Later in March 2014 I attended Curating the Moving Image, a two day intensive at the Arnolfini in Bristol run by Al Cameron, Associate Curator of Performance, and Bridget Crone, curator and Visiting Tutor at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Attended by curators, academics, students and artists, this was a fascinating reminder of the history of artist film and video along with presentations and discussion about curating moving image work in the contemporary context of constantly accessible images and videos, online curated platforms, festivals and specially devised spaces. Also devices used for delineating a framework for experiencing the moving image and concepts of attention span.
Background reading included The Sensible Stage: Staging and the Moving Image (Picture This / Cornerhouse, 2012) and The Place of Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site and Screen (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect and University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Funding meant a large supply of elastic so the first job was to install plenty in the studio space. The first workshop brought in a dancer and aimed to give her time to experiment with movement, testing speed and weight bearing. Some of the work was purely abstract, where the dancer set herself tasks in order to move through the web in different ways.
We noted the ambiguity of the space – although very small in the films the space looks larger and it is difficult to read the perspective and the margins of the space. Strange things happen to the scale of people as they move back and forth in the space.
As we had found before, the sound of the elastic is intriguing and surprisingly varied.
As we tried different ideas and filmed work in progress we discussed the potential outcomes for the work and the possible contexts for exhibition or performance.
The introduction of the chair made reference back to Tea Break and introduced an element of humour.
We were conscious of the drawing made by the elastic, how this shifted with movement and then the introduction of objects such as the aluminium ladder.
The workshop set us questions to consider in the next: how would the movement change if the elastic was less taut? should we try and film with two cameras in different places? should different films emerging from this process stand alone or become a sequential ongoing series of incidents? in an installation would it just be film projection or also elastic? would viewers have to negotiate an elastic web? how could incidents unfold in a real domestic space?
With advice from METAL I also successfully applied for further funding through the Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts scheme. This extended our budget for R&D, to enable the purchase of equipment and software and to cover costs for Darren, a dancer and myself to work together between February and November 2014. This has given us a fantastic opportunity to more fully investigate our collaboration and to work towards new work comprising – potentially – film, film installation, live art and dance.
The R&D project is structured as a series of two day workshops, each recorded on video. This footage is reviewed before the next workshop and what has been learnt is fed into the research.
Having tested the symbiosis between our work and established a foundation for collaboration, I made a successful application for an a-n New Collaborations bursary. Without funding it was proving difficult to work together as often as we would wish and it was clear that we needed to work more intensively to really progress our ideas. We also wanted to work with a dancer and we could not recruit without being able to pay them and cover expenses. The application proposed that the bursary
would enable us to set aside dedicated time to interrogate our different perspectives, to outline ideas that we want to trial and how we might approach working collaboratively. We aim to test how an experienced choreographer and trained dancer would approach the concepts I am working with through discussion and practical workshop time. I would expect to achieve a shared understanding of our respective expectations and whether there is the potential for working successfully together. The workshops would result in filmed footage which will be edited and shared for review and
development.
In Sept/Oct 2013 I curated a project at Blickling Hall, a National Trust property near Aylsham in Norfolk. The participating artists, including myself, researched the proper and made new work for the gallery at Blickling in response to it’s history, architecture, grounds and gardens etc. I focused on the lives and routines of the servants, prompted by a photograph of the punishment room, an 8ft square room entered from the roof of the house and used to imprison those who had committed some misdemeanour. Large estates became small worlds apart, responsible for the welfare, often education, moral development and meting out justice to their employees.
I panelled part of the gallery with appropriate wallpaper and installed elastic so that during the exhibition I ‘lived’ within this constraining environment. The first Tea Break film was shown on a min-ipad.
One day was spent with Darren, working on different ideas for Tea Break and filming.
