Sheffield Fringe

Transient Control

Thursday 29 November 2012, 7:00pm

Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
Av. Córdoba 946
Buenos Aires
Argentina


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Transient Control
Image: MAMBA brochure

 

“Wait until the flash marking the beginning of the shot, and then start counting”
– Philip Hoffman, in ?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film)

Habits and rituals, whether cultural or personal, often originate from an initial curiosity that grows – systematically or superstitiously – to create the semblance of a new kind of order. Actions and places of significance to these artists are presented methodically, often in repetition. Time, as manifested in filmed documentary fragments is treated as something quantifiable, malleable and subject to intensely personal scrutiny. – Esther Harris

The works in this programme have been selected by Esther Harris from programmes curated by Adam Hyman, Gil Leung, Esther Johnson and Minou Norouzi for Sheffield Fringe 2011 & 2012.

Coordination: María Victoria Simón, for MAMBA.

 

River Gauge

River Gauge | Simon Warner | UK 2004 | Digital video | 3 min

A static camera records the tide rising against a depth marker on the Ouse Estuary at Blacktoft, Yorkshire. As the camera is gradually engulfed, reference points and focus are dissolved into a new, wholly abstract environment.

Shoppers Market

Shoppers Market | John Vicario | USA 1963 | 16mm | 22 min

“Supermarkets and their stuff appeal to our wallets through our eyes, and, presumably, to our stomachs through our mouths. The remarkable thing about John Vicario’s recently re-discovered Shoppers Market (1963) is its attention to our ears. With its snippets of customer conversation melded to the eponymous Santa Monica store’s ambience and Muzak (including some piped-in in post by the filmmaker himself—e.g. Ussachevsky, Bartók), Vicario’s film, made at UCLA, cuts a fascinating tapestry of observational footage that audibly takes us to the verge of inner anxieties around produce and product, timelessness and 24 hour commerce, walking the aisle and checking out.” – Ken Eisenstein
UK Premiere. Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive

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The Story Of My Beds

The Story Of My Beds | Gabrielle Le Bayon | UK 2009 | Digital video | 15 min

Making the bed in the morning is an easy action and a simple gesture. Some of us make it everyday, some don’t. The Story Of My Beds is the fractured narrative of a ritual, where spreading the blanket over the bed is like pulling the red curtain down onto the theatre of the night. The bed is the starting point to the path of reality of a more or less ordinary everyday life here and there.

P.S.

P.S. | Margaret Salmon | UK 2002 | Video | 8 min

Anger and frustration are often expressed with repetitious utterings. Here a couple arguing forms the 1st filmic portrait in Salmon’s series of American typographies. The near inaudibility of the soundtrack adds to the sense of despair, whilst visually P.S. weaves together iconography from a range of film genres including classic Hollywood films from the 40s, and New Deal documentaries.

No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached | Pascual Sisto | USA 2001 | Digital video | 1 min 30s

Set against a barren sun trapped bit of LA concrete, No Strings Attached shows a familiar plastic chair enduring transitional change, as it is looped into a constant state of suspension. Whilst the lone chair is subjected to a choreography as sadistic as it is anthropomorphic, the observation of this process and realization of the technique involved sparks humour, excitement, builds tension and finally gives relief.

Vineland

Vineland | Laura Kraning | USA 2009 | Digital video | 10 min

At the last drive-in movie theater in Los Angeles, dislocated Hollywood images filled with apocalyptic angst float within the desolate nocturnal landscape of the City of Industry. In this border zone, re-framed and mirrored projections collide with the displaced radio broadcast soundtrack, revealing overlapping realities at the intersection of nostalgia and alienation. “… Vineland speaks quietly and eloquently of fantasized image-making, of the sheer presence and scale of Hollywood’s imposition on the landscape…” – Tony Pipolo, Millenium Film Journal

?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film)

?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film) | Philip Hoffman | UK 1986 | 16mm | 23 min

“Philip Hoffman’s ?O,ZOO! (The Making of a Fiction Film) uses a diary format to skirt along the edge of someone else’s filmed narrative (Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts), and to trace the anatomy of pure image-making. ‘Pure’ is both the right and the wrong word: Hoffman is a man addicted to the hermetic thisness of filmed images, and plagued by the suspicion that these images, far from being pure, are really scabs torn away from the sores of the world.” – Robert Everett-Green