This page lists all new works added to the LUX collection in March 2008. For
a full list of all LUX collection holdings, see our online
catalogue.
Please use this page menu to browse, or scroll down the whole page.
 |
SEBASTIAN BUERKNER
REALMS PIN
UK, 2007, 5mins, video
Being at the same place at different times at once can grant a brisk
distance from the emotional agitation in a certain toil of life. Space
provides the stage where extremes like loss and gain, companionship
and seclusion reign at times. As objects are witnesses or players in
the individual spectacle, changes to their instance feel like graffiti
poured upon them, revealing the full story.
back to the top |
| |
MAYA DEREN
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON *NEW PRINT*
USA, 1943, 15mins, 16mm
Meshes of the Afternoon's dream-like mise-en-scène, illogical
narrative trajectory, fluid movement and ambient soundtrack invite
a type of contemplative, perhaps even transcendental, involvement for
the spectator. The film is constructed from a myriad of eyeline matches
and mismatches. The use of extreme angles to imply one character looking
down on the dreamer, a type of spider's point of view, foreshadows
the dreamer's death.
back to the top |
| |
MAYA DEREN
AT LAND *NEW PRINT*
USA, 1944, 15mins, 16mm
At Land has a dream-like narrative in which a woman, played by Deren,
is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering
other people and other versions of herself. Deren once said that the
film is about the struggle to maintain ones personal identity. The
composer John Cage and the poet and film critic Parker Tyler were involved
in making the film, and appear in the film, which was shot at Amagansett,
Long Island.
back to the top |
| |
MAYA DEREN
RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME *NEW PRINT*
USA, 1946, 14mins, 16mm
Ritual In Transfigured Time silently follows Rita Christiani's perspective
as she enters an apartment to find Maya Deren immersed in the ritual
of unwinding wool from a loom. Deren includes another expression of
the external invading the internal with a strange wind that surrounds
and entrances her as she becomes transported by the ritual. Ritual
in Transfigured Time links the looming ritual with the ritual of the
social greeting. The film's continuity is established by an emphasis
on gesture and/or dance throughout.
back to the top |
| |
MAYA DEREN
THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT *NEW PRINT*
USA, 1958, 15mins, 16mm
A shimmering constellation of stars established the background for
negative images of figures resembling Greek Gods superimposed on and
magically transported along the milky way. Deren called it her 'ballet
of night', an ethereal dance within a nocturnal space that focused
on the spectacle rather than the narrative.
back to the top |
 |
STEPHEN DWOSKIN
THE SUN AND THE MOON
UK, 2007, 60mins, video
The Sun and the Moon, a film fairy tale, is of two women’s terrifying
encounter with ‘Otherness’ in the form of a man, abject
and monstrous, and for them to either to witness, accept or partake
in his annihilation. All are caught in their own isolation and
are fearful of the menace that has to be met. The film, as a
personal interpretation of Beauty and the Beast, enciphers concerns,
beliefs and desires in seductive images that are themselves a form
of camouflage, making it possible to utter harsh truths.
back to the top |
 |
IAN HELLIWELL
THE ATOMIUM AGE
UK. 2007, 2min 25secs, video
Split-screen film shot at the Atomium in Brussels, the centrepiece
of the World`s Fair in 1958. The remarkable 335 feet high structure
representing an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, is captured
with spontaneous super-8 camerawork, in all its silver spherical glory.
Soundtrack: Hellisizer 2000, Hellitron generators.
back to the top |
 |
IAN HELLIWELL
PLAYING UP
UK, 2007, 3min 45secs, video
Naturally decayed found super-8 footage of children`s and adult`s
games, has been cut up with scissors and spliced back together to reveal
new rhythms and connections.
Soundtrack: Tape loop, keyboard and ring modulator, Hellitron generators.
back to the top |
| |
IAN HELLIWELL
GRID
UK, 2007, 2min 20secs, video
Circles in formation glide by, in this abstract direct animation film.
Coloured inks were applied onto clear super-8 with felt-tip pens, using
an old speaker grill as a stencil.
Soundtrack: Hellitron tone generators.
back to the top |
 |
IAN HELLIWELL
SIGNAL TRACING
UK, 2007, 3min 20secs, video
Abstract audio-generated waveform patterns from an oscilloscope and
modified TV, were filmed with super-8 and then treated with bleach
and vinegar. The electronic music features a special Hellitron photocell
audio generator which reacts to varying amounts of light in the film.
Soundtrack: Hellitron 10.
back to the top |
| |
DAVID LAMELAS
TEMPUS AGERE EST
St. Gallen, 2007, 13 min, 16mm
The Time as Activity project he has been realised in Berlin, Los Angeles,
Warsaw and this year in New York – over a period of almost four
decades. Using a series of static shots, a methodology used in previous
TAA projects, Lamelas films an actress reading texts in German, French
and Latin, at three prominent locations in St. Gallen.
back to the top |
 |
URSULA MAYER
INTERIORS
UK, 2006, 3min 10secs, 16mm
Shot in Ernö and Ursula Goldfinger's home in Hampstead.
'...Mayer’s film highlights the absence of a feminine presence
in architecture and film by means of a sequence of encounters, some
of which seem like stills and espouse an increased focus on female
characters in film and cultural history, in the tradition of Cindy
Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills.' Walter Seidel.
back to the top |
 |
URSULA MAYER
THE CRYSTAL GAZE
UK, 2007, 8mins, 16mm
In The Crystal Gaze three women occupy the art deco rooms of Eltham
Palace in London.
'...What they articulate is the fact of their own bodies-become-images,
exquisitely fragmented and reflected in the metaphor of our and their
crystal gazes. As the opening bars of Peggy Lee’s Is That All
There Is? are played and they break into tragic-comic song the message
is both high-camp relief and the damnation of a fascination with the
screen. What they embody is something like a distillation of Cinema:
neither history nor biography, but quite simply the unbearable seduction
of an image that we cannot enter but from which we can neither escape.'
Ian White.
back to the top |
 |
URIEL ORLOW
THE VISITOR
UK, 2007, 15mins 58secs, video
The Visitor is an almost mythical account of the artist’s audience
with Oba Erediauwa, the current king of Benin (in southern Nigera)
and takes the form of a photo-essay. A local narrator follows the artist
into the Oba’s palace and recounts the conversation between the
European visitor and the royal host and his court of chiefs. The exchange
centers on the Benin Bronzes (which were famously looted by the British
in 1897 and are now in over 500 museums and collections mainly in the
West), on collective memory and the demand for restitution. However,
communication remains somewhat elusive, slipping in and out of gaps
of cultural and historical difference.
back to the top |
| |
PEOPLE LIKE US
WORK REST AND PLAY
UK, 2007, 13mins 39secs, HD QT
Work, Rest & Play has been carefully constructed using industrial
and documentary film footage from 1940-1975 to follow the endless chug
of the conveyer belt of life. The film has been constructed as a triptych,
where the whole is intended to be greater than the sum of the parts.
Material from the Prelinger Archives and AV Geeks, two of the biggest
ephemeral footage libraries in the world, has been pieced together
in a symphony of movement and metamorphosis. Images of production lines,
factories, and educational and creative industries, are sandwiched
by those of the winding up and down processes of the day, the hours
of leisure and relaxation, to illustrate the endless whirr of activity
in our pursuit of meaning and happiness.
back to the top |
| |
SARAH PUCILL
BLIND LIGHT
UK, 2007, 22min, 16mm
Blind Light is filmed in the artist's London loft. The presence of
camera, studio and artist/performer are registered through image and
sound, the loss of the former filling out the presence of the latter.
In this way the physicality of object, space and subject as well as
their interiority is fleshed out, mapping out a space that is at once
material and psychical.
back to the top |
 |
RACHEL REUPKE
NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR
UK, 2007, 9mins 2secs, video
This video work reflects a fascination with science fiction and the
inherent problem of visualising the future. Shot in Beijing in 2006,
it is inspired by a city in the throws of a construction boom where
developers’ hoardings intrude on every street, each displaying,
in a pastel-soft style, an architect’s visual of what is to come:
the future of the city rendered as illustrated inserts into the reality
of its present.
back to the top |
 |
BEN RIVERS
THE COMING RACE
UK, 2006, 5min, 16mm
A hand processed film in which thousands of people climb a rocky mountain
terrain. The destination and purpose of their ascension remains unclear.
A vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage fraught with unknown intentions.
The title ‘The Coming Race’ is after a Victorian novel by
E.G.E. Bulwer-Lytton, about a race of people who live under a mountain.
back to the top |
 |
EMILY WARDILL
SICK SERENA AND DREGS AND WRECK AND WRECK
UK, 2007, 10mins, 16mm
Sick Serena... deliberately resists any settled reading, mixing medieval
iconography and modern references, and undercutting its ritualised story
with faltering delivery and slapstick comedy (the buns on one of the
women's medieval headdresses are made from just that - buns). Wardill's
films deconstruct their own visual languages, in a way that is inspired
by an attempt to empower the viewer, but which also emphasises the irreducible
strangeness of images.
back to the top |