LUX Event WORDLAND: A film by Phil Coy at the Arcola Theatre - Sunday 6 April 2008

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]



Sunday 6th April 7pm
WORDLAND
A film by Phil Coy

Language and property are seen to crumble in this quasi-documentary  
film exploring the impact of coastal erosion on the people and  
landscape of North Norfolk. Concentrating on the small villages of  
Walcott and Cley next the Sea, the film combines interviews, field  
recordings and archive footage

The film is presented with a specially commissioned live sound score  
from musician, Alexander Tucker

Presented by City Projects in collaboration with LUX

Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola St, London, E8 2DJ
ADMISSION FREE, no booking

Phil Coy’s recent exhibitions include DiY, Ars Nova Museum, Turku,  
Finland (2007), Phil Coy/Dave Carbone, Andrew Mummery (2006), Test  
Signal, South London Gallery (2006), Omega, ev+a Biennial, Limerick  
(2006), Real Estate, ICA, London (2005), and Incommunicado,  
Cornerhouse, Manchester (2005). [http://www.philcoy.info]

Alexander Tucker is an ATP recording artist. He has released two  
albums on the ATP label, and has also recently collaborated with  
Stephen O’Malley (SunnO))) on the side project, Ginnungagap. [http:// 
www.atpfestival.com/atp-recordings/alexander-tucker/]

exhibition continues.. 4–27 APRIL, SAT/SUN 1-6pm CITY PROJECTS, 46  
Brooksby’s Walk, London E9 6DA +44 (0)20 8985 2236  
www.cityprojects.org



WORDLAND

Wordland is ostensibly a film about the eroding east coast of England  
and the effects of floods on this area, particularly the well-known  
and devastating flood of 1953. Filmed in and around the small  
villages of Walcott and Cley next the Sea, Coy’s film combines  
interviews, field recordings, archive footage and a specially  
commissioned sound score from musician, Alexander Tucker.

Wordland takes the apparently antipathetic forms and techniques of  
documentary filmmaking, the montage film, and structural film  
practices and collapses them into one another. Drawing on the history  
of, in particular, British experimental film, Coy’s digitally  
produced film presents something like an elegy for the ambition of  
different experimental film practices. As documentary elements give  
way to structural elements his playful juxtapositions of processes  
and imagery produce a romantic portrait of loss. But this romanticism  
is consistently tempered and undermined by the fact that an analogue  
medium is being mourned digitally.

The work has two very particular reference points: a painting, The  
Last of England (1855) by Ford Maddox Brown, and the 1988 film of the  
same name by Derek Jarman. Each of which conjured up romantic,  
apocalyptic visions of England. Coy’s film also depicts an island  
under siege, but the island of Wordland, and the film’s polemic, is  
less culturally and politically specific. Wordland is threatened, not  
by the arcane social policy of governments, but by the deterioration  
of celluloid, the erosion of land and arbitrary boundaries, and the  
fragmentation of language.

With distinct melancholic notes the film opens with long establishing  
shots of the sea gently lapping the shores of North Norfolk.  
Gradually shots of the land are introduced, and before long voices  
emerge out of the slowly building sound score. Through the use of  
intertitles and isolated words and phrases that simultaneously refer  
to the erosion of the coast and to the language of filmmaking,  
Wordland builds a distinct narrative by combining non-linear editing  
with a form of cut-up poetics. Tucker’s sound score similarly uses  
drones, cut-up and layered vocals, and fractured song structures. His  
simultaneously bucolic and unsettling composition blends the musical  
genres of doom metal and folk. The pastoral themes and atmosphere  
evoked by Tucker’s score and his structural approach to musical  
composition relate closely to Coy’s own themes and working methods.

The film will premiere at a special event co-organised with LUX at  
the Arcola theatre and will feature a live soundtrack by Tucker,  
before being screened at an exhibition at City Projects’ space.  
There will then be further presentations in Norwich and North  
Norfolk. For further details please visit the Wordland website  
[www.word-land.info]


-------------- next part --------------
Skipped content of type multipart/mixed