TAKE 291: 30-06-2005
Film / 2005
01/02
Press release
TAKE 291
Thursday 30th June 2005
DONALD BOUSTED - A MEMORY GAME (MiniDV, 13 minutes)
"Uses sound recordings and footage of my parents as they disentangle memories attached to 5 photographs. The work examines their personalities, their relationship together, and to some extent, their relationship with me".
ZADOC NAVA - THE CAGE (Super 8mm, 4 minutes)
A short impressionistic film about a new ultra-violent martial arts sport, known as Cage Fighting, that focuses on the losers rather than the winners. This form of ritualised violent conflict can be seen as a metaphor for masculinity in crisis, reflecting a growing sense of fear and anxiety in a culture where traditional male roles are becoming increasingly obsolete.
CHIAKI WATANABE - BLIND APOCALYPSE (MiniDV, 10 minutes)
This piece is an excerpt from a collaborative live audiovisual performance with David Linton at the Tank of New York, in Feb 05. This work is cross-talk between sound, modulated abstract graphic animation and electro-acoustic sound (hand manipulated electronicallv regenerative sound), which settled upon a solid commonality in relationship to the processes and elemental materials.
JULIAN NELSON - HANGING A MIRROR IN A HALL (MiniDV, 3 minutes 30 secs)
Hanging a Mirror in a Hall is a tableau; the actors are arranged in a specific way and have been unnaturally frozen in real-time. The piece is shaped by its stillness and the removal of action in the regular sense: it is not until the end of the piece that the composition is completed.
INTERVAL ONE
JEAN-GABRIEL PERIOT -WE ARE WINNING DON'T FORGET (MiniDV, 7 minutes)
We are many. we are uniforms, we smile in the pictures, but we are NOT happy.
IAN GOULDSTONE - COROLLARY (DigiBeta, 2 minutes)
A short animated film centered on the atrophy of a theoretical maths education
STUART POUND - POSTCARD (DV, 2 minutes 54 seconds)
An erotic postcard from Paris is processed into the moving image of a young woman posing beside her mirror. She becomes the "Chloris" addressed in the soundtrack, a French song of a similar date. The song appears on screen as a wave-form that intensifies the link between image and sound. and makes visible our own period and its technologies.
SIMON KENNEDY - THE DANCER (MiniDV, 10 minutes)
This film is intended as a metaphorical commentary on contemporary London life. The city is presented as having its own life, and while its inhabitants move to the constant and inescapable rhythms, in the end they emerge independent and victorious. The narrative follows a day in the life of a young female inhabitant, whose journey through the city reaches an unexpected conclusion when the city comes to life in a surprising fashion.
JON PURNELL (CACK-U-LIKE) - HAUNTED TATE (MiniDV, 2 minutes)
A group of ghosts, dressed in white bed sheets, board the central line tube at Stratford, travel to the city and disembark at St Paul's. They run across the Millennium Bridge and enter the Tate Modern. subsequently, the ghosts make their way to the galleries and haunt the Rothko room. After a while. the security staff become aware of their activities and they ask the ghosts to vacate the building".
PAVLA ALCHIN - BLACKMAIL: SOUND TEST 2 (HOMAGE TO ANNY ONDRA)
(MiniDV, 4 minutes 20 seconds)
The piece was inspired by a Czech/Polish/German actress, Anny Ondra, who was the star of Hitchock's last fully silent movie (Manxman, 1929) and his first 'talkie' (Blackmail, 1929). Due to her strong accent (the Blackmail character was an English woman), Hitchcock was forced to hire another actress (Joan Barr) who provided the voice for the sound version.
INTERVAL TWO
JO BARNES - MIDST OF PARADISE (35mm stills, 3 minutes 40 seconds)
A night in the life of a girl on the town.
DAVE GRIFFITHS - ROGUE STATE (MiniDV, 2 minutes 15 seconds)
Vetoed UN resolutions hand-inscribed onto DV tape using a magnetic quill. Reinterpreted by the digital apparatus, these marks reveal abstract, lawless sonic and visual explosions - a fluid display of synthetic aerial terror. The action alludes to the shared natures of entertainment and military technology in seeking perfect spectacle whilst shunning error uncertainty. Compressed light and sound are unleashed in volatile glitches to commemorate abandonment of conventions in both the digital medium and international law.
TAI SHANI - USA MAJORIS JE T'AIME (miniDV, 7 minutes) and BARK BABY (3
AmanunteSs
Tai Shani's videos, photographs and installations reflect the construction of gender. They especially examine how a body becomes sexed. They do not only recreate the female body from the viewpoint of "to-be-looked-at", but they also exemplify the deformation of body and identity resulting from this perspective. They thereby underline the power of definition that fashion has and portray pop as a field on which this power is executed.
JOHN SMITH - BLIGHT (UK, 1994-6, 14 mins, 16mm & video)
Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, using images and sounds of demolition and road building in conjunction with the spoken words of local residents. But although the film is constructed from images and sounds of real events, Blight exploits the ambiguities of its material to produce new meanings and metaphors, fictionalising reality through framing and editing strategies. The emotive power of music is used in the film to overtly aid this
A stunning montage depicts the destruction of a London street to make wav for new roads. The rhythmic, emotive soundtrack is partly musical and partly a collage of the residents' voices. Shots and sounds echo and cross-link in the film's 14 minutes to reinvent a radical documentary tradition.' A.L. Rees 'A History of Experimental Film and Video' 1999, British.
Take 291 is curated by Charlie Phillips for 291 Gallery