LUX UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPENINGS THIS WEEK 2 - 8 June 2008

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]

UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPENINGS THIS WEEK.

1. Monday 2 June. Nought to Sixty: Anja Kirshner and David Panos. ICA, London

2. Thursday 5 June. Drive In, Stuart Croft. Fred, London

3. Thursday 5 June. LUX Salon: Q&A. LUX, London

4. Saturday 7 June. Into View: A two programme dialogue between Ute  
Aurand and Peter Todd, Goethe-Institut, London




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1.
Monday 2 June.
Nought to Sixty: Anja Kirshner and David Panos.
Upper Galleries, ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
Exhibition 2 - 9 June. Open daily 12pm - 7pm (9pm on Thursdays)
Admission price covers entry to exhibitions, café and bar. Mon-Fri:  
£2/£1.50 concs Sat-Sun £3/£2 concs

Anja Kirschner?s films fuse historical and literary narratives with  
genres such as sci-fi cinema and TV soap opera. At the ICA the artist  
is showing a new 50-minute film, Trail of the Spider ? A Passage  
Through Limbo, a transhistorical vision of the Wild West, made in  
collaboration with David Panos. In a vanishing frontier, swarming with  
calculating surveyors, corrupt lawmen and hired thugs, a haunted  
gunfighter must pit himself against the future. Screenings on the hour.

www.ica.org.uk



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2.
Thursday 5 June.
Drive In, Stuart Croft.
Fred, 45 Vyner Street, London, E2 9DQ
Exhibition 5 - 20 June. Open Wed - Sun 12 - 6pm or by appointment

The genre of the classic road movie habitually depicts fugitives on  
the run; outlaw couples whose self-destructive fate is sealed from the  
opening credits. The protagonists can, in turn, be signposted towards  
existential discovery by a myriad of characters encountered on the road.

In DRIVE IN, Stuart Croft's gallery-based rendition of the road movie  
genre, none of this happens. His movie-couple encounter no violence,  
meet no fateful ending and find no resolve. Instead, their road  
journey is ceaseless. They meet no one and arrive nowhere.

DRIVE IN features two characters whose car glides through a nameless,  
rain-soaked city at night. The passenger, a super-confident American  
woman in her late twenties, recounts a ?desert island? joke to a  
middle-aged male driver, who remains unnervingly silent throughout.  
The woman's 'joke' is a classic but barely disguised male fantasy: a  
pathetic guy, washed up on a paradise island, stumbles across the  
woman of his dreams. The guy, open-jawed, falls hopelessly in love.  
And the perfect relationship ensues.

However, Croft has removed the joke's punchline so that, somewhat  
perversely, it never ends. Both joke and journey recur in the gallery  
space as a seamlessly conjoined circle. Furthermore, the woman  
delivers her monologue as a diatribe; a caustic indictment discharged  
toward her male companion. The fantasy image of utopian paradise,  
rendered via the desert island joke, collides with the idealised image  
of the city, rendered through the movie camera.

Shot on celluloid and on the road with the full apparatus of a film  
crew, DRIVE IN appears to be a convincing slice of a contemporary  
feature film. Yet with endlessness at the core of Croft's  
scriptwriting, editing and gallery installation, he infinitely denies  
linear cinematic assurances.

www.fred-london.com



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3.
Thursday 5 June  7 for 7.30pm
LUX Salon: Q&A
LUX 28, 28 Shacklewell Lane, London E8 2EZ

A programme of four films using the format of the interview or debate,  
in which the conversation is only half the story. We join Willoughby  
Sharp interviewing performance artist Chris Burden, lounging by a  
Californian swimming pool as the camera operator?s attention wanders  
to the girls by the poolside; a dead John Wayne and Susan Hayward  
posthumously discuss their demise in a TV studio; Neil Bartlett  
blatantly lies to his interviewer about the contents of his briefcase;  
and Owen Land documents the meeting of a group of Christians to  
hypnotic effect.
Curated by Rachel Reupke (LUX Associate Artist 2007-8).
LUX Salon takes place at LUX, 3rd Floor, Shacklewell Studios, 18  
ADMISSION FREE, booking is essential - to book a place email  
salon at lux.org.uk

www.lux.org.uk


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4.
Saturday 7 June 4.30pm
Into View: A two programme dialogue between Ute Aurand and Peter Todd
Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2PH
Tickets: £5, Booking: 020 7596 4000

Into View is a two programme dialogue between film makers and curators  
Ute Aurand, based in Berlin, and Peter Todd, based in London. Each has  
selected work by the other to include in a programme of work from  
collections in their respective home city, LUX in London and The  
Friends of the German Kinemathek (FDK) in Berlin. The process of  
selection, which was preceded by an exchange over several years, is  
both an exploration of themes and a reflection about each other's work  
and practice in the context of older and more recent artists films.  
The two programmes thus also offer an opportunity to bring into view  
rarely screened films including work by Robert Beavers, Stan Brakhage,  
Storm De Hirsch, Marie Menken, Hans Richter, Annabel Nicolson, and  
Margaret Tait.

Peter Todd and Ute Aurand will be present to introduce the programmes.

Ute Aurand's most recent film In die Erde gebaut (Building Under  
Ground, Germany 2008) was screened as part of Forum Expanded at this  
year's Berlin Film Festival. For many years she was one of the group  
that organised the Filmsamstag screenings in Berlin.

Peter Todd's work includes the international touring programme of work  
by Margaret Tait for LUX and the programme Basement Basement presented  
at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2008.
www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/kue/en3209313v.htm