A listing of all LUX projects that took place during 2005

Projects 2002
Projects 2003
Projects 2004
Projects 2006
Projects 2007

19 January 2005
LUX SALON: JIM TRAINOR
LUX
Jim Trainor has been making animated films since he was thirteen, and now he's forty-four! His medium is black magic markers on typing paper. He grew up in Washington, DC. and now lives in Chicago, where he teaches at the School of the Art Institute. He is just completing a series of films about animals called THE ANIMALS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS and is finally moving on to human beings. His film “The Magic Kingdom” recently showed in the Whitney Biennial 2004. Tonight he presents a selection of his recent film works; The Bats (1998), The Moschops (2000), The Magic Kingdom (2003) and Harmony (2004) plus a live slide show performance, All About Geb based on his comic strip project, Sun Shames Headhunting Moon.
The Bats - 1998, 8 mins.  A vermivorous neotropical phyllostomid of no extant species narrates this story of a life devoted to carnal pleasures and the avoidance of predators, under the guidance of a prescient but ineffectual God.
The Moschops - 2000, 13 mins.   Scientists believe the Moshcops was capable of interior tenderness, which it expressed, ironically, through incessant fighting.  It lived in South Africa one hundred and forty seven million years ago.  There were no dinosaurs then, and the Moschops is definitely not a dinosaur.
The Magic Kingdom - 2003, 9 mins.  In the blue-green light of the tropical rainforest, among the creeks and boulders and fallen trees, humankind's nearest relatives drift in and out of meditative states. Also features a hippo and a tapir.  Mostly live-action.
Harmony - 2004, 12 mins.  A male God bestows upon animals the gift of self-awareness, which they promptly use to express guilt for their behavior.  This moral breakthrough is somewhat undermined by the appearance of humans, whose invention of magical belief systems degrades the whole of Nature.
All About Geb This is a slide show based on a long comic-strip project, "Sun Shames Headhunting Moon", which is in turn based on a forgotten book of anthropology, Dema by Jan van Baal.  Oh Geb, oh abject, abject Geb, your head is above the sun, your feet are in the underworld, you are living in a hole in the ground, you murder children, at last you are caught and beheaded.
Presented with thanks to Jennet Thomas.

February 11 & 19 2005
REVERENCE: THE FILMS OF OWEN LAND (FORMERLY KNOWN AS GEORGE LANDOW) - PROGRAMME 1
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium, London
The UK launch of a major new LUX touring project.
As George Landow, Owen Land was one of the most original American filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. His early materialist works anticipated ‘structural film’, the definition of which provoked his rejection of film theory and convention. The uniqueness of Land’s mature work lies in the skillful fusion of reason and, significantly, the humour that distances it from the supposedly ‘boring’ world of experimental film.
His characters are often the antithesis of those we might expect to see, such as podgy middle aged men and radical Christians, and the rationality of his approach – with its complex web of cultural references and irreverent wit – is exactly that which makes the films seem so enigmatic to the viewer. Landow has exposed the material of film and deconstructed the process and the effect, while covering the ‘big topics’ of religion, psychoanalysis, commerce and pandas making avant-garde movies.
LUX is publishing a book, Two Films by Owen Land, to coincide with the tour, which will be available to buy at the screenings - see the shop page for more details.
For information on the programmes, see the Reverence page

15 February 2005
LUX SALON: GARINE TOROSSIAN IN PERSON
LUX
Supported by the Canadian High Commission in London. Thanks to Maggie Warwick.
Gariné Torossian is a Toronto-based self-taught filmmaker and photographer, whose films are inflected by her own treble experiences of migration; her ancestors fled the Armenian genocide, and then, with her, fled Lebanon’s political disorders when she was young. Like Atom Egoyan, Torossian has turned to experimental styles of filmmaking to conjure the primary forces of the diaspora: persons severed from their homeland and mother tongue, images severed from their referent, architectural forms copied from elsewhere, landscapes abstracted and totalized, and within all this, the powerful forces of desire and yearning.
Mining a rich palette of colours and textures, superimpositions and dissolves, mixing formats of super 8, 35mm and video, Torossian creates films that bridge the gaps between visual art, sound art, cinema and the rock video. Sixteen of her films have shown internationally at festivals and universities Retrospectives of her work include New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Stan Brakhage’s first person cinema, Yerevan’s Cinematheque, Berlin Arsenal, and Telluride Festival. She’s been awarded prizes and mentions at Berlin, Melbourne and Houston film festivals.
Babies On The Sun (2001, 16mm, 5min) offers nostalgic, weathered images of ‘childhood’ inspired by the song of the same name by the band Sparklehorse. The textured and layered style of the film gives the impression of blurred memories floating in the subconscious mind.
Shadowy Encounters (2002, 16mm, 15min)
A homage to the work of the Quay Brothers. The film is a synthesis of collaged moving and still images taken directly from the Quay Brothers’ 35 mm films and recontextualized in order to metaphorically and responsively capture and reframe the Quay’s films’ qualities. The resultant textured and layered imagery delves into the labyrinthine and secret realms of the Quay Brothers world.
Death to Everyone (6min, 1999)
Pomegranate Tree (5min, 1998)
Girl From Moush (1993, 16mm, 5min)
A poetic montage of the artist’s journey through her subconscious Armenia. It is not an Armenia based in a reality but one which appears, like the mythical city of Shangri-La, when ones eyes are closed. A mesh of traditional images ‘engraved’ in film, with a haunting voice-over, and original colours, music and rhythms that continue long after the film is over. A journey through uncharted landscapes of uncertainty and fascination.
Sparklehorse (2000, 16mm, 9min) is a film inspired by three songs by the band Sparklehorse. The film conveys the way people communicate with and value each other in a world of spiraling mediation.
Drowing In Flames (1994, 16mm, 22min)
A serious confrontation with the works of Mike and Doug Starn. The film articulates criticism and commentary about the work of the Starns, within the visual realm where the image can be juxtaposed with other images. The Starn brothers’ work seeks to create a multiplicity of layers which incorporate art history, aesthetic devices, and post-modern pluralism . ‘Drowning in Flames’ becomes yet another layer, a visual statement which both enlightens and impregnates the Starn’s work with new realities and stratas of meaning.

1 April 2005
SELECT: DARIA MARTIN - FLESH & FANTASY
Tate Britain
[select] is a new LUX/Tate screening series which asks British-based artists to select films that have inspired and influenced them. This first screening entitled Flesh and Fantasy is curated and introduced by Beck's Futures 2005 nominee Daria Martin.
"The process of making film in general is curious in the way that it combines what someone might call 'flesh and fantasy.' It begins in a dreamy way (images in the head of a scriptwriter), then becomes almost unbearably heavy during production as the crew lugs around equipment and set pieces, and finally ends up as an ethereal beam of light in a darkened room. I wonder whether this projected beam of light has something in common with the phenomenon of psychological projection: a powerful mental image anchored to something physical." (Daria Martin, excerpt from notes on ICA talk, 2004,)
This programme aims to bring together works that articulate film's unique capacity to both capture and dissolve solid material. These works play with the tension between opacity and transparency -giving body to dream images, and questioning the barriers between physical and mental space. They are each alternative kinds of "virtual realities" dwelling on the erotics of physical form through a medium made of light.' Includes work by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Kenneth Anger, Carolee Schneeman, Maya Deren, Robert Morris, Charles and Ray Eames and a live film performance by Guy Sherwin.
Programme details:
Mirror
Robert Morris
1969, USA, 9 min, 16mm
Morris, in a winter landscape, holds a mirror to nature, and to the camera.
Fuses
Carolee Schneemann
1964-67, USA, 25 mins, 16mm
By interweaving and compounding images of sexual love with images of mundane joy (the sea, a cat, window-filtered light), she expresses sex without the self consciousness of a spectacle, without an idea of expressivity, in her words, 'free in a process which liberates our intentions from our conceptions.' Carolee and her lover James Tenney emerge from nebulous clusters of colour and light and are seen in every manner of sexual embrace...one overall mosaic of flesh and textures and passionate embraces. Every element of the traditional stag film is here -yet there's none of the prurience and dispassion usually associated with them. There is only a fluid oceanic quality that merges the physical act with the metaphysical connotations, very Joycean and very erotic. Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema.
Light Display: Black-White-Grey
László Moholy-Nagy
1930, Germany, 5 mins
Lichtspiel, schwarz-weiß-grau was originally supposed to consist of six parts, but only the last part was filmed. The first five parts were supposed to show different forms of light in set combinations: from the self-lighting match, automobile headlights, reflections, moonlight, and colored projections with prisms and mirrors to the production of the <light prop.> The filmed part [...] consists of documentary photographs of a rotation light prop; and the large shots of the numerous discs, screens, mirrors, and ball-shaped structures join forces with the fades to produce an abstract play of light and shadow. Hans Scheugl
Kustom Kar Kommandos
Kenneth Anger
1965, USA, 3 mins, 16mm
Pygmalion and his machine mistress.
To the soundtrack of "Dream Lover" a young man strokes his customized car with a powder puff.
Blacktop
Charles and Ray Eames
1952, USA, 11 mins, 16mm
Blacktop was the first film completed by Charles and Ray Eames: an 11 minute visit with the washing of a school playground, an exploration of the shapes and forms in the water and soap.
Man with Mirror
Guy Sherwin
1976/2003, film performance with mirrored screen
The filmmaker's live interaction with his on-screen image which is projected onto a hand-held mirrored screen.
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti
Maya Deren
1947-1951, sound, B&W, 55 mins, 16mm
Deals with the rituals of the Rada, Petro and Congo cults of Haiti, whose origins stem from Africa. The devotees serve the cosmic powers by means of prayer, offerings, song and dance. Introduces a pantheon of spirits who communicate to the worshipper all life wisdom. The direct manifestation, or communication, is through spirit "possession" as the spirit enters and rides a person as a "Divine Horseman." Filmed between 1947-1951 by Maya Deren, after she had been initiated into the religion as a priestess and edited posthumously by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito.

10 April 2005
DESCRIBING FORM: SCULPTURE ON FILM
Tate Britain
London launch of new LUX touring film exhibition. How to represent the weight and space of sculptural form on film? How to describe in moving images what is fundamentally still? It could be said that sculpture is described by the space around it, by the experience of perambulation, or touch. The moving image positions the viewer at one remove from this direct experience. The sense of material and surface and environment that is so immediate during a first hand encounter with a sculptural form becomes framed through the lens of the filmmaker, a document caught in another time and space. It is in the tension between these two states that avant-garde filmmakers, and the artists themselves, have brought their singular and experimental approaches to filming form. Artists as varied as Maya Deren and Richard Serra have explored structures of sound, performance and even humour to go beyond mere documentation, and present new ways of using the moving image to offer fresh perspectives on sculptural form. Including work by Maya Deren, William Raban, Liliane Lijn, Marie Menken, Richard Serra, Daria Martin, Dudley Shaw Ashton, Hannah Wilke, Hy Hirsh.
See the Describing Form touring page for more details

11 April 2005
LUX SALON: JENNIFER TODD REEVES
LUX
New York-based filmmaker Jennifer Reeves works with optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques to explore a range of topics including: mental health and recovery, women's sexuality, poetry, free-association, dogs and the infamous Bush crime family. In 2003 Reeves began doing live multiple-projection film/music performances as an extension to her work as a "single-strand" filmmaker, tonight we show one of these, He Walked Away (2003) with a selection of her recent single-screen works.
Girls Daydream about Hollywood (1992, 16mm, 5 min)
We are Going Home (1998, 16mm, 10 min.)
Solarized, tinted, and optically-printed, this is a surreal portrait of desire, ghosts and pursuit of the sensual. Rhythmic color shifts in the emulsion bring life to the rural landscape, which seems to embody the terrain of the subconscious. Three women seek pleasure and the beyond in parallel universes, which never quite intersect.
Skinny Teeth (2001, video, 7 min)
Appropriated audio from motivational tapes and raw hewn video footage of the exploits of two punk girls creating a disturbance in an Ohio Mall (circa 1988) challenge the great society of the American heartland. A savvy examination of hard-edge adolescent aggression and an attack on "proper" codes of behavior. (Karyn Riegel, Occularis)
Darling International, co-directed w/ M.M. Serra (1999, 16mm, 22 min.)
This is an evocative work whose sensual sadomasochistic scenerio, grainy visual texture and layered soundtrack render it highly tactile, fairly begging to be touched. (Shannon Kelley, Sundance Film Fest 2000.)
He Walked Away (2003, double-projection 16mm, sound on CD, 17 min)
Presented in association with the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival http://www.llgff.org.uk/

24-5 April 2005
DAVID LAMELAS: EARLY SHORTS & THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF A NIGHTMARE
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
David Lamelas is best known for the legendary structuralist films and media installations that he produced when living in Belgium, London and Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, after he left his native Argentina to participate in the 1968 Venice Biennale. These iconic projects question the limits of art's temporality, its capacity to construct meaning and information, and its ability to collapse fact with fiction. Within current discussions on the relationship between art, the media, and politics, his work represented thirty years later has lost none of its relevance.
Lamelas will introduce this pair of screenings, which presents the UK première of his new film, The Light at the Edge of a Nightmare, in addition to a selection of his rarely seen early works. These films will subsequently be part of the Time Is A Fiction tour.
Presented in collaboration with LUX and the Courtauld Institute of Art
Read more about the films on the Time Is A Fiction page.

6 May 2005
PURE PRODUCTS: NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Curzon Soho, London
A touring project curated by Sarah Wood to accompany the release of Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, presented in collaboration with the Independent Cinema Office: www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk
"The pure products of America go crazy" – William Carlos Williams
As we emerge from what we might call the first American century, the Pure Products film programmes offer work by a range of artists and filmmakers which not only meditate on the dominance of American culture – its effect on modern western culture, on modern western private experience – but also finds new ways to express its complexity. Loosely themed around ideas of family and culture, the two programmes offer innovative ripostes to the bizarre kitsch world constructed from daytime TV, the fading glitz of Hollywood , the freaky shine of materialism. Like Caouette's film, the artists here search for the authentic, the human, the lost landscape of the real, buried deep in the craziness of modern culture.
Why Don't You Love Me?
Directors: Matthias Muller/Christophe Girardet,
Germany, 1999, 5 mins, video
The definitive study of Hitchcock's distinctive portrayal of mothers.
Migration of the Blubberoids
Director: George Kuchar, USA , 1989, 12 mins, video
It is the first white turkey day for fifty years: snow abounds yet life goes on.
The Pharoah's Belt
Director: Lewis Klahr, USA , 1993, 9 mins, 16mm
"Klahr's characters negotiate a labor of extrication from the morass of Betty Crocker chocolate icing, formica kitchens and parental phantoms toward a mastery of the imagination and the attaining of true love." – Tom Gunning
The Waltons
Director: Anne McGuire, USA, 1996, 7 mins
A homespun deconstruction of an entire era of TV mannerisms, this re-examination of John-boy's near death experience at the sawmill is deft and cunning.
Back East
Director: Cordelia Swann, UK, 2000, 14 mins, 16mm/video
A chronicle of a progressively darkened New York childhood.
Alpsee
Director: Mathias Muller, Germany, 1995, 15 mins, 16mm
Muller's unforgettable moving portrait of growing up in the 1960s.

8 May 2005
PURE PRODUCTS: KARAOKE CULTURE
Curzon Soho, London
The second promgramme of touring project curated by Sarah Wood to accompany the release of Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, presented in collaboration with the Independent Cinema Office: www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk
Exchange Policy
Directors: Gordon Winiemko and Julie Wyman,
USA , 2001, 14 minutes, video
A wild-eyed spending spree or a study of modern shopping?
We The Normal
Director: George Kuchar, USA , 1987, 11 mins, 16mm
If only life was like in the movies.
We Edit Life
Director: Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us),
UK , 2002,11 mins, video
A journey through the layers of perception to the very centre of your imagination.
Pony Glass
Director: Lewis Klahr, USA , 1997, 15 mins, 16mm
The story of comic book character Jimmy Olsen's secret life.
I Am Crazy And You're Not Wrong
Director: Anne McGuire, USA , 1997, 11 mins, video
McGuire portrays a Kennedy-era singer performing in a space where theatre meets TV.
Yes? Oui? Ja?
Directors: Thomas Draschan/ Ulrich Wiesner,
Germany, 2003, 4 mins, 16mm
The film emerges from the unconsciousness of a dreaming woman.

29 May 2005
JOSEPH CORNELL & LAWRENCE JORDAN
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
This screening presents a unique chance to see films by both Joseph Cornell and Lawrence Jordan. Jordan collaborated with Cornell in the 1950s and went on to produce his own body of extraordinary animations. The programme includes Cornell's films Cotillion, Carousel and Jack's Dream; Jordan's 1965 film about Cornell; and several of Jordan's animations, including Chateau/Poyet and Ein Traum der Liebenden. The programme will be introduced by Jordan, on a rare visit to the UK. After the screening he will be in conversation with Stuart Comer, Curator of Film and Events.
Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) was the single brightest star in the firmament of American surrealism. He was the poet of juxtaposition, best known for his 'boxes' of bric-a-brac - miniature curiosity cabinets composed like three dimensional collages. He was also a pioneer of 'found footage' film, producing a series of short films assembled from scraps, including Cotillion, Carousel and Jack's Dream. Lawrence Jordan collaborated with Cornell on several of these films in the 1950s, before going on to develop his own extraordinary oeuvre: a form of animation drawing on nineteenth century ephemera, in which the ghosts of Victoriana inhabit two-dimensional worlds governed by the logic of dreams. With a unique style developed over decades, Jordan continues to elaborate on his baroque and uncanny vision.
Presented in collaboration with Compton Verney: www.comptonverney.co.uk

2 September 2005
SELECT: A NIGHT WITH PHIL COLLINS AND ALEX BAG
Tate Britain Clore Auditorium
‘This is a living-dead art, a critical-hysterical acting out of the deodorized-bathroom neurotic, the suicidal biochemical-test subject and the terminal media addict we all recognize as ourselves.’ John Kelsey, Artforum, May 2004
Once described as ‘the spawn of Cindy Sherman and Buster Keaton’, Alex Bag makes irreverent, smart and fiercely critical work in video and installation. She is best known for her low-tech performance tapes that utilise the power of televised image and the satiric edge of stand-up comedy to cheerfully but mercilessly denounce a range of modern-day maladies.From frivolities of our celebrity infatuated culture to the futility of the whole fine-art enterprise to Consumer Mesmerism, Product Sorcery and the Necromantic Reimagination of Consumption, nothing escapes the fury of this unflagging art-world renegade. An iconic figure of the New York art scene since the mid-90s, Bag is acclaimed as one of the foremost American artists yet her work has been rarely exhibited in the UK. In his role as the host of the second in the Tate/Lux screening series, Phil Collins offers an unprecedented opportunity to take you on a trip into the hilarious and wild world of Alex Bag. Along with the most recent works, the selection will also include Bag’s classic Untitled (Fall ’95) (1995).
This is the second screening in the Select series, an ongoing collaboration between LUX and Tate Britain.

21 - 24 October
THE ARTISTS CINEMA @ THE FRIEZE ART FAIR
Regents Park, London
The Artists Cinema is a major initiative by Frieze Projects and LUX, to focus on the increasing importance of cinema as a mode of exhibition for contemporary artists. A bespoke auditorium is situated inside the Frieze Art Fair for the presentation of artists' film and video works. The programme premieres both Frieze Projects and LUX/SPACEX 'A Movie' commissions. Daily screenings of these commissions are accompanied by a diverse series of programmes presented by eight invited international curators over the four days of the fair. The curated programmes survey contemporary work in relation to historical legacies, our current political climate, or prevailing formal and aesthetic concerns.
See the Artists Cinema page for more details, include a downloadable version of the programme.
www.friezeartfair.com

28 October 2005
APPARENT MOTIONS - RECENT ARTISTS' FILM PRESERVATIONS FROM ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES, NEW YORK
National Film Theatre
Presented by Andrew Lampert, Archivist, Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives was founded in 1968 to preserve, promote and present avant-garde, experimental and independent film and video. Located in New York City's East Village, Anthology houses 20,000 plus films and videos, a research library containing more than 10,000 books, 11,000 files and 250 sets of periodicals, as well as 2 theaters. Programming consists of contemporary and classic art films, retrospectives, thematic series and repertory screenings from our Essential Cinema collection, a 330-film cycle that encapsulates the history of film as a unique art form.Established in the early 70s, Anthology’s film preservation program has created new negatives and safety elements for over 700 films/videos to date.
Film Number 16 a.k.a.OZ: The Tin Woodman’s Dream (Harry Smith, c1967, 14.30’)
Sea Rhythms (Jim Davies, 1970, 9.30’)
Lights (Marie Menken, 1964-5, 6.30’)
Apparent Motion (Paul Sharits, 1975, 22’)
Thanatopsis (Ed Emshwiller, 1962, 5’)
Divinations (Storm de Hirsch, 1964, 6’)
Anita Needs Me (George Kuchar, 1963, 16’)

22 November 2005
NEW WORK UK: DOUBLE LUNAR TROUBLE
Whitechapel Art Gallery
NEW WORK UK is a new LUX/ Whitechapel series showcasing new British artists' film and video, each event is selected by a different guest curator.
Inspired by Joan Jonas' Double Lunar Dogs (1984), the multi-layered, high-digital practices shown here address memory, uncertainty and dislocation. Incorporating performance, biopolitics, surveillance and SFX, they challenge the production and organisation of images. Artists include Benjamin Callaway and Hilary Koob-Sassen. Curated by Stuart Comer, Curator at Tate Modern.

23 November 2005
LUX SALON: MARTIN BLAZIEEK & RECENT WORKS FROM PRAGUE
LUX
Prague based artist Martin Blažíèek (www.blazicek.net )has been making films since 1996 and is a leading figure in Czech experimental film. He is a founding member of the film group F.A.G. and V_LTRA, he has been making abstract and structural films using hand-made techniques some of which are fused with live performances. Tonight he will present a selection of his recent work together with work by his contemporaries Vit Pancir and Ondrej Vavrecka from the Czech Republic, Gyula Nemes from Hungary and Andreas Wurz from Germany. The artists in this program are unified through their mutual connections with the artistic scene in Prague. The work fuses abstract film with experimental documentary and shows the vitality and creativity of Central European work and the artistic scene in Prague.
Presented with the assistance of Renata Clark and the Czech Centre London (www.czechcentres.cz/london) and co-ordinated by George Clark.
Screen Hatching - Ondrej Vavrecka, CZ, 2005, 4.5min, silent
The Dike of Transience - Gyula Nemes, HU, 2003, 10min, sound
Study 9 - Martin Blažíèek, CZ, 2003, 4.5min, silent
LeMans - Andreas Wutz, G, 2003, 9.5min, sound
On The Snow Dog - Vit Pancir, CZ, 2003, 14min, sound
Image Description - Martin Blažíèek, CZ, 2003, 11min, sound

4 December 2005
JOHN LATHAM
Tate Britain, Clore Auditorium
This screening is a rare chance to see John Latham's extraordinary film works, all of which interrogate our notions and perception of time and space. The programme presents several prints newly restored by LUX, including intense rapid-fire animations, the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a selection of video works created for Channel 4's artist-commission series, Dadarama.
Speak, 1962, 10 mins
Unedited Material from Star, 1960, 10 mins
The Gulf, 1990, 6 mins
Erth, 1971, 35 mins
Dave's Bike, 1990, 8 mins