LUX/ ICA BIennial of Moving Images 2012 Programme Guide

24–27
May
2012
biennialofmovingimages.org.uk
ICA Reader Cover6.indd 1 17/05/2012 11:43

foreword
We are delighted to be collaborating with LUX on the inaugural LUX/

ICA Biennial of Moving Images. The ICA has long been a home for Artists’
Moving Image in London, and in this event, we celebrate the many artists
who have passed through our doors over the years, as well as those who
come to us for the first time in 2012. The Biennial’s cross section of activity
– screenings, talks, performances, two schools and a live journal – inhabit
the ICA for four days this May, using the building to its fullest potential.
It’s an occasion we are very proud of.
Most importantly the Biennial is a platform for discussion and
debate, bringing together a community of artists, filmmakers and film
lovers under one roof here at the ICA. Coinciding with the final weeks of
“Remote Control”, our expansive group show charting the influences of
television on several generations of art and artists, the Biennial confirms
our dedication to Artists’ Moving Image. Throughout the year, our Artists’
Film Club programme of events and screenings profiles the best and most
interesting work being made across the globe, as well as the occasional gem
from the recent past. We look forward to the Biennial and hope you enjoy
the many screenings and events taking place at the ICA.
Gregor Muir, Executive Director,

Institute of Contemporary Arts
LUX ICA reader 14.indd 2 17/05/2012 11:36

foreword
Considering the great tradition of Artists’ Moving Image in the UK, it’s
amazing that London has lacked an event celebrating it for so many years.
Our hope is that the LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images will be that
event – a place and time to gather, see, talk and think about all aspects of
moving image practice. Despite its ubiquity, moving image’s dispersed and
ephemeral nature can often seem to keep it just out of reach; the Biennial
is our attempt to create a critical mass which will really give a sense of the
state of moving image practice and where it might go next. As with all of
LUX’s activities, we aspire to the potential for collective progression – as
one of our founders Malcolm Le Grice would describe it, taking ‘ideas from
the screen’ and moving forward. We hope the Biennial with its various
interactive elements will offer just that opportunity.
We have been talking about, and working on, a moving image festival
for a long time, including a brief period when it might have taken place
in Norwich, and I remain indebted to the artists and organisations there
(particularly OUTPOST) for so generously supporting the development of
the project. Now back in London, it is fitting that the Biennial finally comes
into the world in partnership with the ICA, an organisation which has done
much to support Artists’ Moving Image over the years, as well as being
the first home of “Pandemonium” (a festival of moving image organised
by our predecessor London Electronic Arts in the 1990s) and Little Stabs
at Happiness, Mark Webber’s club night where so many people discovered
artists’ films in 90s London. We are very happy to be opening the Biennial
with its one off return. Finally, I would like to dedicate this first Biennial
to a number of artists and friends we have lost in the past year who all
contributed so much to Artists’ Film and Video: Breda Beban, Robert Breer,
George Kuchar, Owen Land, Mike Kelley, Adolfas Mekas and Robert Nelson,
as well as the great writer, programmer and advocate, Amos Vogel.

Benjamin Cook, Director, LUX
3

ICA Map
Ground Floor
CINEMA
1
CINEMA bar Toilets

2 café
BOX OFFICE
concourse
Toilets Shop Lower Gallery bar theatre

reading room
ICA
Entrance
First Floor
Upper
Gallery
Upper
Gallery

Introduction
Welcome to the inaugural LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, a four-day

celebration of contemporary Artists’ Moving Image launched by LUX
and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. From 24–27 May 2012, the ICA
is transformed into a hub of moving image activity, featuring a wide
range of guest curated screening programmes selected by Thomas Beard
& Ed Halter (Light Industry), Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Michelle Cotton,
Elena Filipovic, Shanay Jhaveri, and Martha Kirszenbaum, as well as two
programmes selected by moving image artists Rosa Barba and Ben Rivers,
and those of two curators selected from a curatorial open call, Carmen
Billows and Shama Khanna.
At a pivotal time in the development of moving image, as its media
dematerialises in the wake of recent digital forms, the Biennial seeks
to address contemporary approaches from a position informed by the
practice’s rich heritage. As well as offering the opportunity to view a huge
number of films, the Biennial also provides a platform for discussion
and debate, featuring a high-profile series of chaired panel discussions,
presented in association with Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network
(FLAMIN), that explores current issues in contemporary Artists’ Moving
Image practice, focusing on topics such as ‘Cinema as Art’ and ‘Artists’
Long-form Filmmaking’. Our panel chairs include Bridget Crone, Maeve
Connolly, May Adadol Ingawanij, and Stuart Comer.
In addition to the talks programme, the students of the LUX/
Central Saint-Martins MRes Art: Moving Image course will co-produce
a two-day Student Symposium for UK-based MA and PhD students to
present their research ‘On Failure’ and ‘Contemporary Currents’ within
Artists’ Moving Image practice, with keynote lectures from Jan Verwoert
and Maeve Connolly.
A series of evening events kicks off with a revival of Little Stabs at
Happiness, the music and film club presented by Mark Webber at the ICA
from 1997 to 2000, which launches the Biennial on Thursday 24 May, and
5

Introduction
includes a rare screening of Roberto Rossellini’s The Machine that Kills

Bad People (La Macchina ammazzacattivi) (1952) and music from Little
Stabs DJs. The following three nights see a series of live events take
over the ICA’s Theatre.
These performance events are co-produced by Bridget Crone / Plenty
Projects in association with Picture This, Electra, and Tramway, and
feature expanded cinema screenings and live performances by artists
including Claire Hooper, Sophie Macpherson & Clare Stephenson, Shelly
Nadashi, Gail Pickering, Jimmy Robert, Corin Sworn & Charlotte Prodger,
and Cara Tolmie, as well as a collaborative project by Ed Atkins, Gareth
Bell-Jones, Gil Leung, and James Richards.
Running parallel to the Biennial, a 5-day Artists’ School led by Ian
White and a 2-day Curating Artists’ Moving Image Course led by George
Clark facilitate discussion and debate through a dynamic programme
of seminars and discussions featuring curators and artists contributing
to the Biennial, while a Live Journal, produced onsite and edited by
Isla Leaver-Yap, features commentary, analysis, and up-to-the-minute
reportage by writers-in-residence, Amy Budd, Thomas Morgan Evans, and
Jonathan P Watts, who were selected from an open call.
The LUX/ICA Biennial is the only event of its kind in the UK, and
its length and breadth of content is testament to the diversity of Artists’
Moving Image. We hope you enjoy the Biennial.

contents
8 Little Stabs at Happiness

9 Timetable
12 Screening Programme

52 Performance Programme
59 Live Journal
60 Talks Programme
61 Student Symposium
62 Artists’ School
63 Curating Artists’ Moving Image Course

Little Stabs at Happiness
Launch Event
Thursday 24 May 8pm A club night presented by

ICA Theatre Mark Webber
8pm: Quiet Music &

Underground Films
• Irm & Ed Sommer, Nitsch, 1969,
16mm, 14 min
• Tony & Beverly Conrad, Straight
and Narrow, 1970, 16mm, 10 min
• Manuel De Landa, Incontinence:
Roberto Rossellini, The Machine that Kills Bad People
(La Macchina ammazzacattivi), 1952. A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches,
1978, 16mm, 18 min
A revival of Little Stabs at 9.30pm: Feature Film

Happiness, the music and film • Roberto Rossellini, The Machine
club presented by Mark Webber that Kills Bad People (La Macchina
at the ICA from 1997 to 2000. ammazzacattivi), 1952, 16mm,
Early evening experimental films 83 min
and contemporary music will be
followed by a rare screening of 11pm: Music & Dancing
Roberto Rossellini’s The Machine • Real songs with a beat you can
that Kills Bad People (La Macchina dance to.
ammazzacattivi) (1952). When the
credits roll, the volume rises, as 1am: Close
original Little Stabs DJs and guests
spin disco anthems, new wave big
beats and smash hits of yesteryear.

Friday 25 May
cinema 1 cinema 2 Theatre

10
AM
11
12
1
PM
2
Screening + Q&A:
Live Jounral
3 Curated by
Shanay Jhaveri
4
Screening + Q&A:
5 Curated by
Shama Khanna
6
Screening + Q&A:
Curated by Thomas
7 Beard & Ed Halter
(Light Industry)
8
Screening + Q&A:
9 Curated by
Rosa Barba
Performance:
10 Co-produced by Bridget
PM
Crone / Plenty Projects in
association with Picture This

Saturday 26 May

10
AM
11
Student
Symposium:
On Failure
12
1
PM
2
Screening + Q&A:
Live Jounral
3 Curated by
Martha Kirszenbaum Screening: Talk:
Curated by Theatricality and
Ben Rivers Staging
4
Screening + Q&A:
5 Curated by
Carmen Billows Screening:
Talk:
Curated by
Cinema as Art
Elena Filipovic
6
Screening + Q&A:
7 Curated by
Screening:
Michelle Cotton
Curated by
Shanay Jhaveri
8
Screening + Q&A:
Curated by
9 Yann Chateigné Screening:
Tytelman Curated by Thomas
Beard & Ed Halter Performance:
10 (Light Industry) Co-produced by Electra
PM
+ Screening 10.30pm
(see p. 56)
10

Sunday 27 May

10
AM
11 Student
Symposium:
Contempororary
12 Currents
1
PM
2
Screening:
Live Jounral
3 Curated by
Carmen Billows Screening:
Talk:
Curated by
Global Centres
Rosa Barba
4
Screening:
5 Curated by
Martha Kirszenbaum Screening: Talk:
Curated by Artists’ Long-form
Shama Khanna Filmmaking
6
Screening + Q&A:
7 Curated by Ben Rivers Screening:
Curated by
Michelle Cotton
8
Screening + Q&A:
9 Curated by Screening:
Elena Filipovic Curated by
Yann Chateigné
10 Tytelman Performance:
PM Co-produced by
Tramway
11

questions of Travel
Friday 25 May, 2pm Curated by

ICA Cinema 1 Shanay Jhaveri
Saturday 26 May, 6.30pm
ICA Cinema 2
Screening programme
• Marcel Broodthaers, A Voyage on the North Sea, 1974, 16mm, 4 min

• Charles and Ray Eames, Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, 1955,
16mm, 11 min
• Leslie Thornton, Binocular (Black Parrot), 2010, video, 3 min 40 sec
• Camille Henrot, The Strife of Love in a Dream, 2011, video,
11 min 37 sec
• Mark Lapore, The Sleepers, 1989, 16mm, 16 min
• Ben Russell, Black and White Trypps Number 2, 2006, 16mm, 9 min
• Paul Sharits, Brancusi’s Sculpture Ensemble at Tirgu Jiu, 1984,
16mm, 23 min
• Len Lye, Colour Flight, 1938, 16mm, 4 min
Shanay Jhaveri is a PhD candidate at the

Royal College of Art, London. He graduated
from Brown University, concentrating on
Art Semiotics and the History of Art and
Architecture. He is the editor of Outsider
Films on India: 1950–1990, and has curated
film programmes at Tate Modern, London,
INIVA, London and Frieze.
Ben Russell, Black and White Trypps Number 2, 2006,
16mm. Courtesy Lightcone and the artist.
12

questions of Travel
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
***
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?
***
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there… No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?
Elizabeth Bishop
The films in this programme are about travel, about going abroad.
Yet, their images, records of ‘others’, ‘objects’ and ‘things’ cannot be
regarded simply as testimonials, plain evidence of existence(s). Not
merely presentation that can’t be, it is representation, and representation
is performance, the realisations of certain positions and effects. Their
subjects are not only what is being documented, but also the orientation
of the images themselves, how they are shaped, bent, twisted, contrived,
affected, formed. So if taking these films as such, the further possibility
is allowed to perchance look to the medium itself, the desires and
aspirations attached to it, and how they have invariably grown and
multiplied over time.
13

questions of Travel
The programme shuttles between Charles and Ray Eames’ account of an

exhibition that was shaped by a Cold War picture, rendered completely out
of still images of objects, to a work whose images range from North Africa
to New York’s Chinatown, speaking to the profound deterritorialisation of
the late 20th century. This film by Mark Lapore is neither documentarian,
lyrical, diaristic nor didactic, but engages all of those methods to produce
a dialectic that is both incredibly specific and abstract. The discourse
initiated is an insight into, but never a literal or direct illustration, of the
place of third world cultures from a period of duelling hegemonic powers
to that of global totalisation. All the while, there are interruptions by the
mirrored procession of tree branches, the interweaving of a pilgrimage
with the production of anti-anxiety medication and the extraction of
snake venom, the metaphysical continuum amongst a series of Brancusi
sculptures, the kaleidoscoping of a black parrot, and a riot of colour
sponsored by Imperial Airways.
This cluster of images – personal, sensorial, curious, oblique –
of real ‘places’ and real ‘things’ have had many which have come before
them, and many which will surely come after. They are part of a loop,
an accumulation of images. Ultimately, I am not sure what they all carry
forward. From frame to frame, perhaps just themselves, perhaps just
memories of a feeling, but for me they are fair and generous companions
to have when wandering through all this sameness.
14

LUX ICA reader 14.indd 15
15
questions of Travel
Camille Henrot, The Strife of Love in a Dream, 2010, video. Production: Maharaja Films.
© Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris.
17/05/2012 11:36
Nine Films by Luther Price

ICA Cinema 1 Thomas Beard &
Saturday 26 May, 8.30pm Ed Halter
ICA Cinema 2
Screening programme
• Turbulant Blue, 2006, 16mm, 8 min

• Singing Biscotts, 2007, 16mm, 6 min
• Inkblot #1, 2007, 16mm, 6 min
• After the Garden: Dusty Ricket, 2007, 16mm, 7 min
• Inkblot #44: Aqua Woman, 2009–11, 16mm, 5 min
• A Patch of Green, 2004–5, 16mm, 8 min
• The Mongrel Sister, 2007, 16mm, 7 min
• Dipping Sause, 2005, 16mm, 6 min
• Shelly Winters, 2010, 16mm, 8 min
Thomas Beard is a founder and director

of Light Industry, a venue for film and
electronic art in Brooklyn. In addition to
organising screenings and exhibitions for
Artists Space, New York; Gladstone Gallery,
New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New
York; the New Museum, New York; and Tate
Modern, London, he recently co-curated the
cinema programme for “Greater New York”
(2010) at MoMA PS1, Long Island City and
16

Known since the 1980s for his Super-8 films and performances, Luther
Price has, in recent years, turned to 16mm, assembling new works from
discarded prints of old documentaries, instructional films, obscure
Hollywood features, and other examples of cinematic detritus. Working
in his home in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, he re-edits the
footage by hand, effaces the image through scraping, buries the films to
rot and gather mould, and adds tumultuous visual patterns using coloured
inks and permanent markers. For soundtracks, he frequently employs
only the brutal electromechanical noise generated by sprocket holes
running through the projector’s audio system, or abrades the optical track
to introduce a sonic blur. The manual ingenuity of his films produces
equally complex emotional effects, suggesting chaotic mental states that
lie just below the surface of consciousness. Each reel he creates is thereby
a unique object, a kind of sculpture, often altered to such an extent that
it seems to struggle through the projector, as if playing out the end of film
itself. His is a cinema that ecstatically embraces its death drive, so as to
achieve maximum potency.
Price has produced over a hundred individual films since he
began this new phase of his work less than a decade ago, and the
following programme provides a glimpse into the idiosyncratic formal
the film programme for the 2012 Whitney Modern, London. He has also co-curated the
Biennial, New York. film and video programmes for “Greater New
Ed Halter is a critic and curator living York” (2010) at MoMA PS1, Long Island City
in Brooklyn. He is a founder and director and the 2012 Whitney Biennial, New York.
of Light Industry, a venue for film and His writing has appeared in Artforum, The
electronic art, and has organised events at Believer, Little Joe, Frieze, Mousse, the Village
Artists Space, New York; the Flaherty Film Voice and elsewhere.
Seminar, New York; the Museum of Modern
Art, New York; the New Museum, New York;
PARTICIPANT INC., New York; and Tate
17

vocabularies he has developed during this time. In Turbulant Blue

(2006), he refashions a bit of 16mm editing slug – a 35mm action picture
sliced down the middle, an element of the post-production process
never meant to be seen – running it through the projector to yield a
disorienting flutter reminiscent of analogue video’s vertical roll. For A
Patch of Green (2004–5), Price worked from the smaller end of the format
spectrum, sandwiching pieces of 8mm film between clear 16mm leader,
transforming an innocuous romp of kids and pets into something more
fragile and precarious. He created Singing Biscotts (2007), part of his
“Biscotts” cycle, from multiple beat-up prints of a 1970s documentary
about a nursing home, splicing together the same moments from each
copy to create a damaged hymn through imperfect serial repetition.
Inkblot #1 (2007), the first of his “Inkblots” or hand-painted films, is a
pure abstraction made from black ink on clear film, while a later inkblot,
Inkblot #44: Aqua Woman (2009–11), adds a layer of oneiric colour washing
over images of women and children. From his “After the Garden” series,
Dusty Ricket (2007) reveals new patterns formed on an ethnographic film
that Price interred in his backyard to disintegrate; the combination of
destruction and new mould-growth causes the film’s human figures to
throb in and out of existence. The selection concludes with three films
that foreground the generative possibilities of radical re-editing: The
Mongrel Sister (2007) deforms a medical melodrama into an hysterical
distress signal; Dipping Sause (2005) reconfigures a strange film involving
a tube-socked boy punished by a Rube-Goldberg-esque dunking machine;
while Shelly Winters (2010) is an imageless film, remade from a social issue
documentary with only its soundtrack left intact, in which anonymous
voices relate personal stories of abuse and regret.
18

Luther Price, Sally’s Mouth, 1999, handmade slide. Collection of the artist.
© Luther Price. Courtesy the artist.
19

Subconscious Society

ICA Cinema 1 Rosa Barba
Sunday 27 May, 2.30pm
ICA Cinema 2
Screening programme
• Leslie Thornton, Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, 1985,

16mm, 19 min 40 sec
• Ingrid Wiener, Northwestpassage, 1988, DVD, 10 min
• Jordan Lavi Quellman, The Deteriorationists, 2012, HD .mov, 13 min
• Liza Bear, Earthglow, 1983, video, 8 min
• Ben Rivers, Origin of the Species, 2008, 16mm, 16 min
Rosa Barba’s work considers the situations

of cinema, whether it be the physical
characteristics of celluloid, light, projector
and sound, the structures of narrative,
or its often improbable people, places or
stories. Barba takes a sculptural approach
to film, often taking apart its elements to
create new mobile objects or directing the
p. 24–25: Ben Rivers, Origin
of the Species, 2008, 16mm.
camera at objects and landscapes with a
Courtesy LUX and the artist. particular attention to form. She has had
20

Subconscious Society
Subconscious Society features a range of films made between 1985 and

2008 that suggest the existence of different worlds and parallel realities,
often beginning in what are familiar settings before reaching out into
strange and imagined territories, bringing about notions of the future
or of life elsewhere.
Each of the five works included uses language in an exploratory
manner, reorganising and mixing vocabulary so that words are
recognisable, yet their meaning or use is not entirely understood. In Leslie
Thornton’s Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (1985), for example, words
are scattered in abstract dialogues, but we pick them up and arrange them
in an order that makes sense, more or less.
The films also twist the concept of time by suggesting that their
subjects exist outside of any particular period or that time is somehow
running backwards – it is as if reality is malleable and can be bent in
all directions, as in Jordan Lavi Quellman’s The Deteriorationists (2012),
or uncannily appearing to have no beginning or end.
In their different ways, each of these works somehow searches for
origins, as the title of Ben Rivers’ film Origin of the Species (2008) suggests.
They are pulling towards something, with a desire to reach the place
where everything emerges, and in this struggle, the place becomes more
and more uncertain, vulnerable and intense.
solo exhibitions at institutions such as such as MAXXI Museum, Rome; Museo

Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthaus Zürich; Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid;
Marfa Book Company, Texas; Fondazione and the Swiss Institute, New York, as well
Galleria Civica – Center of Research on as numerous biennial exhibitions including
Contemporary Art, Trento; MART Museum, the Liverpool Biennial 2010; the 52nd and
Rovereto; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Tate 53rd Venice Biennale; the 2nd Thessaloniki
Modern, Level 2 Gallery, London; Centre Biennial of Contemporary Art; and the
d’art de l’ile de Vassivière; and the Center Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva.
of Contemporary Arts, Tel Aviv. She has
participated in group shows at institutions
21

Fetish & Figure
Saturday 26 May, 2pm Curated by

ICA Cinema 1 Martha Kirszenbaum
Sunday 27 May, 4pm
ICA Cinema 1
Screening programme
• Kenneth Anger, Puce Moment, 1949, 16mm, 7 min

• Agnieszka Polska, Plunderer’s Dream, 2011, HD video, 3 min 56 sec
• Isabelle Cornaro, Premier rêve d’Oskar Fischinger (Part 1 and Part 2),
2008, 2-channel 16mm transferred to mini dv, 3 min 14 sec
• Shana Moulton, The Galactic Pot Healer, 2010, video, 8 min 32 sec
• Ulla von Brandenburg, The Objects, 2009, Super-16mm transferred to
HD & Blu-ray, 5 min 37 sec
• Ursula Mayer, The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Fourrure, 2008, 16mm,
7 min 30 sec
• The Twilight Zone, episode “The After Hours”, 1960, 30 min
Martha Kirszenbaum is an independent

curator and writer based in Paris. She
graduated from IEP Sciences-Po in Paris and
Columbia University in New York. After a
long-term internship in the Department of
Media and Performance Art at the Museum
of Modern Art, New York, she assisted the
chief curator of Photography at Centre
Ursula Mayer, The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Georges Pompidou, Paris. From 2008 to
Fourrure, 2008, 16mm. Courtesy LUX and the artist.
2010, she worked as a research assistant at
24

Fetish & Figure
Fetish & Figure brings together six films and videos by artists and
filmmakers that address both the fetishisation of objects and the exclusive
relation between the representation of objects and the body. Exploring
the theme of tableau vivant, this programme challenges the presence
of the human body that disintegrates, allowing objects to come to life
on screen as the camera captures them. The proposed works share a
common approach in their use of feminine iconography constructed
around sophisticated accessories – perfume bottles, enchanting jewellery
and shimmering pieces of clothing – while questioning images of
voluptuousness and consumption and, finally, reflecting on human
solitude, existential melancholy and physical disappearance.
A lavishly coloured evocation of Hollywood’s mythical era, Kenneth
Anger’s Puce Moment (1949) appears to praise boredom and luxury as it
crystallises the filmmaker’s feverish obsession with the dream factory.
From an oriental ballet of sparkling fabrics to a diva languorously
perfuming her body before proudly walking her greyhounds in the sunset
of the Hollywood hills, Anger captures something properly sublime in the
declining yet golden Los Angeles seen in the dazzling narcissism of his
only feminine movie through his play with movement, colour and sound.
Agnieszka Polska’s animations are visual collages made of images
the New Museum, New York, notably on the Biennale. She completed a curatorial
exhibitions “The Generational: Younger Than residency at the Center for Contemporary
Jesus” and “Brion Gysin: The Dreamachine”. Art, Warsaw in 2010, and is currently the
As an independent curator, Kirszenbaum has guest curator of contemporary art at the
organised exhibitions in New York and Paris. Belvedere Museum / 21er Haus, Vienna.
She curated a video programme for the 2011 She regularly contributes to Kaleidoscope,
College Arts Association, New York, and was L’Officiel, and Voxpop, and has recently led
invited to propose a special project for the two seminars on curatorial practices at
2011 European Culture Congress in Wrocław Université Paris VIII and Parsons Paris.
and, most recently, for the 2012 Marrakech
25

Fetish & Figure
found in art magazines and newspapers from the 1960s, which give her
videos a subtle documentary aspect. She often revisits Polish modernism
through recycling old material and archival photographs into narrative
and melancholic animated films, such as the enchanting The Plunderer’s
Dream (2011), where a mysterious thief reveals the precious treasures
hidden in a household’s everyday objects.
In her dual channel installation Premier rêve d’Oskar Fischinger (Part
1 and Part 2) (2008), an homage to the avant-garde animator who famously
worked on Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940), Isabelle Cornaro creates
carefully arranged and lit compositions of objects related to cinema on
neutral backgrounds that are then filmed on 16mm using both panoramic
and close-up shots. Her framing and filming strategies distort scale and
shift the viewer’s perception of these objects: miniature perfume bottles
adopt hieratic, sculptural poses; blown-glass paperweights transform into
mysterious, luminous planets.
Combining an unsettling, wry humour with a low-tech, Pop
sensibility, Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her
video and performance works, where she plays a character with surreal
interactions with the everyday world. As her protagonist navigates the
magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships
with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.
In The Galactic Pot Healer (2010), a woman is guided by messages in
her medicine cabinet as she seeks to heal her broken ceramic pot. Her
consumption of new-age objects and redemptive treatments amplifies
the fragile economy of her body.
Interested in the mechanisms of representation and illusion, Ulla
von Brandenburg’s practice is inspired by theatre, science and the psyche.
Her film The Objects (2009) is a mise en abîme of an enigmatic theatre of
objects. Von Brandenburg abandons actors in favour of a procession of
props. The camera moves through a looping series of chessboards, flutes,
26

Fetish & Figure
fans, mirrors and coils of rope, which dance away from us, suspended on
pieces of string. As hypnotic and hallucinatory as these animated artefacts
seem, the artist always reminds us of backstage mechanics, probing the
distance between artistic ideals and lived experience.
In her 16mm film The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Fourrure (2008),
Ursula Mayer stages an imaginary encounter between three female icons
of the 1920s. Taking place in a modernist glass house where haunting
objects – a tape recorder, a surrealistic chessboard, a fur cover-up –
become the characters in an enigmatic play, the film provides the viewer
with a mysterious historical flashback. As it addresses the memories of
the avant-garde, the dismantled narrative structure of the work conveys
ritualised movements, and the subconscious fusion of dream and reality.
The programme closes with an episode taken from the American
science-fiction TV series The Twilight Zone, entitled “The After Hours”
(1960). A middle-class American woman gets lost in the apparently
inexistent ninth floor of a large department store, and enters the ‘twilight
zone’, where bodies and objects are confounded and the fine line between
humans and mannequins is crossed. Built around a captivating narrative,
this episode investigates a deeper human anguish very present in popular
culture of lost identity, living objects and inanimate bodies.
27

On the Custom of Wearing Clothes

ICA Cinema 1 Michelle Cotton
ICA Cinema 2
Screening programme
• Bonnie Camplin, Get Me a Mirror, 2004, video, 5 min 58 sec

• Spartacus Chetwynd, Call of the Wild, 2007, 16mm, 7 min
• George Barber, Schweppes Ad, 1995, video, 4 min
• Wim T Schippers, Phil Bloom reading a newspaper on Hoepla,
1967, 1 min 19 sec
• Michel Auder, The Games: Olympic Variations, 1984, video, 25 min
• Jennifer West, Naked Deep Creek Hot Springs Film (16mm film neg
soaked in lithium hot springs water, Jack Daniels and pot – exposed with
flashlights – skinnydipping by Karen Liebowitz, Benjamon Britton & Jwest),
2007, 16mm negative transferred to digital video, 2 min 33 sec
• Shahryar Nashat, One More Time with James, 2009, HD video, 4 min
• Anthea Hamilton, Venice, 2011, video, 4 min 27 sec
Michelle Cotton is the Senior Curator at and historical surveys of the films of Mary
Firstsite, Colchester. She has curated over Ellen Bute and the work of the British
thirty exhibitions, screenings and projects design group, the Design Research Unit. She
including solo exhibitions by Michel Auder, has published numerous reviews, essays
Steven Claydon, Paul Sietsema and Stephen and articles, and is the author of Design
Sutcliffe, as well as group exhibitions Research Unit 1942–72 and the editor of a
that include “Camulodunum”, Firstsite, new publication on Steven Claydon, Culpable
Colchester; “The Long Dark”, International Earth. In 2011, she joined the Acquisitions
3, Manchester, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle Committee for the collection at FRAC
Upon Tyne, and Kettles Yard, Cambridge, Champagne-Ardenne, Reims.
28

George Barber, Schweppes Ad, 1995, video.

Courtesy LUX and the artist.
29

30
Jennifer West, Naked Deep Creek Hot Springs Film (16mm film neg soaked in lithium hot springs water, Jack Daniels and pot – exposed with flashlights –
skinnydipping by Karen Liebowitz, Benjamon Britton & Jwest), 2007, 16mm film negative (transferred to digital video). Courtesy Vilma Gold, London
and the artist.
17/05/2012 11:36
Writing in the early 1570s, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne

ventured:
I believe… that as plants, trees, animals, and all living

things are furnished by nature with sufficient covering to
protect them from the assaults of the weather, so too were
we. But like those who by artificial light put out the light
of day, by borrowed means we have destroyed our own…
If we were born with the need for petticoats and breeches
nature would no doubt have armed with a thicker skin those
parts that she exposes to the rigours of the seasons, just as
she has done the finger-tips and the soles of the feet… I see
a far greater difference between my way of dressing and a
peasant’s of my own district than between his and that of a
man who wears nothing but his skin.
Titled after and compiled in the spirit of Montaigne’s philosophical essay,

On the Custom of Wearing Clothes considers the relationship between
convention, necessity and commerce. The programme contains nudity.
31

Inner Cinema: Films by Eric Duvivier

ICA Cinema 1 Yann Chateigné Tytelman
ICA Cinema 2
Screening programme
• Concerto mécanique pour la folie or La folle mécanomorphose,

1962–63, 16mm transferred to video, 19 min
• Images du monde visionnaire (Images of a Visionary World), 1963,
16mm transferred to video, 34 min
• Autoportrait d’un schizophrène (Self Portrait of a Schizophrenic),
1977, 16mm transferred to video, 21 min
Yann Chateigné Tytelman is a critic and “The Curtain of Dreams. Hypnagogic

curator. He is currently Dean of the Visual Visions”, IAC Villerubanne, 2011–12; “The
Arts Department at Geneva University Mirage of History”, Kaleidoscope Project
of Art and Design where he supervises Space, Milan, LiveInYourHead, Geneva,
LiveInYourHead, the school’s curatorial and Whitechapel, London, 2010–11; “Fun
institute. He previously served as Chief Palace”, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010; “IΔO.
Curator at CAPC Museum of Contemporary Explorations in French Psychedelia”, CAPC
Art, Bordeaux. He has curated and co-curated Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux,
several cross-disciplinary projects, 2008; and “A Theater without Theater”,
programmes and exhibitions including MACBA, Barcelona and Museu Berardo,
32

Through a selection of rare films taken from almost 600 productions made
by Eric Duvivier in the past 50 years, this programme is an introduction
to the universe of a filmmaker who explores the most obscure zones
of the human mind – what Henri Michaux termed l’espace du dedans
(‘the inner space’). Produced and distributed within the context of the
pharmaceutical industry and of medical universities, these ‘visual poems’
are also experimental documentaries and political essays, which make
us consider, retrospectively, that Duvivier might be one of the most
important, yet ignored figures of French cinematic history.
The work of Eric Duvivier is as stupefying as it is unknown.
Nephew of cineast Julien Duvivier, filmmaker and producer, he was
rapidly adopted by the Surrealist Group. In 1967, he directed an
adaptation of Max Ernst’s novel La Femme 100 Têtes, which French writer
André Pieyre de Mandiargues called ‘the best Surrealist movie seen in
the last thirty years or more’. In the meantime, Duvivier collaborated
with Henri-Georges Clouzot, who asked him to conceive special effects
for Inferno (1964). When the producers from Columbia Pictures saw the
amazing visual power of the filmmaker’s cinematic experiments, they
offered him an ‘open budget’. Though spectacular, this strange film was
unfortunately never completed.
Lisbon, 2007–08. He is a regular contributor

to Artforum, Frieze, Art in America,
Kaleidoscope, Artpress and Criticism.
33

In 1963, Eric Duvivier worked together with Henri Michaux on one of

his cult pieces, Images du monde visionnaire (1963). This film, financed
by Sandoz Laboratories (where twenty years earlier, Albert Hoffmann
famously discovered LSD), is a hallucinatory exploration of the ‘visual
images’ produced by the brain under the influence of drugs. The viewer
becomes immersed in abstract landscapes and absurd, dreamlike visions:
this film remains one of the preeminent examples of psychedelic cinema,
even though it was not produced in the context of any artistic or cultural
field, but in that of medical documentaries with a clear scientific goal.
Concerto mécanique pour la folie (1962), directed in collaboration with
Paris-based, Icelandic artist Erró, stages French pop singers Dominique
Grange and Jacques Higelin in a grandiloquent, theatrical sci-fi film. Here,
an eccentric visual universe fantasises the nightmare of industrialisation,
denounces the social norms of 1960s society, and appears as a visionary
cybernetic fable. Always collaborative, the films of Eric Duvivier are often
made with a specialist from the medical field.
Autoportrait d’un schizophrène (1977) was directed with Pr. D.J.
Duché, and the actor and psychedelic filmmaker Pierre Clémenti. The film
is both a lyrical attempt to recreate the world perceived by the patient, as
well as an abstract and colourful elegy for madness, shot in a grey Paris
that had been ruined and hollowed out after May 1968. This film defines
Duvivier’s work as an audiovisual poem, holding the possibility for a
cinematic representation of the glory of inner revolutions.
34

Eric Duvivier and Henri Michaux, Images du monde visionnaire, 1963, 16mm.
Courtesy Cerimes, Vanves.
35

Friends with Benefits
Saturday 26 May, 2.30pm Curated by

ICA Cinema 2 Ben Rivers
Sunday 27 May, 6pm
ICA Cinema 1
Screening programme
• Ron Rice, Senseless, 1962, 16mm, 28 min

• Robert Nelson, Deep Westurn, 1974, 16mm, 5 min
• Laida Lertxundi, Footnotes to a House of Love, 2007, 16mm, 13 min
• Ute Aurand, Paulina, 2011, 16mm, 5 min
• Ute Aurand, Franz, 2011, 16mm, 5 min
• George Kuchar, We, The Normal, 1988, video, 11 min 29 sec
• Stephen Sutcliffe, The Garden of Proserpine, 2008, video, 3 min
Ben Rivers graduated from the Falmouth London, 2011; “Slow Action”, Matt’s Gallery,
School of Art in 1993. He is the recipient of London and Gallery TPW, Toronto, 2011;
numerous prizes including: the FIPRESCI “On Overgrown Paths”, Impressions Gallery,
International Critics Prize at the 68th Venice Bradford, 2010; and “A World Rattled of
Film Festival for his first feature film Two Habit”, A Foundation, Liverpool, 2009.
Years At Sea; the Baloise Art Prize at Art
Basel 42; and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Award for Artists in 2010. Recent exhibitions
include: “Slow Action”, Hepworth Wakefield,
2012; “Sack Barrow”, Hayward Gallery,
36

37
Laida Lertxundi, Footnotes to a House of Love, 2007, 16mm.

Courtesy the artist.
17/05/2012 11:36
Ute Aurand, Franz, 2011, 16mm.

38

Friends with Benefits refers neither to the Justin Timberlake

sex friend movie, good as it was, nor to people on the dole
(though both those themes may have crossed over into this
selection of films). This programme is about making films
with the good, the unbelievably obliging, and the sometimes
long-suffering folk around you. I think a lot about how
groups of friends get together in front of and behind the
camera, partly because I become friends with the people in
my films over the longish periods of time they are made,
and also because right now I am halfway through making
a collaborative film with Ben Russell. When you’re making
things on the cheap, as artists often have to do, your first
port of call is usually your friends (‘please will you come to
the woods with eight other people and take off your clothes,
cover yourself in mud and paint, and wear a mask please’?).
There are so many permutations of this that it’s hard to
confine to one programme – and there are some great feature
examples, like many of the Zanzibar group films, too long to
include here. So I’ve put together a list of personal favourites,
one each for the last five decades – plus a bonus two minutes
from Stephen Sutcliffe (which is a bit cheeky, because it’s
not actually his friends in the film, but rather footage from
Monty Python, who were indeed all friends from university,
mostly mucking around together).
39

This Obscure Object of Desire or,
“No ideas except in things”
Saturday 26 May, 4.30pm Curated by

ICA Cinema 2 Elena Filipovic
Sunday 27 May, 8pm
ICA Cinema 1
Screening programme
• Michel Auder, Talking Head, 1981–2009, video, 2 min 27 sec

• Danai Anesiadou, I Kiss Your Ectoplasm Like I Would a Shark V, 2010,
video, 13 min
• Michael Robinson, These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us, 2010, digital video,
12 min 50 sec
• Anna Molska, Tanagram, 2006–7, video, 5 min 10 sec
• Erkka Nissinen, Night School, 2007, video, 12 min 49 sec
• Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse, The White Suit, 2002, video, 3 min
• Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter, Die Fregatte (The Frigate), 2008,
video, 19 min
• Tamar Guimarães, Tropical blow up, 2009, video, 4 min 45 sec
• Nashashibi / Skaer, Flash in the Metropolitan, 2006, 16mm, 3 min
Elena Filipovic is a writer, art historian, and Work of ‘Art’” (2008–09), “Felix Gonzalez-
curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Torres: Specific Objects without Specific
Brussels. She co-curated the 5th Berlin Form” (2010–11) and “Alina Szapocznikow:
Biennial (2008) with Adam Szymczyk, and Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972” (2011–12),
co-edited The Biennial Reader: Anthology co-curated with Joanna Mytkowska. She has
on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of also organised numerous solo exhibitions
Contemporary Art (2010) with Marieke van with artists such as Klara Lidén, Lorna
Hal and Solveig Øvstebø. She has curated a Macintyre, Melvin Moti, Tomo Savic-
number of historic retrospectives, including Gecan, and Tris Vonna-Michell, in addition
“Marcel Duchamp: A Work that is not a to group shows including “The Other
40

It was the poet William Carlos Williams who advanced the proclamation,
‘No ideas except in things’, seeming to locate the very potential for ideas
at all in material, obdurate, or even mundane stuff. What happens,
though, when those ideas that come in the form of solid or concrete
‘things’ inhabit film – that quintessentially immaterial medium, all
about projection, flickering light, and ephemeral experience? This Obscure
Object of Desire… is a selection of films by artists who each – and each
differently – produce moving images arguably haunted by an object that,
more than simply taking centre stage, provides the formal or conceptual
terms for its own documentation and engagement.
In French filmmaker Michel Auder’s Talking Head (1981–2009),
an eight-year-old girl is quietly filmed as she speaks to herself, while
enraptured in the obsessive power of a mysteriously evoked ‘thingy’. An
almost animistic, roast Thanksgiving turkey seems to stand in for other
foods stuffed into the open mouth of an unsuspecting restaurant patron in
Belgian-Greek artist Danai Anesiadou’s I Kiss Your Ectoplasm Like I Would
a Shark V (2010). A mysterious, slowly swirling, gem-encrusted jacket sets
the stage for American artist-filmmaker Michael Robinson’s Technicolor,
Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor-inspired video These Hammers
Don’t Hurt Us (2010). Enigmatic black constructivist forms are pushed
Tradition” (2010), “Anachronism” (2007), in numerous artists’ catalogues, as well as

and “Let Everything Be Temporary” (2007). Afterall, Frieze, Kaleidoscope, and Mousse.
She is guest curator for the Prix Ricard,
Paris (2012), and was guest curator of the
Satellite Program at the Jeu de Paume, Paris
in 2010. Since 2007, she has been a tutor of
exhibition history and theory on De Appel’s
postgraduate curatorial training programme,
and an advisor at the Rijksakademie,
Amsterdam. Her writings have appeared
41

around by two men in outfits vaguely reminiscent of futuristic battle gear

in Polish artist Anna Molska’s Tanagram (2006–7), while an animated
panda (among other oddities) is the object of love in Finnish artist Erkka
Nissinen’s marriage of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Paul McCarthy’s
erotic-scatological antics and the Teletubbies, in Night School (2007). The
dead pan insertion of a young man in a ‘white suit’ into various unlikely
locales forms the basis of German artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse’s
eponymously titled video The White Suit (2002). Belgian filmmaker duo
Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter’s Die Fregatte (The Frigate) (2008) is an
eerie, daunting drama of a black frigate that obsesses a group of recreation
room escapees. In Brazilian artist Tamar Guimarães’ Tropical blow up
(2009), various found photographs bleed into a moving image mystery
where the enigmatic object, repeatedly pointed to but never seen
(a corpse just out of view?), remains persistently indiscernible.
Finally, mute museum objects are momentarily lit like animals caught
in headlights in British artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer’s
sumptuous 16mm collaboration, Flash in the Metropolitan (2006).
The numinous power of things and those obscure objects of these artists’
desires are the subject here, revealing something like a potential new
mantra: No films except in things.
42

Tamar Guimarães, Tropical blow up, 2009, video.

Courtesy the artist and Fortes Vilaça Gallery.
Nashashibi / Skaer, Flash in the Metropolitan, 2006, 16mm.

Courtesy LUX and the artists.
43

We only dream of places and resistance,
for now

ICA Cinema 1 Carmen Billows
Sunday 27 May, 2pm Selected from the LUX/ICA
ICA Cinema 1 Curatorial Open Call
Screening programme
• Cyprien Gaillard, Cities of Gold • Josephine Meckseper, March on

and Mirrors, 2009, 16mm Washington to End the War on
transferred to digital, Iraq, 9/24/05, 2005, Super-8
8 min 52 sec transferred to DVD, 8 min 35 sec
• Alexandros Pissourios, Blomqvist, • Matthias Fritsch, We,
2011, Super-8 transferred to video, Technoviking, 2010, found footage
3 min 5 sec video, 7 min
• Joachim Koester, I myself am only • Ryan McNamara, I Thought It
a receiving apparatus, 2010, Was You, 2008, 2-channel
16mm, 3 min 33 sec digital video, 5 min
• Hannes Schüpbach, Falten (Folds),
2005, 16mm, 28 min
• Emily Roysdon, Story of History,
2009, video, 7 min 51 sec
• Anna Witt, Einsatzübung (Field
Test), 2006, video, 5 min 46 sec
Carmen Billows is a London-based curator,
specialising in film and video. She studied
Cultural Studies, Aesthetics & Art History,
and Film Studies at Universität Bremen
and Université Paris 8, Vincennes. She has
worked internationally for art galleries and
museums such as Künstlerhaus Bremen;
Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin; Palais
de Tokyo, Paris; and Artists Space, New
York. Her curatorial trajectory led her to
44

for now
Cities, socio-political systems and cultural values are subject to change.

Rapid shifts, experiences of loss and estrangement can leave identities
fragmented and individuals torn from long-held values and well-known
places. In this scenario, the body seems to remain a reliable constant.
In moments of re-adjustment, dance, gesture and ritual – generally
perceived as a fundamentally human and universal language – can
offer an alternative tool of communication. This has been at the core of
traditional rites of passage demarcating a moment of transition where
ceremonial performance seems to transform the body into a vehicle for
memories and emotions as a way of establishing a sense of community
and cultural identity.
Landscape and architecture seem to contain residues of the past,
fragments of histories, and ideas that persist through ruptures and
changes. We constantly move through different kinds of spaces and
inhabit architectural structures and urban environments whose creation
is very often stimulated by political decisions. These artificial spaces seem
to stimulate bodily reactions and shape behavioural patterns.
Giorgio Agamben famously claimed that society had lost its sense
of gesture at the end of the 19th century, but it seems that the surge in
the 20th century of art dealing with embodied expression, especially in
London, where she graduated with an production and presentation. Her curatorial
MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the practice aims to integrate film and video
Royal College of Art. She has curated and into an interdisciplinary art and gallery
co-curated various projects such as the Video context. In recent curatorial projects, she has
Art Section at Asian Hot Shots Berlin 2008 experimented with site-specific modes of
and a major solo show with London-based film projection.
filmmaker John Smith in 2010. She has a
special research interest in international
film avant-garde movements, as well as
video performance and performative film
45

for now
transitory moments, makes up for this loss. Throughout recent history,

artists have drawn special attention to moments of transition, invoking
through performance their potential for renegotiation. Artists such as
Trisha Brown or Jirí Kovanda have responded through their performative
interventions in public space to a rapid change in modern cities and
conditions of alienation and an increased isolation amongst individuals.
In this programme, space and architecture become a stage and
the body a tool of communication. Memories of cultures lost or doomed
seem to be re-evoked in the stones of architectural residues in Cyprien
Gaillard’s film Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009) and Alexandros Pissourios’
video Blomqvist (2011). Joachim Koester’s work plays with the notion
of the body as a place where history is inscribed. Through a bodily
engagement with space the actor in his film I myself am only a receiving
apparatus (2010) seems to react to the vibrations of the past emanating
from a spatial environment.
By way of a close observation of movement and gesture, Hannes
Schüpbach’s film Falten (2005) visualises fundamental patterns of
perception and ways of remembering, as well as re-evaluates gestural
processes. Emily Roysdon’s work Story of History (2009) is concerned with
developing a vocabulary of human gestures that could serve as building
blocks within her philosophy of imaginative political representation.
In Einsatzübung (Field Test) (2006), Anna Witt develops a dance-like
choreography while re-enacting the bodily language of authority and
dominance; she playfully dismantles the structures of power in everyday
life. In Josephine Meckseper’s March on Washington to End the War on Iraq,
9/24/05 (2005) protest culture transforms the body into a tool for political
manifestation and the construction of group identity.
A similar but different rite of public self-representation is the
fetishism of the body and mannered behaviour in rave culture, as seen
46

for now
in We, Technoviking (2010) by Matthias Fritsch. Meckseper’s as well as

Fritsch’s videos take a special interest in our freedom to publicly voice
resistance and demonstrate a sense of community. In Ryan McNamara’s
I thought it was you (2008), the protagonist confesses the very private and
unspeakable in a bodily response to places of personal significance.
Matthias Fritsch, We, Technoviking, 2010, found footage video.

47

A Blurred Boundary is still a Boundary

ICA Cinema 1 Shama Khanna
Sunday 27 May, 4.30pm Selected from the LUX/ICA
ICA Cinema 2 Curatorial Open Call
Screening programme
• Neïl Beloufa, Brune Renault, 2009, video, 17 min 45 sec

• Rachel Reupke, Containing Matters of no very peaceable Colour, 2009,
video, 5 min 11 sec
• Gil Leung, This is Living, 2011, SD video, 4 min 2 sec
• Nino Pezzella, Zum Briefkasten (To the mailbox), 1989–92, 16mm, 17 min
• Lucy Clout, Untitled, 2011, video, 4 min 51 sec

Shama Khanna is a freelance curator

and writer based in London. Her recent
projects include “Brief Habits”, the year-
long exhibition programme and artists’
film screening series as part of a curatorial
residency at E:vent Gallery, London (2011),
and the group exhibition and performance
p. 52–53: Nino Pezzella, Zum programme “Narcissus Trance”, which took
Briefkasten (To the mailbox),
1989–92, 16mm. Courtesy
place at E:vent Gallery and Spike Island,
the artist. Bristol during 2010–11.
48

A Blurred Boundary is still a Boundary
A Blurred Boundary is still a Boundary surveys five Artists’ Moving Image

works for changes in the aesthetic language of their films and videos since
the advent of Web 2.0.
When artists’ film can sit amongst countless YouTube clips,
or equally be of similar duration to either a film trailer or a feature-length
commercial movie, how does this inherent blurring of boundaries in
how their work is received affect the content of the work itself and how
it is read?
The increasing availability of online image archives and blogs makes
history easier to look up than to remember. Writer Mark Fisher detects the
symptoms of this constant archiving, unlimited playback and ‘resource
bingeing’ in our diffused sense of history and temporality. He suggests
that our networked status stops at production: ‘There is peer-to-peer
distribution of culture, but little sign of peer-to-peer production’.*
A Blurred Boundary is still a Boundary looks at how, if at all, artists
attempt to overcome this perceived levelling of experience, and slowing
down of the modes of production and reception of their moving image
work, via techniques of language, aesthetics and loopholes in perception.
Presenting work by five contemporary artists alternately working
in film and video, in the studio, with performance, found footage and
diegetic recording, the programme suggests how these filmmakers might
acknowledge the boundary between watching videos on a laptop and
in the cinema, whilst confronting the predetermined rhetoric of both
contexts. Here the flatness of the screen as a metaphor for the levelling
of visual culture as anti-historical matter is challenged, by imagining
instead the possibility for sincerity, intimacy or an aura, to be reclaimed
within the artifice of the mediated or repeated image.
* Mark Fisher, ‘Running on Empty’,

The New Statesman online, 30 March 2012.
49

The Sensible Stage: Performances
Friday 25 May, 9.30pm Annabel Frearson,

ICA Theatre Gail Pickering, Jimmy
Robert and Cara Tolmie
performances Co-produced
by Bridget Crone / Plenty
Projects in association
with Picture This
The Sensible Stage: Performances Jimmy Robert, Emma/Mystique,

explores theatricality and modes 2001, Super-8 transferred to
of performance in relation to 16mm
both film and the ‘live’ event.
The programme includes a new Emma/Mystique (2001) juxtaposes
performance by Gail Pickering, two sets of footage, both depicting
Not Yet, No Longer (2012) that a lone figure in everyday, familiar
continues her series of unique neighbourhoods. Movement and
live events, Sixty Six Signs of Neon gesture link the figures – for
(2010–ongoing), which was recently example, the touch of a hand on a
included in the “British Art Show rough, stone wall or along a metal
7”. The works in this programme fence – yet there is also a haunting
utilise the affective space of sense of distance between the
performance in different ways. filmed figures and between

This programme of performances celebrates
Annabel Frearson, the launch of The Sensible Stage: Staging
Frankenstein 2, 2012, live and the Moving Image, a collection of newly
performance with sound commissioned texts that explore the moving
image in relation to performance, time
and the event, edited by Bridget Crone and
Annabel Frearson re-works the published by Picture This.
text of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Bridget Crone / Plenty Projects is a curator
into something both sinister and and writer based in London working across
the UK and internationally. She convenes
corporeal.
52

The Sensible Stage: Performances
what takes place on the screen

and ourselves.
Cara Tolmie, Myriad Mouth

Line, 2011, live performance
with sound
Cara Tolmie’s Myriad Mouth Line

constitutes a space for affect in
which the body and the unspeaking Gail Pickering, Sixty Six Signs of Neon,
2010–ongoing, video. Courtesy the artist.
voice evoke, delineate and structure
the space of the performance itself.
Gail Pickering, Not Yet, No

Longer, 2012, live performance,
musician, projected video,
sound, lights
dead transmissions and a petrified
Pickering’s Not Yet, No Longer studio audience cause us to inhabit
raises the spectral body of a 1970s and reflect on the ‘real labour of
community television archive: representation’.
Film Exercise, a monthly screening and Museum, Bath; Arnolfini, Bristol and
discussion programme, and has a particular The Showroom, London.
interest in contemporary moving image and Picture This is an artists’ film and video
performance practices. She was Director commissioning agency and service provider.
of Media Art Bath from 2006 to 2011, and It commissions, produces and presents work
in addition, has curated exhibitions and across two platforms: its innovative Studio
projects by artists including Gail Pickering, and its new project space, Video Shop.
Tom Nicholson, Clare Gasson, and Pil and
Galia Kollectiv; and for organisations such
as Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; Holburne
53

Eris: The Path of ER
Saturday 26 May, 9.30pm Claire Hooper

ICA Theatre Performance co-produced
by Electra
Eris: The Path of ER (2012) is a new performance commission by Claire

Hooper, drawing on Greek mythology as a narrative device and treading
a fine line between classical theatre, docu-fiction and soap drama.
The work is an exploration of strength, tracing the experiences of Danielle
Marie Shillingford, a woman who has lost, and struggles to regain custody
of her children. In the film, the slippages between Danielle and her god-
like alter ego Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, creates a continuous
blurring between the fantastical, the superhuman and the absolutely
mundane. Here loss becomes both the source of suffering, and the root
of a boundless force and power – a tension which cannot be contained
by realism alone.
The performance departs from Hooper’s 2011 film Eris, and takes
the form of a part-film, part-performance delivery by Danielle with
a narration by Grime MC Lioness and a specifically developed live
soundtrack by musician and composer Beatrice Dillon.
Eris (2011) was commissioned by

Film London Artists’ Moving Image
Network (FLAMIN), Picture This,
Bristol and Lighthouse, Brighton
with the support of Arts Council
England.
54

Eris: The Path of ER
Claire Hooper, Eris: The Path of ER, 2012.

Electra is a London-based contemporary art Lorenz, “Toxic” (2012) at Les Laboratoires

organisation that curates, commissions and D’Aubervilliers and Palais de Tokyo, Paris,
produces projects by artists working across and South London Gallery (2012); and “The
sound, moving image, performance and the Right to Silence” (2012) at South London
visual arts. Through close dialogue with a Gallery.
range of venues and collaborators, we present
projects across the UK and internationally.
Recent projects include, “Her Noise:
Feminisms and the Sonic” (2012) at Tate
Modern, London; Pauline Boudry/Renate
55

A Methodology for a
Phosphorescent Screen
Saturday 26 May, 10.30pm Ed Atkins

ICA Theatre Gareth Bell-Jones
Gil LeunG
James Richards
A Methodology for a Phosphorescent Screen. Courtesy the artists
This late-night screening programme is selected and edited specifically

for a phosphorescent screen, featuring C-100 Film Corporation / Direct
Effect’s Public Service Announcements (1990–92); Stuart Baker’s Music and
Commodity (1988); James Richards’ Untitled (Cinema Programme) (2006);
Gil Leung’s The French Drop (2012); and Ed Atkins’ Delivery to the following
recipient failed permanently: A Trail (2011). The event is a response to
a screening programme commissioned by Wysing Arts Centre for the
exhibition “The Starry Rubric Set” in 2011.
56

Boredom and Ornament
Sunday 27 May, 9.30pm Shelly Nadashi, Charlotte

ICA Theatre Prodger & Corin Sworn,
and Sophie Macpherson &
Clare Stephenson
Performances co-produced
by Tramway, Glasgow
be shown with a new short film

Medium (2012), which portrays
three different conversations
between fictional characters told
in an exaggerated, theatrical
manner. Taking the form of jokes or
abstracted scenarios, these stories
Shelly Nadashi, performance from “Text Me Faster
Dance Company”, Transmission Gallery, 2011.
are told whilst three objects are
Courtesy the artist spun at different speeds by the
artist’s hand on a rotating platform.
Shelly Nadashi Slowly, as if through the objects’
Refrigerating Apparatus / motions, narrative associations
Medium, 2012 begin to form and the objects
develop their own stories, histories
Combining sculpture, telekinesis, and personalities.
a guide to email etiquette, and
Kung Fu Kata exercise patterns, Corin Sworn & Charlotte
performance artist Shelly Nadashi Prodger
explores the distinctions between HDHB, 2011
muteness and speech, movement
versus stasis, and performance Cinema may be dying but aspects of
versus installation. its experience are ubiquitous – its
Her latest performance echoes are found in having one’s
Refrigerating Apparatus (2011) will hearing tested in a sound-proof
57

Boredom and Ornament
suggesting industrial modes of

calibration as a process of sensory
normalisation.
Sophie Macpherson &

Clare Stephenson
Sophie Macpherson & Clare Stephenson,
SHOPLIFTERS SHOPGIRLS,
Shoplifters Shopgirls, 2011, performance. 2011
Working in collaboration, the

booth or sitting at the kitchen artists developed SHOPLIFTERS
table watching a downloaded film. SHOPGIRLS (2011) while in
Often, when a film is re-shot in a residence at Tramway, using the
cinema illegally, it is at an oblique different functions and spaces of
angle and some of the image is the building as a backdrop to a
lost. Glasgow-based artists Corin discussion about performance,
Sworn and Charlotte Prodger’s ritual, theatricality, and the use and
collaborative performance-film production of objects. This period
HDHB (2011) uses this reframing of experimentation led to a live
and compression to critique event at Tramway, which the artists
hierarchies of image quality, have reinterpreted for the Biennial.
Tramway is an international art-space Büchel, Duncan Campbell, Phil Collins,

that commissions, produces and presents Redmond Entwistle, Torsten Lauschmann,
contemporary art projects. Claire Jackson Lara Favaretto, and Hilary Lloyd. During
is currently Visual Art curator at Tramway, her time at Tramway, Jackson has initiated
and has curated a number of exhibitions significant research into the development of
and events with international and emergent interdisciplary and event-based strands of
artists since 2008. Projects so far have programming.
involved significant new commissions
and events with artists including Pablo
Bronstein, Sebastian Buerkner, Christoph
58

Live Journal
Wednesday 23 May
to Sunday 27 may
The Live Journal is the online blog for the LUX/

ICA Biennial of Moving Images. For the duration
of the festival, it will present commentary,
analysis and up-to-the minute reportage.
Featuring previews and responses to the
festival’s screenings and performances, video
interviews with participating filmmakers, live
recordings of festival talks and events, the
journal reacts to the Biennial as it unfolds,
effectively becoming its legacy document.
The Live Journal is a project that seeks to
broaden the experience of young and upcoming
writers interested in developing their skills
within the fast-paced, diverse context of the
Biennial environment. The Live Journal team –
Amy Budd, Thomas Morgan Evans and Jonathan
P Watts – were selected from an open call and
will be writers-in-residence for the duration of
the Biennial. The editor is Isla Leaver-Yap.
59

talks
The Biennial hosts a series Cinema as Art Globalism and the art
of chaired panel discussions Saturday 26 May world’s dependence on the
and talks, presented in 4.30pm, ICA Theatre market question the need
association with Film Chaired by writer, for a new global centre.
London Artists’ Moving researcher and lecturer Considering the political
Image Network (FLAMIN), Maeve Connolly. and demographic shifts of
exploring current issues With artist Jesse Jones; the 20th century, the panel
in contemporary Artists’ artist, curator and writer Ian discusses moving image
Moving Image practice. White; and artist, writer and practice from a variety of
curator Lucy Reynolds. global locations.
Theatricality
and Staging Considering the cinema as Artists’ Long-form
Saturday 26 May a suitable site for Artists’ Filmmaking
2.30pm, ICA Theatre Film and Moving Image, the Sunday 27 May
Chaired by curator and panel discusses the shifting 4.30pm, ICA Theatre
writer Bridget Crone. contexts of collective Chaired by Stuart Comer,
With curator Vanessa viewing and investigates Curator of Film at Tate
Desclaux, artist Beatrice how showing moving Modern, London.
Gibson, and Pil and Galia image work in the gallery, With filmmaker John
Kollectiv. cinema or screening room Akomfrah, artist Ben Rivers,
can challenge the ways we and others.
Recent debates have engage with Artists’ Moving
disrupted and complicated Image. A distinguished panel
the separation between discusses the realities and
theatre and performance, Global Centres practicalities of artists’
but what do these debates Sunday 27 May long-form filmmaking.
mean for the moving image 2.30pm, ICA Theatre With the rise of artists
– how does the image itself Chaired by writer and working in feature-length
become live and material in academic May Adadol productions, questions of
form? A distinguished panel Ingawanij. audience, sustainability and
tackles subjects raised in With curator Shanay Jhaveri, infrastructure are raised.
The Sensible Stage: Staging writer and curator Omar
the Moving Image, a new Kholeif, and others.
collection of essays edited
by Bridget Crone.
60

Student Symposium
The two-day student Robert Rapoport Further papers by:

symposium is co-produced The End of Ethnographic Katy Connor
by the LUX/Central Representation in Huyghe’s From Solid Light to Satellite:
Saint-Martins MRes Art: ‘The Host and the Cloud’ the materiality of the moving
Moving Image course and Ruskin School, Oxford image as broadcast signal
was open to submissions and data
from UK-based MA and Rosa Menkman EMERGE, Bournemouth
PhD students. Two sessions The Intentional Faux-Pas University Media School
explore the ideas ‘On Failure’ Kunsthochschule für Medien,
and ‘Contemporary Currents’ Cologne Christopher C de Selincourt
with papers presented Where is the Mind of the
by students and keynote Emily Candela Media Editor?
speakers, Jan Verwoert and No signal: Failures of Cardiff School of Art and
Maeve Connolly. transmission in the moving Design
image from analogue ‘snow’ to
On Failure the ‘ blue screen of death’ Rebecca Birch
Saturday 26 May Royal College of Art and the Field Montage
10am–1pm, ICA Theatre Science Museum, London Loughborough University
Keynote speaker: School of the Arts
Jan Verwoert Contemporary
Why Rudie Can’t Fail Currents Marialaura Ghidini
Jan Verwoert is a critic, Sunday 27 May Working through and beyond
writer, curator, art historian, 10am–1pm, ICA Theatre web-based video platforms:
and contributing editor to Keynote speaker: towards a redefinition of
Frieze magazine. Maeve Connolly moving image
Television, Cultural CRUMB, University of
Further papers by: Legitimation and Sunderland
Anirban Gupta-Nigam, Contemporary Art
Failure as Possibility: Reading Maeve Connolly is a writer, Andy Weir
Two Fragments of Moving- lecturer and research fellow Deep Time Contagion: Nuclear
Image Work at Internationales Kolleg für Storage and the Nonhuman
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kulturtechnikforschung und Temporality of Moving
School of Arts and Medienphilosophie (IKKM), Image Artwork
Aesthetics, Delhi Weimar Bauhaus University. Goldsmiths College, London
61

Artists’ School
From 23–27 May, the Artists’ School will be convening behind the scenes at
the ICA for an intensive series of seminars, presentations and discussions
led by artist, writer and curator Ian White, that respond to the screenings
and events taking place during the LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images.
Visiting artists, academics and curators include Thomas Beard, Maeve
Connolly, Fatima Hellberg, May Adadol Ingawanij, Martha Kirszenbaum,
Irene Revell, and Emily Roysdon.
The Artists’ School is now fully subscribed, but a special event will
be devised by the participants during the Biennial and announced online.
Ian White is an artist, curator and writer Curator for the Whitechapel Gallery, London,
working mainly in performance and Artists’ Associate Curator of The Secret Public: The
Moving Image. Performance works include Last Days of the British Underground, 1978–
Trauerspiel 1 (Hebbel Am Ufer Theater, 1988 (Kunstverein Munich, 2006–7), and
Berlin, 2012), the solo exhibition “Ibiza curator of a monographic exhibition of films
Black Flags Democracy” (daadgalerie, Berlin, by Emily Wardill (De Appel, Amsterdam,
2010) and Hinterhof (KUB Arena, Kunsthaus 2010), with whom he co-authored We Are
Bregenz, 2010–11), as well as collaborations Behind. He has written extensively on
with Jimmy Robert and Emily Roysdon. Artists’ Moving Image and is the co-editor of
From 2001 to 2011, he was Adjunct Film Kinomuseum: Towards an artists’ cinema.
62

Curating Artists’ Moving Image Course
Running concurrently with the Artists’ School, a Curating Artists’ Moving

Image Course brings together curators from across the UK for two day-long
sessions, which include presentations and discussions exploring curating,
programming and working with Artists’ Moving Image, led by curator,
writer and artist George Clark.
The Curating Artists’ Moving Image Course is now fully subscribed.
Guest curators, academics and artists include Rebecca Shatwell, Gil Leung,
Melissa Castagnetto, Erik Martinson, Ed Halter, Robert Leckie, Michelle
Cotton, Martha Kirszenbaum and Will Rose.
George Clark is a writer, curator and artist York 1976–1982” for Glasgow Film Festival;
based in London and Los Angeles. He was Worm, Rotterdam; and Cinéma Nova,
one of the curators of the 6th Bangkok Brussels (all 2011).
Experimental Film Festival (2012) and
curated the Lav Diaz focus at the “AV
Festival 12: As Slow As Possible”, Newcastle
(2012). Other curatorial projects include
“Infermental” for Focal Point Gallery,
Southend-on-Sea (2010) with Dan Kidner
and James Richards, and “No Wave: New
63

Colophon
Published on the occasion All rights reserved. No LUX

of the LUX/ICA Biennial of part of this publication 18 Shacklewell Lane
Moving Images 2012 may be reproduced, stored London E8 2EZ
Institute of on a retrieval system or +44 20 7503 3980
Contemporary Arts transmitted, in any form or www.lux.org.uk
24–27 May 2012 by any means mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, Benjamin Cook
The Biennial is a without prior permission in Mike Sperlinger
collaboration between writing from the publisher. Gil Leung
LUX and the Institute All images courtesy the Lyn French
of Contemporary Arts, artists. All texts copyright Silvia McMenamin
coordinated by Steven the authors.
Cairns, ICA Associate Institute of
Curator of Artists’ Film and Supported by Arts Council Contemporary Arts
Moving Images, and assistant England The Mall
coordinator, Nicole Yip. London SW1Y 5AH
With additional thanks to: +44 20 7930 3647
Design: Sarah Boris Central St Martins www.ica.org.uk
Website: Tom Roberts Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Technical Support: UK Film Council Gregor Muir
Adam Jones, John Rivett The Edwin Fox Foundation Karen Turner
Printing: Healeys The London Consortium Matt Williams
Institut Français du Anna Gritz
Published by LUX and Royaume-Uni
the ICA British Council

24–27
May
2012
ICA Reader Cover6.indd 1 17/05/2012 11:43

LUX/ ICA BIennial of Moving Images 2012 Programme Guide

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24–27

ICA Reader Cover6.indd 1 17/05/2012 11:43

We are delighted to be collaborating with LUX on the inaugural LUX/

Gregor Muir, Executive Director,

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CINEMA bar Toilets

Toilets Shop Lower Gallery bar theatre

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Welcome to the inaugural LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, a four-day

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includes a rare screening of Roberto Rossellini’s The Machine that Kills

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8 Little Stabs at Happiness

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Thursday 24 May 8pm A club night presented by

8pm: Quiet Music &

A revival of Little Stabs at 9.30pm: Feature Film

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cinema 1 cinema 2 Theatre

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cinema 1 cinema 2 Theatre

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cinema 1 cinema 2 Theatre

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Friday 25 May, 2pm Curated by

• Marcel Broodthaers, A Voyage on the North Sea, 1974, 16mm, 4 min

Shanay Jhaveri is a PhD candidate at the

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Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

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The programme shuttles between Charles and Ray Eames’ account of an

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Friday 25 May, 6pm Curated by

• Turbulant Blue, 2006, 16mm, 8 min

Thomas Beard is a founder and director

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vocabularies he has developed during this time. In Turbulant Blue

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Friday 25 May, 8pm Curated by

• Leslie Thornton, Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, 1985,

Rosa Barba’s work considers the situations

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Subconscious Society features a range of films made between 1985 and

solo exhibitions at institutions such as such as MAXXI Museum, Rome; Museo

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Saturday 26 May, 2pm Curated by

• Kenneth Anger, Puce Moment, 1949, 16mm, 7 min

Martha Kirszenbaum is an independent

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Saturday 26 May, 6pm Curated by

• Bonnie Camplin, Get Me a Mirror, 2004, video, 5 min 58 sec

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George Barber, Schweppes Ad, 1995, video.

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Writing in the early 1570s, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne

I believe… that as plants, trees, animals, and all living

Titled after and compiled in the spirit of Montaigne’s philosophical essay,

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