[LuxWeeklyNews] LUX Weekly News 23 - 29 April 2007 EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]

LUX Weekly News 23 - 29 April 2007

EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

1. Oberhausen on tour, BFI Southbank, 21 April - 1 May

2. Retrospective: The Subjective Camera, Greenwich Picturehouse, 25  
April – 30 May

3. New Work UK: Pastoral, Stephen Sutcliffe / Emily Wardill,  
Whitechapel Gallery Film Programme, Thursday 26 April, 7.30 pm

4.Haluk Akakçe, The Approach,  26 April – 27 May

5. Matthew Buckingham, Camden Arts Centre, 27 April - 1 July

6. Dan Fox on The Secret Public, ICA Talk, Saturday 28 April, 3pm



LUX LONDON EVENTS CALENDAR the most comprehensive daily listing of  
artists' moving image events, screenings and exhibitions in London  
www.lux.org.uk/resources/calendar.htm


1.
21 April - 1 May
Oberhausen on tour
BFI Southbank
Southbank, Waterloo, London SE1
http://www.bfi.org.uk/oberhausen 020 7928 3232
Every year the German city of Oberhausen is transformed as some of  
the world's most creative minds come together to showcase their work  
in Europe's ground-breaking short film festival. Many directors start  
out on short films - and Oberhausen has consistently uncovered the  
ones to watch.

Six innovative programmes of shorts from the archive of the  
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen have toured 40 European  
cities before arriving at BFI Southbank for their British premiere.  
Award-winning shorts, music videos and artists' film and video works  
hit the big screen.

2.
25 April – 30 May
RETROSPECTIVE: THE SUBJECTIVE CAMERA
Greenwich Picturehouse
180 Greenwich High Road, SE10 8NN
www.picturehouses.co.uk, 08707 550 065
The Subjective Camera is a series of retrospective film screenings of  
six film artists whose work examines subjectivity with an analysis of  
film language. Emerging within the context of the London Filmmakers’  
Co-op during the ‘80s and ‘90s, these artists each developed an  
independent practice that at once built on and countered the  
principles of the Structuralist film movement of the ‘70s. Their  
films extend anti-illusionist explorations of the materiality of film  
and incorporate investigations of the materiality of the body. With  
their shared history, that situates the artist at the centre of the  
physical process of putting the film together, sometimes as camera  
person as well as editor, these six artists weave into the filmmaking  
process a broad scope of contemporary concerns, from religion to  
psychoanalysis, the spaces of abstraction, voice, language and song,  
to the dialogue between personal and meta-narrative.
JAYNE PARKER, NINA DANINO, ALIA SYED, MICHAEL MAZIERE, SANDRA LAHIRE,  
SARAH PUCILL Curated by Sarah Pucill Films screened in association  
with LUX

Wed 25 April, 6.45 pm
JAYNE PARKER

Whilst Parker’s films have taken different directions over a span of  
nearly three decades, an individual approach is highly distinct.  
Always employing a pared down aesthetic, structural precision is  
conducted in each film where the direction and space of the camera’s  
gaze in relation to the protagonist is woven into the performance of  
the film.  Speech is absent from most of her films, leaving the  
structure of image and sound to speak in raw isolation. Performance  
is central to all her films, the presence of the figure being  
conveyed as much by her image as in the surrounding space and the  
objects the body uses or, in the case of musical instruments, plays.   
Filming herself in her early work, her oeuvre emphasises performance  
as a generative process where self is in a state of becoming, a  
process of self-generation. In much of her work, a resistance to  
literal interpretation is clear.  Sometimes this is in the  
interpretative gap that is created through the edit joins of  
otherwise obscurely related images, and sometimes it is a straight  
forward posturing of an ‘almost as if but not quite’ everyday  
activity. The subjective in Parker’s work rests within the body; its  
objects and its space, inside and out, as process, sound, texture and  
light, as film.  This resistance to literal and singular  
interpretation is a key to the power of her work.

Jayne Parker will be taking part in a Q&A session after the screenings.
I DISH (1982, 15 mins, 16mm) Edited images from the seashore and the  
kitchen reveal the lack of communication between a young couple.
K (1989, 13 mins, 16 mm) Part 1: a woman pulls her intestine out of  
her mouth and lets it fall in a soft pile at her feet. Then she knits  
the intestine using only her arms. Part 2: she stands on the edge of  
a pool and makes herself dive again and again.
THE POOL (1991, 10 mins, 16 mm) Blood splashes from the naked  
protagonist's nose and drips down her torso as she stands in an empty  
swimming pool. A graphic dance sequence with a male partner leads to  
the graceful movement of a fish in an aquarium, and to a final scene  
of release in which the performer swims in a pool now full of water.
BLUES IN B FLAT (2000, 8 mins, Beta SP from original 16m film) Blues  
In B Flat takes its name and subject from a cello solo, composed by  
Volker Heyn in 1981. In this film, the cellist (Anton Lukoszevieze)  
is both a musician and a protagonist.
STATIONARY MUSIC (2001, 8 mins, Beta SP from original 16m film) 
Stationary Music takes its name from the first movement of Stefan  
Wolpe's 'Sonata 1' composed in 1925. It is introduced and performed  
by his daughter, pianist Katharina Wolpe.
CATALOGUE OF BIRDS: BOOK 3 (2006, 15 mins, Beta SP from original 16mm  
film)An interpretation of Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Tawny Owl and Woodlark’  
played by pianist Katharina Wolpe. London Premiere screening.  
Supported through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network

3.
New Work UK: Pastoral
Stephen Sutcliffe / Emily Wardill
Thursday 26 April, 7.30 pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX

First in a new series of guest-curated programmes showcasing the best  
of recent British work. This screening is curated by Michelle Cotton  
and showcases recent work by Stephen Sutcliffe and Emily Wardill.

Stephen Sutcliffe combines sound and footage from an extensive  
archive of material recorded from television and radio broadcasts.  
English poetry is read with thespy precision and meshed with streams  
of music and spoken word to emphasise or undercut another story told  
on film. Collaging ideas from traditions in literature, encountered  
in neo-romantic cinema or excerpts of rogue video, Sutcliffe reworks  
a received version of familiar, native territory recounted in a  
cultural heritage.

Stephen Sutcliffe was born in 1968 and studied at Glasgow School of  
Art and Cal Arts, he lives and works in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions  
include solo presentations at Tart Contemporary San Francisco,  
Tramway Glasgow and group exhibitions Art Now Lightbox Tate Britain,  
Zenomap Venice Biennale 2003, Electric Earth: Film and Video from  
Britain (British Council touring exhibition), Pass the Time of Day  
Gasworks Gallery London, Angel Row Nottingham, Castlefield Gallery  
Manchester and Collective Gallery Edinburgh.

Emily Wardill’s work is concerned with the communication of ideas and  
agency implicit in the structure of language and formulation of  
material by the media. Her 16mm films isolate detail from a complex,  
metropolitan vernacular edited with a syntax of absences in sound and  
image. Structured in reference to a single metaphor or motif,  
Wardill’s films construct a formal investigation of the social and  
psychological implications of the media she employs for the  
formulation of consciousness and the construction of self.

Emily Wardill was born in 1977 and studied at Central St Martins  
College of Art & Design, she lives and works in London. Recent  
exhibitions include solo presentations at Fortescue Avenue and group  
exhibitions Art Now Lightbox Tate Britain, Among the Ash Heaps and  
Millionaires Ancient & Modern, London and Romantic Detachment PS1 New  
York, Chapter Arts Cardiff and Q Arts Derby. Wardill is represented  
by Fortescue Avenue, London and her films are distributed by LUX.

The Whitechapel Film Programme is presented in collaboration with LUX.

£5, booking essential. Booking form: http://www.whitechapel.org/ 
content.php?page_id=3109


// FILMS //

…(No ideas
but in things) Invent!

William Carlos Williams A Sort of Song  1944

Pastoral is titled after the literary tradition of employing a common  
vernacular to illustrate a complex idea making social or political  
comment. In classical pastoral literature a simple image of an  
invented world acts as a metaphor for reality, exploring tensions  
between nature and art, the real and the ideal. It’s modern  
translation consists in locality and a contact with a reality that  
proposes a synthesis between elements from the natural and civilized  
worlds.

Stephen Sutcliffe Death In Leamington  2003  1’44”
Excerpts from Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 film This Sporting Life, partly  
filmed in Sutcliffe’s native Wakefield, are coupled with the voices  
of Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith reading John Betjeman’s poem  
Death in Leamington on the BBC chat show Parkinson in 1973. Sutcliffe  
syncs word and image so that the poem is overlaid as a kitchen sink  
dedication to a collage of dramatic scenes from Rachel Roberts  
extracting Richard Harris’s dominant lead character from the  
narrative and re-drawing Lindsay’s heroine.

Emily Wardill Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul   
2005  9’
Set within earshot of the bells of St Anne’s Church in Limehouse the  
film is structured by the rhythm of the chimes recorded at noon.  
Wardill adopts a poetic idea from Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1887 text On  
The Genealogy of Morals, which opens with an image of someone stirred  
from reverie by “twelve trembling strokes” and jolted into a presence  
of mind that ushers in stream of existential questioning before  
leading the author to conclude blankly “‘Everyone is furthest from  
himself’ of ourselves, we have no knowledge”. The film isolates  
detail in Wardill’s footage of the area, disrupting the initial,  
plain familiarity of the scenes by producing a meter that fixes the  
anachronisms and clashes to give way to the complexity of the image.

Stephen Sutcliffe  Transformations  2006  1’56”
Transformations takes its name from Thomas Hardy’s poem describing a  
process of organic renewal whereby a life’s loves and ancestors pass  
through the earth and are regenerated in the flowers and plants that  
grow from the soil. In Sutcliffe’s film the poem is narrated over a  
mesh of soundtracks and clips from a 1970’s television documentary.  
The footage describes moments of contact with the natural realm, the  
mingling of modern sounds and elements in the seemingly timeless  
environment of the forest. Hardy’s closing words on the cycle of  
energy are followed by an image of oil squirted on to the wheel of a  
lathe and falling in heavy, black drops on a neighbouring fern.

Emily Wardill  Basking in what feels like ‘an ocean of grace’ I soon  
realise that I’m not looking at it, but rather that I AM it,  
recognising myself  2006  8’
Basking in what feels like ‘an ocean of grace’… is structured through  
its content in sound and image around the concept of the mirror and  
its role in projecting formal or cognitive accord. Wardill used  
computer software to compose music that would appear symmetrical when  
laid out as sheet music. The centre of the music coincides with the  
middle of the film where the footage moves from the illusory  
architecture of a nightclub interior to a group of girls  
participating in a focus group exercise, their image reflected in the  
one-way mirrors that separate them from the unseen observers in the  
adjacent rooms.

Stephen Sutcliffe ‘O Come all ye faithful’ 2006  47”
Television footage of Christopher Logue reading his poem O come all  
ye faithful is pitched against a stream of obscenities overlaid as  
background noise. Logue’s hopeful tract on the harmonizing forces of  
love and regenerative potential of change is undercut by a  
disparaging internal monologue.

Emily Wardill  Ben  2007  10’
Ben follows on from Basking in what feels like ‘an ocean of grace’…  
as a second but entirely different treatment of the psychological  
study of behaviour. Two narrators read distinct and opposed texts,  
one is a case study describing the social and symptomatic background  
of a patient called Ben, the other is a transcript from a hypnotist  
who asks his subject to collect an object from the other end of the  
room whilst maintaining the delusion that the room is empty and her  
path free from obstruction. Wardill creates a highly stylised  
environment for the hypnosis to be re-enacted using costume, props  
and scenery laden with ciphers that point to different eras and the  
footage of the black and white set alternates between colour and  
black and white.

Stephen Sutcliffe  Come to the Edge  2003  1’47”
Come to the Edge uses a recording of the poet Christopher Logue  
reciting a poem of the same title, written in 1968 and based upon a  
phrase that has been attributed to the French modernist poet and art  
critic, Guillaume Apollinaire. Sutcliffe marries Logue’s forcefully  
optimistic monologue to video shot in a sixth form common room. In  
the footage a good-humoured scene is suddenly transformed into  
something altogether more sinister as the group of schoolboys enact a  
ritual humiliation upon a seemingly older boy and Logue’s invocation  
of risk jars with the unsettling violence of the film.

4.
26 April – 27 May
Haluk Akakçe
The Approach
1st Floor, The Approach Tavern
47 Approach Road
London, E2 9LY
http://www.theapproach.co.uk

5.
27 April - 1 July 2007
Matthew Buckingham
Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
London NW3 6DG
http://www.camdenartscentre.org
Opening hours: Tues –Thursday, Friday Saturday Sunday 10am – 6pm,  
Wednesday, 10am – 9pm

One of today's most significant critical artists, Matthew Buckingham  
presents three new film and video works. He investigates history and  
its representation, addressing present day realities such as the  
impact of globalisation and colonialism. 'The Spirit and the Letter'  
refers to the unsettled legacy of 18th-century social reformer Mary  
Wollstonecraft; 'Everything I Need' imagines the thoughts of  
psychologist and radical feminist Charlotte Wolff on her return to  
Germany following exile in the 1930s. There will also be a site  
specific installation 'Specularia' engaging with the history of  
Camden Arts Centre - its architecture and changing function  
throughout time.

6.
Saturday 28 April, 3pm
Dan Fox on The Secret Public
ICA
The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
Box Office: 020 7930 3647 / Switchboard: 020 7930 0493 www.ica.org.uk
Entry free with Admission Ticket.
Join Dan Fox for his insights into aspects of the current exhibition.  
Dan is associate editor of frieze magazine, filmmaker and musician.



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