All projects organised in 2004
Projects 2002
Projects 2003
Projects 2005
Projects 2006
Projects 2007
14 January 2004
LUX SALON: DIRK DE BRUYN: ANCIENT DAMAGE
LUX
Dirk de Bruyn will present a programme of 16mm from 1976 to 2004, including both his first and latest films. Born in the Netherlands, he has been active as an artist, writer and organiser for over 30 years, primarily in Australia where he has been a central figure in the Melbourne film scene. De Bruyn uses a variety of techniques including direct animation, flicker, time lapse and hand-processing to create dynamic personal cinema. This programme features a film from each decade and includes the world premiere of Analog Stress (2004, 12 mins). The visual element is constructed from reworked industrial and discarded personal footage, while the sound combines the original optical tracks with scratches, pen marks and Letraset. Also screening: Running (1976, 30 mins), Boerdery (1985, 11 mins) and Rote Movie (1994,12 mins).
3 February 2004
LUX SALON: BJØRN MELHUS
LUX
Bjørn Melhus is a media artist who reprocesses recognisable elements of American culture, feature films and daytime television into a humorous, but unsettling, reflection of modern life. From his 16mm student films and early videotapes, through to his more recent, technically seamless, digital productions, Melhus has continued to explore the boundaries between the real world and its fictional counterpart. Further blurring our perception, he performs as every character in each, building a dizzying repertory of doppelgangers.
For the LUX Salon, Bjørn will introduce a selection of single-channel works including his latest, Auto Center Drive (2003), which explores the impact of American cinema on our collective memory. The Oral Thing (2001) parodies TV evangelists, quiz and talk shows, Das Zauberglass (1991) is a self-reflexive melodrama and No Sunshine (1997) a music video for cyber-clones. Bjørn Melhus’ first British solo show Primetime is at FACT Liverpool until 7 March 2004 and his evangelistic double-projection Weeping (2001) will be on display as part of the forthcoming Serpentine Gallery exhibition ‘State of Play’.
Presented by LUX in association with the Serpentine Gallery and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt. With thanks to Rochelle Steiner and Anita Beckers.
www.melhus.de
5 - 7 March 2004
VASULKA VIDEO
Candid Arts & University of Westminster
A weekend with two pioneers of electronic art, Steina & Woody Vasulka. This weekend of events is the first opportunity in decades to see a substantial collection of the Vasulka’s early works and alongside performances and lectures at Candid Arts Trust & University of Westminster.
Read Chris Meigh-Andrews' introduction to the Vasulkas in the featured section
5 March, Candid
Screening
Steina and Woody Vasulka discuss the formation of The Kitchen, the electronic arts laboratory they co-founded in 1971, and their early years as part of the illegitimate counter-culture of New York. Plus screening of Participation, an anthology of performances recorded on their first Sony Portapak, featuring Don Cherry, Candy Darling, Miles Davis, Eric Emerson, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Jarrett, Jethro Tull, Taylor Mead, Ondine, Holly Woodlawn and many others.
6 March, Candid
Video Gallery
A continuous daytime single-channel projection of image-processed tapes from the Vasulka archive, made on analogue equipment in the 1970s. Includes Sketches, Studies, Don Cherry, Violin Power, Interface, Swan Lake, Black Sunrise, Spaces II, Distant Activities, Home, The Matter, Noisefields, Solo For 3, Reminiscence, Soundgated Images, 1-2-3-4, Telc, Soundsize, Heraldic View, C-Trend, Land of Timoteus, No. 25, Flux, Bad.
6 March, University of Westminster
Performance
Steina presents a live adaptation of her seminal tape Violin Power, using a MIDI violin and customised software to process the video image in real time. Plus screening of Orbital Obssessions, a multi-layered, studio performance/exploration of reshaped video space.
7 March, Candid
Lecture
Woody Vasulka presents an illustrated lecture on audio-visual relationships in early video and cathode ray tube experimentation, featuring classic works that explore the similarities between the electronic sound and image signals.
10 March 2004
LUX SALON: ALIA SYED
LUX
Alia Syed's presents her new film 'Eating Grass' (2003) alongside Mona Hatoum's classic 'Measures of Distance'(1988) and a rare screening of Margerite Duras' 'Les Mains Negative' (1979).
‘[Alia Syed]’s film-making could be compared to that of Marguerite Duras or the writing of Virginia Woolf. Alia Syed crafts the film poetically, creating a mesh of five stories emerging from London, Karachi and Lahore. Shadows trigger memories, memories relate to the times of day, the times of day to Muslim prayer… Very much a meditative film that places the beauty of fleeting experience above all else: its joys are not of conventional storytelling. This film relishes in the sites and materials from which it was made: a buzzing market in Karachi, a wet London city street, flowing material. It fascinates with how the photographs ‘move,’ and how the colours dance. It compels with its transformation of real moments in the past: captured, reproduced, layered and arranged. Syed’s skills in cinematography and editing are magic. The film is slick, startling and delicious.’ - Emma Field
14 March 2004
SPRING WITH ROSE LOWDER
Tate Britain Auditorium|
Rose Lowder presents a selection of her films from the 1970s to the present day. Lowder’s ecological style portrays nature in a unique manner, with each film meticulously constructed by individually composing and exposing every single frame. In projection, condensed clusters of images form a retinal collage of spatial and temporal impressions. This programme mixes early works such as Parcelle (1979) and Les Tournesols (1982) with selections from the ongoing series of Bouquets (1994-present) and other recent films shown for the first time in the UK.
Programmed by Mark Webber.
21 March 2004
DAVID LEISTER: NATURE BOY
Tate Britain Auditorium
This pastoral projection by David Leister, centres around his 16mm found footage hybrid Nature Boy (1990), and films from his extraordinary and eclectic collection. Featuring glimpses through the back gardens of British amateur movie makers, an instructional film on flower arranging, and a Cine Society film with poetic commentary on the passing of the seasons. Plus surprise films and a celebration of Eden Ahbez' classic song Nature Boy, interpreted in many strange and wonderful ways.
Programmed by Mark Webber.
30 March 2004
LUX SALON: BARBARA HAMMER
LUX
Barbara Hammer, is an internationally recognised film artist who has made over eighty films and videos, and is considered a pioneer of lesbian-feminist experimental cinema. Tonight she presents some of her classic early works in ‘Barbara Hammer's Classic, This programme of Sexy Lesbian Shorts includes: Dyketactics (1974), Multiple Orgasm (1977), Double Strength (1978), Our Trip (1980), Sync Touch (1981) and No No Nooky T.V. (1987).
www.barbarahammerfilms.com
16–21 April 2004
GREGORY MARKOPOULOS
National Film Theatre, London
Towards The Temenos: Myth, Portraiture and Films of Place: Four programmes of the work of Gregory Markopolous, curated by Mark Webber and introduced by Robert Beavers.
Gregory Markopoulos was the archetypal personal filmmaker: an accomplished technician, masterful editor and consummate perfectionist, who created great works of art with a minimum of means. A contemporary of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren, he was a major figure of the New American Cinema, the post-war movement that developed a new, visionary approach to film.
16 & 18 April
Literature and Myth
Two contemporary, personal interpretations of classical literature. In Swain (1950, 24 mins), an early psychodrama based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel ‘Fanshawe’, a young man flees from a woman who represents an oppressive sexual identity. Twice A Man (1963, 49 mins) is a modern adaptation of the myth of Hippolytus, in which a chaste youth rejects the advances of his mother and is saved from death by a caring physician. This film demonstrates a great stylistic leap as Markopoulos introduces single-frame montage and a more elliptical narrative process.
17 & 19 April
Films of Place
Markopoulos created many impressions of buildings and places, making in-camera dissolves and superimpositions without any subsequent editing. Ming Green (1966, 7 mins), a portrait of his humble apartment, painted the colour of the title, was made shortly before his departure from New York, while Sorrows (1969, 6 mins) was shot at the house in Switzerland built for Wagner by King Ludwig II. Gammelion (1968, 54 mins) is a measured and romantic portrayal of an Italian castle, extending seven minutes of photographed ‘film phrases’ with hundreds of fades in and out.
17 & 20 April
The Illiac Passion
Throughout his life, Markopoulos remained closely connected to his family background, and ultimately saw the Greek landscape as the ideal setting for viewing his films. The Illiac Passion (1967, 92 mins), one of his most highly acclaimed works, is a visionary interpretation of ‘Prometheus Bound’ starring mythical beings from the 60s underground including Andy Warhol, Jack Smith and Taylor Mead. The soundtrack of this contemporary re-imagining of the classical realm features a reading of Thoreau’s translation of the Aeschylus text and excerpts from Bartók. The preceding film, Bliss (1967, 6 mins), is a brief study of a church on the island of Hydra.
18 & 21 April
Portraiture
Galaxie (1966, 92 mins) consists of thirty-three portraits of important figures from the art world, including painters, poets, critics, filmmakers, and choreographers. Each is shot with a single roll of 16mm film and though edited entirely in-camera, often comprises of many layers of dense superimposition. The subjects were invited to pose in their home, together with objects chosen by them as symbolic extensions of their personality. Saint Actaeon (1971, 12 mins) is a rhythmic portrait of historian and aesthete Sir Harold Acton, shot in the gardens of his family villa.
18 April 2004
CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE
Tate Britain Auditorium
Two very different films which try to redescribe our first experiences of language. Poto And Cabengo (1978), by Godard’s former collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, is an experimental documentary based around the case of two young San Diego twins, Gracie and Ginny Kennedy, who had apparently invented a private language.
Guy Sherwin’s Messages (1981-83) was made during his daughter's early childhood: ‘It's not about her, but it's a response to her questions about the world that implicitly challenge things we take for granted - the visual appearance of the world, ambiguities in language, the ways we communicate.’
Read more about Jean-Pierre Gorin at www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/gorin.html
25 April 2004
THIS IS A FILM ABOUT YOU
Tate Britain Auditorium
These films are about you: three films in the second person.
In Laure Prouvost’s Just Me And You (UK, 2003, 40’), you are the silent partner in a love affair which is funny and painful, and invariably too close for comfort.
In Patrick Keiller’s Stonebridge Park (UK, 1981, 21’), you are the narrator’s confessor as he plays out his private drama of crime and punishment on a motorway footbridge.
In Owen Land’s Remedial Reading Comprehension (USA 1970), you are a pacemaker for the jogging artist, and the butt of some bad jokes.
19 May 2004
LUX SALON: PETER D’AGOSTINO
LUX
US-based artist Peter d'Agostino has been working in video and new media for the last three decades. His pioneering projects have been exhibited internationally in the form of installations, performances, telecommunications events, and broadcast productions. Using computer imaging, collage and virtual realities, d'Agostino's work explores history through the prism of technology. For the LUX salon, he has chosen five works, from the 1980s up to one of his most recent tapes: TransmissionS (1985-90), VR/RV: A Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality (1994), TRACES (1995), Y00 (YearZEROZERO) (1999-00) and Between Earth & Sky: Cordoban Ceilings (2003).
www.peterdagostino.net
24 May 2004
LUX @ CANDID ARTS: NICOLAS REY
Candid Arts, London EC1
Extraordinary hour-long triple-projection work by Paris-based artist Nicolas Rey to celebrate the opening of the new No.w.here artists’ film centre. A mixture of Guy Debord and Hollis Frampton concerned with labour and analytical study (Rey describes it as ‘one of those action films, only the action would be contemplating’).
Opera Mundi (Nicolas Rey, 3 x 16mm, 1999, 60 minutes)
Presented in collaboration with Candid Arts Trust and No.w.here, a new artists’ centre for fine art film production.
perso.club-internet.fr/nicorey
15 June 2004
LUX SALON: MATTHEW NOEL-TOD
LUX
British artist filmmaker, Matthew Noel-Tod presents his recent works, Jetzt Im Kino (2003) and Ulysses Italian Cinema (2002) and selected films, Peter Gidal’s Hall (1968) and David Lamelas’ Time as Activity, Berlin (1998).
23 June 2004
LUX SALON: STATE OF THE UNION: BRUCE BAILLIE & LENKA CLAYTON
LUX
A US election year special. LUX is pleased to present a new print of Bruce Baillie's legendary American travelogue Quixote (USA, 1964-67), made coast-to-coast over a four year period. Baillie's film is a lyrical, patchwork portrait of the margins of 60s America, from the supermarket aisles to the circus big top. ‘Baillie’s trip is wedged between two generations of youthful nomads; the Beats (contemporaneous with Hollywood’s heydey of Western expansion) on one side, the hippy transhumances (and Easy Rider) on the other. That Quixote could be claimed, at different times, by each is a sign of its hinged position to two vastly different projects’ - Paul Arthur.
Lenka Clayton's concept in Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet (Germany, 2003) was a simple one - take the 4,100 words from George W.Bush's infamous 'Axis of Evil' speech, and splice them together in alphabetical order. The result is powerful: a mesmerising snapshot of the posturing, rhetoric and obsessions dominating American politics in the aftermath of 11 September.
14 September 2004
EXPOSURE
Candid Arts Trust, London EC1V|
Exposure is a new regular open submission screening event run by LUX specifically for artists' film and video. Taking place on a bi-monthly basis, exposure offers the opportunity for artists to show and discuss their work in an intimate and supportive environment. Established and emerging artists are encouraged to participate and it is hoped that exposure will offer new opportunities and create new networks for the artists' film and video community.
16 September 2004
EARTHMOVING (ERDBEWEGUNG) – A TRILOGY BY RAINER KOMERS
Goethe-Institut London, London SW7
LUX and the Goethe-Institut London are pleased to present EarthMoving, a documentary in three parts. Composed mostly of static shots, with no voice-over or music but with an exquisite attention to visual detail and ambient sound, each film in the trilogy has its own characteristics, but also forms an integral part of the overall composition.
All three films are named after roads: one in Europe, one in North America, one in Asia: B 224 (Germany), Nome Road System (Alaska / USA), and NH 2 (India). But these roads are not the subjects of the films. They are the passage ways through different urban and rural landscapes that are marked by varying degrees of human activity. The earth is opened and moved, it is quarried and mined, cultivated and paved over. People and animals move and are moved, so are machines, vehicles and tools. All this activity, whether work or play, carried out by hand or machine, is carefully recorded. But nothing is explained or judged.
ErdBewegung (Germany 1999– 2004, colour, 35mm & Beta SP, 102 min, no dialogue)
Rainer Komers was born in Guben, south-east of Berlin, in 1944. After completing a film studies master class at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, he studied photography at the University of Essen. He has worked as a freelance cameraman and filmmaker since 1981. He lives in Berlin and Mülheim an der Ruhr. His films have been shown at festivals throughout the world including Oberhausen, London, Krakau, Instanbul, and Seoul.
Rainer Komers will be present at the screening.
2 November 2004
LUX SALON: LOS ANGELES FILM
LUX
A selection of short experimental films on Los Angeles by former students of Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, the internationally acclaimed experimental documentary showing at the London Film Festival 2004, the programme also includes two early short films by Thom Andersen, both documents of Los Angeles in the 1960’s.
Films included are Architecture of Riot (Erika Vogt, USA 2002 DV 14mins), Ojos Que no Ven (Allen D. Glass II, USA 2003 16mm, 14 mins), Social Visions (Redmond Entwistle, USA 2000 16mm, 14mins), Olivia’s Place (Thom Andersen, USA, 1966, 6 min, 16 mm), --- ------- (aka short line long line) (Thom Andersen & Malcolm Brodwick, USA 1966 16mm, 11mins) and The Going (Blue Hadeagh, USA 1994 16mm, 25min).
8 November 2004
LUX SALON: JEROME HILER
LUX
Film artist Jerome Hiler presents a rare screening of a work-in-progress project he has been working on since the 1960s.
'The film I am presenting is composed mainly from spontaneous renderings of ordinary life. My method was to work directly with the Bolex camera as a sort of transformation device rather than to dream up some sort of plan and execute that. The moments of vision in the film, be they insightful or mundane, are joined by moments of complete blackout. These blackouts, which are like the blinking of an inner eye, create discontinuity and flow at the same time.
My experience as an artist has shown me that the work produced has been like a mirror held up to myself rather than to nature. My memory of the day before yesterday is already spotty and I have no idea what the next hour will bring. I actually can see myself bumbling from event to event in my life thanks to the very effort I make to establish sense and order in my film. The film, then, is a reflection of that fabulous combination of brilliance in the moment and desperate hoping for the best as it steps forward into unknown territory.'
16 November 2004
MARGARET TAIT: SUBJECTS AND SEQUENCES
Cecil Sharp House
A night celebrating the life and work of Orcadian film-poet Margaret Tait and launching a new LUX touring exhibition and book. Highlights of the evening include screenings of newly restored prints of her key film works, a performance of Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonatas 4 & 5 and readings of Margaret Tait’s poetry and stories by contemporary writers; Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Gerda Stevenson.
For more programme details see the Margaret Tait touring page
25 November 2004
LUX SALON: FILMART
LUX
Artists film and video uniquely positions itself between the cinematic space (quite literally meant, the space of cinematic projection) and the gallery, the traditional space of visual art . Each environment requires different notions of scale, of narrative, of focus and attention. Any screening assembles a group in a particular space and time, nurturing a collective, plural ‘dreaming’. The gallery by contrast, encourages an individual relation, working not with a collective consciousness, but with solitary even personal narrative. Attending a screening of short works promotes an expectation that what one sees, one sees once, contextualised within a themed programme. The attention and its span, demanded by the collective, cinematic space, requires a commitment to the duration of the programme. The gallery allows fleeting glimpses or long reflection, allows viewing and reviewing, allows the possibility of contextual/narrative disfunction, dipping into or completely avoiding a particular work in favour of another.
This programme, including work by Abigail Child, Alia Syed, Julia Dogra-Brazell and Ruth Novaczek, and its accompanying exhibition explores contemporary film art which can cross the line and back again. Work that moves questioningly between gallery and cinematic projection space. The films introduce the missing link of experimental film tradition to current art practise, and, conversant with both fine art and fine art film, create a bridge that defines as developmental the difference between the privacy of the gallery and the public nature of screening.
Curated by Ruth Novaczek This screening relates to a group show of the same name which took place at Catalyst Arts, Belfast. 16-20 October 2004.
7 December 2004
EXPOSURE 2
Candid Arts Trust, London EC1V
Exposure is a new regular open submission screening event run by LUX specifically for artists' film and video. Taking place on a bi-monthly basis, exposure offers the opportunity for artists to show and discuss their work in an intimate and supportive environment. Established and emerging artists are encouraged to participate and it is hoped that exposure will offer new opportunities and create new networks for the artists' film and video community.
This edition includes work by John Smith, Takeshi Kushida, Glenn Webb, Ulrich Fischer, Steve Hines, Véronique Chance, Alexander Shaw-West and Allsop & Weir.
