Workshop programme 6

Workshop programme 6: Performance

Packing | Behrooz Karamizade | Germany 2009 | Video | 4min

Playground | Maria Marshall | UK 2001 | Digital video | 2min 30sec

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

Arabesque | Harold Offeh | UK 2007 | Digital video | 1min 10sec

The Invisibles | Nisha Duggal | UK 2012 | Video | 4min

Acer Pseudoplatanus | Angus Braithwaite | UK 2013 | HD | 5min 19sec

Biter | David Blandy | UK 2013 | HD | 9min 24sec

As part of an educational training scheme at Studio 174 in Kingston Jamaica, structured as a twofold artists’ residency and summer school, we were invited to participate with six curated artists’ film programmes. Young people from the downtown area of Kingston worked together with students from the University of the West Indies and resident artists on a series of artistic works in various disciplines, including filmmaking, painting, radio, sound art, and photography. The workshops were organised by Openvizor and lead by resident artists Anton Kats and The Rainbow Collective.

The programmes curated by Minou Norouzi were organized thematically. To reflect the interests of the participants we made a selection based on six keywords: dreams, poetry, portrait, music, history, and performance, around which we structured the programmes.

Packing | Behrooz Karamizade | Germany 2009 | Video | 4 min

Observing children at play never fails to charm. This diligently observed piece is the first part in a trilogy looking at children making their first steps in an adult world. They are inventive, and resourceful battling their way to complete a weighty mission in a busy Iranian street market.

Playground | Maria Marshall | UK 2001 | Digital video | 2 min 30s

Maria Marshall’s video work  emanates a repetitive echo of a football against a building. In the video projection the ball has escaped the image and entered the viewer’s space, the white church and boy become two aligned objects with only a shadow of their nexus remaining within the frame.

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.

Arabesque | Harold Offeh | UK 2007 | Digital video | 1 min 10s

A playfully pathetic homage to Grace Jones’ cover artwork from her legendary album ‘Island Life’. Artist Harold Offeh attempts to reenact the original artwork that sees a manipulated image of Jones holding an impossible arabesque pose.

The Invisibles | Nisha Duggal | UK 2012 | Video | 4 min

In a singular call to action The Invisibles employs and re-affirms Socialist anthem The Internationale for a contemporary audience. A hand-drawn, animated self-portrait of the artist performing to camera. The Invisibles attempts to highlight cultural mimesis and slippage between opposing dogma, including the solitary versus the many, and political branding in the hands of the digital dilettante.

Vive la Révolution!

Acer Pseudoplatanus | Angus Braithwaite | UK 2013 | HD | 5 min 19s

Refining the absurd, Angus H Braithwaite’s practice often transforms the performing body into ludicrous actor. His new work, Acerpseudoplatanus – set in the patch of woodland at the bottom of his garden – is a film that romanticises a childhood event, one which pinpoints the moment of conception for the artist through interaction with a non-native tree. A series of reconstructed vignettes outline factual occurrences. Offset with a prose-like narrative, steeped in black humour, the piece seeks to preserve the memorial remnants of such a rebirth.

Biter | David Blandy | UK 2013 | HD | 9 min 24s

Biter examines how much hip-hop has entered the artist’s unconscious mind, how stories from the streets of New York have become a part of a Londoner’s consciousness. Shot in Freud’s final consulting room, Blandy awkwardly attempts to summon rap lyrics in a space loaded with the history of psychoanalysis. Biter is an Artsadmin Jerwood Commission with the generous assistance of The Freud Museum.