4. 23 - 31 January, William Raban at flat 123, Balfron Tower 1. John Smith, Associations, 1975 John Smith’s 1975 film Associations, is constructed from, around, and in response to an essay “Word Associations and Linguistic Theory” by Herbert H Clark. The essay examines the syntactic and semantic “rules” of the word association game and to do so limits its field of study to a particular type of word association - one that is neither too quick as to produce “clang responses, words that sound like or rhyme with the stimulus”, nor too slow as to allow “exotic”, idiosyncratic, personal allusions. Smith’s film takes his own, personal set of “clang responses” to the text and deftly undermines the possibility of taking such a constricted view of language. John Smith (1952. UK) studied film at the Royal College of Art. Since 1972 he has made over forty film, video and installation works that have been shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television throughout the world and awarded major prizes at many international film festivals. Recent exhibitions and screenings include those at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE) and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (US). Charlotte Moth, Travelogue, 1999 – present The Travelogue is a collection of analogue photographs begun in 1999. This collection is to be understood neither as an autonomous work or archive. Instead, it functions as an image bank for a visual vocabulary that questions the way we perceive and works with notions of process, seriality, form, time, and speculation too. In this sense the photographs are not documents or exemplary expressions, but "containers for thought" and incentives to view architectural spaces and sites in a phenomenological way. A lack of concrete information creates a space for assumptions, imaginations that require timelessness and the quality of being out of place in order to unfold. Here an isolated image has the possibility to make reference to a single moment and also to, within the context of other images embody a collection of innumerable moments. The potential inherent to the photos in the Travelogue is activated directly and indirectly depending on the respective underlying idea: this enables a range of works in differing media to be developed. Charlotte Moth (1978. UK) studied at the Slade School of Art graduating in 2002. She recently held a research post at the Jan van Eyck Acadamie, Maastricht (2005-6) and has exhibited internationally since 2003. Forthcoming exhibitions include the Bloomberg Space, Comma commission, London and Studio Sandra Recio, Genève; Part of the festival "50 JPG 2010. 50 Jours pour la photographie", The revenge of the Photographic archive, Center for photography, Genève. Jeremiah Day, Jefferson Project, 2004-6 In the summer of 2004, against the backdrop of the re-election campaign of George W. Bush, the national memorials in Washington DC underwent major reconstruction; while the meaning of the Vietnam war was re-debated nightly with equal parts amnesia and invective, parts of the Vietnam Veteran’s Monument were covered up under sheets of plywood, only re-opening after the November election. This event is the point of departure for Jeremiah Day’s Jefferson Project, a work consisting of analog color photographs with hand-written text and a slide-show performance. Taking up the reconstruction of the monuments as a kind of allegory for a broader questioning of politics and memory, in Day’s work image and text work in dialogue, an index of both literal and more metaphorical journeys to make the work both explicit and metaphorical. Stories of family appear alongside political research and aphoristic speculations, juxtaposed with a photographic investigation of the interplay between the man-made and natural landscape. Hannah Arendt's 1963 book, On Revolution, is depicted in the series and her ideas - from a positive appraisal of the American Revolution, the argument that revolution is linked to preservation and restoration, and her suggestion that Thomas Jefferson uniquely articulated the irresolvable problem of preserving the revolutionary spirit - form a backdrop for the Jefferson Project. Day's slide-show performance 1-2-3-4 will be presented at the closing of the exhibition. Jeremiah Day (1973. US). This is the third exhibition of Day’s work at Arcade after his 2008 solo exhibition The Fall of the Twelve Acres Museum and 2009 collaboration with Can Altay You Don’t Go Slumming. Jeremiah Day’s work is currently presented in the exhibition Heartland at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum. Upcoming exhibitions include Freymond-Guth & Co. in Zurich and the traveling exhibition Critique of Archival Reason that opens February 18th at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. Arcade ... 21 January - 18 April 2010 Whitechapel Gallery Berlin-based artist Charly Nijensohn’s film The Dead Forest (Storm), 2009, harks back to the idea of the romantic sublime. Based on a performance, where a human figure is placed in a threatening natural environment, Nijensohn creates an audiovisual experience that points to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the environment by global commercial interests. The second film on show, Pink and White Terraces, 2006, is a Technicolour film by Auckland artist Nova Paul. Reflecting on the poetics and politics that make a place, scenes of everyday life are shot in red, green and blue layers creating ghostly auras that hold a colour-coded record of the passage of time. Deriving its title from the historically famous geological forms in New Zealand’s North Island, the film process echoes the natural geological phenomenon of layers of strata accruing to create form. This exhibition is part of Art in the Auditorium, a collaborative project organised by the Whitechapel Gallery with institutions from Europe, Asia, South America and the US to provide a showcase for the work of some of the most exciting young artists working with film, video and animation today. Charly Nijensohn was selected by the Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires; Nova Paul by the City Gallery Wellington. http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/charly-nijensohn-and-nova-paul
Wed-Sun 12-6 William Raban at flat 123, Balfron Tower The Agency is pleased to present a joint show by Emma Hart and Melanie Stidolph featuring performative video pieces and large scale photographs with an unexpected take on the pastoral landscape. ‘Running and Standing’ is not a conventional two-person show. It was conceived by Hart and Stidolph as a visual dialogue on a common theme and shows diverging approaches to making work; contemplation and action, which can be used to capture it. The pastoral, although often associated with serenity originally stems from the notion of working the land and rearing animals. A common motive in iconography, Hart and Stidolph nevertheless manage to bring their own unique perspectives to it. Both artists question the accuracy of the camera and both attempt to push the boundaries of representation through the lens. Your browser may not support display of this image. Emma Hart’s ongoing series Chasing Animals makes a point of the fact that the artist’s unconcealed presence behind the camera and her actions have an influence on the scene she is capturing. Hart creeps up on animals, but once they have seen her, instead of remaining still and utilising a zoom to get closer to the horses, sheep or geese, Hart runs towards them with a handheld video camera. Hart is trying to physically ‘zoom’ herself into the vicinity of the animals yet the act of running with the camera, scares the animals and they bolt. The camera records the action it has created. The videos Chasing Animals do not present an objective documentation of nature, but record the active interference of the artist’s camera with natural behaviour. We cannot see Hart, but we sense what she experiences through the resulting images and sound. We no longer see the iconic landscape but become hu nters of an image or the animals themselves. Instead of a contemplative representation of the pastoral, the video series becomes a portal to the experience of being outdoors and effecting a change. So whilst Emma Hart’s way of filming is an interference which causes a reaction from the animals, it perplexingly leads the viewer towards a sensation of the real, rather than the spectacle of the reality. Your browser may not support display of this image. In contrast, Melanie Stidolph works by remaining still, unobtrusive and largely undetected, using a medium format camera to portray animals and landscapes. Stidolph records moments where the animal acts naturally rather than in direct response to her presence. Instead of relying on an existing iconography of landscape, she records and edits moments which are closest in authenticity to nature itself. On occasions those moments border on the grotesque, defying the conventions of pictorial language. In Hare most of the image represents shrubbery and only a small centrally focussed area reveals the hare of the title. The work truthfully represents, yet also compresses the image information into an overwhelming two-dimensional pattern, within which the hare is just a small variation. Untitled (Cow) shows an animal in motion, looking disproportionate due to its own awkward movement. The image records a truthful moment, yet it is not a conventional documentary image, this small uncomfortable shift is the point, where Stidolph allows the camera to record a curious slippage, which is as authentic as it is noteworthy. Running and Standing examines whether these two actions are opposed or whether they could lead to the same result theoretically, despite being aesthetically divergent. The exhibition brings into the foreground the processes of making art and suggests that the camera is not neutral and that its limitations result in media specific compositions. At the same time both artists attempt to reach beyond the constraints of the lens. The visual result of these examinations is a series of works which bring a refreshing conceptual touch to a genre whilst at the same time celebrating the beauty of wildlife and nature.
Tuesday 26 January 2010 8pm: PASSAGE THROUGH: A RITUAL by Stan Brakhage + MUSICAL STAIRS by Guy Sherwin A chance to see one of Brakhage’s most important sound films for the FIRST time in London alongside Guy Sherwin’s Optical Sound film Musical Stairs. Parts 1 and 2 of Histories of the Avant-Garde looked at the resolutely, intensely silent Brakhage film Riddle of Lumen and Guy Sherwin’s Short Film Series. Part 3 enters the world of sound with these two filmmakers and also looks forward to Part 4 in February, which will be examining music’s manifold relationship to Film with five American masters. Brakhage’s relationship to sound was complex. It took an almost indirect collaboration with the composer Phillip Corner to fulfill Brakhage’s desire for a way of giving equal importance to music and image whilst keeping them parallel, distinct experiences. Long passages of black with Corner’s music are cut with silent flashes of colour photography culled from Brakhage’s ‘rejected’ footage. Meditative and demanding but ultimately one of Brakhage’s most rewarding films. In his development of myriad radical cinematic languages over his long filmmaking career, Stan Brakhage frequently promoted a profound aesthetics which often positioned intense silences as ground for his complex and subtle visual compositions. In his interest in non-verbal expression, he was greatly inspired by music and his rare forays into sound filmmaking stand as some of the most unique sound/image statements in the history of cinema. - Steve Polta of the San Francisco Cinematheque When I received the tape of Phillip Corner’s ‘Through the Mysterious Barricade, Lumen I (after F. Couperin)’ he included a note that thanked me for my film ‘The Riddle of Lumen’ he’d just seen and which had in some way inspired this music. I, in turn, was so moved by the tape he sent I immediately asked his permission to ’set it to film’. It required the most exacting editing process ever, and in the course of that work it occurred to me that I’d originally made ‘The Riddle of Lumen’ hoping someone would make an ‘answering’ film and entertain my visual riddle in the manner of the riddling poets of yore. I most expected Hollis Frampton (because of ‘Zorn’s Lemma’) to pick up the challenge, but he never did. In some sense I think composer Corner has, and now we have this dance of riddles as music and film combine to make ‘passage’, in every sense of the word, fu rther possible. (To be absolutely ‘true to’ the ritual of this passage, the two reels of the film should be shown on one projector, taking the normal amount of time, without rewinding reel 1 or showing the finish or start leaders of either –especially without changing the sound dials– between reels.) - Stan Brakhage MUSICAL STAIRS One of a series of films that uses soundtracks generated directly from their own imagery. I shot the images of a staircase specifically for the range of sounds they would produce. I used a fixed lens to film from a fixed position at the bottom of the stairs. Tilting the camera up increases the number of steps that are included in the frame. The more steps that are included the higher the pitch of sound. A simple procedure gave rise to a musical scale (in eleven steps which is based on the laws of visual perspective. A range of volume is introduced by varying the exposure. The darker the image the louder the sound (it can be the other way round, but Musical Stairs uses a soundtrack made from the negative of the image.) The fact that the staircase is neither a synthetic image, nor a particularly clean one (there happened to be leaves on the stairs when I shot the film) means that the sound is not pure, but dense with strange harmonics. - Guy Sherwin An Interview with Guy Sherwin by The Dog Movement will follow in February |
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