Your Tongue, Teeth & Ultimately Your Lips

“Eyes are the organ of curiosity” says Haneke in 24 Realities per Second, “sound goes straight to the heart”.

Your Tongue, Teeth & Ultimately Your Lips looks at documentary positioned as musical, where song is used as the central narrative device. Here, sound is at times a ‘force of nature’, at other times a consequence of urban living, and the primary material component telling a story. The programme weaves its way through different vocal styles and varying aspects of human voice expression, asking what it means to really hear? In the interplay between these works departing from a style is as important, as is the arrival from one piece to another, like listening to an album.

In Charlotte Ginsborg‘s Over The Bones, an odd kind of love story, both the physical and metaphysical aspects of ‘voice’ are explored in a quasi-mystical encounter between a singer and a truck driver. Isle of Lox by Leyla Rodriguez & Cristian Straub is a performance documentation, both unhinged and textually dirty, with seemingly random poetic declarations. Alicja Rogalska’s Untitled (Broniów Song) presents – with surprising humour – a folk style choir formation in rural Poland. The subtitles reveal lyrics about the Polish economy, forming a contemporary twist. Long before we hear “Every heartbeat is just the bass for a good rhythm” in Jani Ruscica’s Beatbox, alternate take we are immersed in the film’s remarkable soundscape created in collaboration with three young New York beatboxers. And sitting perhaps unusually in this company, Alison Ballard’s The Consequence of Noise and Silence draws attention with devastating consequence, to the lesser privileged human organ – our ears and to the act of hearing itself. – Minou Norouzi

Selected by Minou Norouzi, moving image artist and PhD by Practice candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London. minounorouzi.com

Over The Bones | Charlotte Ginsborg | UK 2008 | 16mm | 30 min

Following the structure of a road movie, Over The Bones is a visual essay fusing documentary and fiction to detail the meeting of two intentionally incongruous characters, a singer and a lorry driver. The narrative is revealed through voice over, interviews and musical performance. Witnessed in their separate working environments the characters’ stories slowly converge until they meet through an accident in a swimming pool that has surreal consequences for both. (Commissioned & funded by the Jerwood Foundation & Arts Council England)

Isle of Lox | Leyla Rodriguez & Cristian Straub | Germany 2013 | Video | 6 min

Isle of Lox is a video series, which in its second season explores ramifications resulting from the tensed relationship between framework and identity. Which cut of which image is the true representation of which period of time? Mediaval Spanish mystic and friar Juan de la Cruz, more precisely his poem The Dark Night, serves as an inspiration and a guideline in the creation of the three episodes “Without Light and Guide”, “Senses Suspended” and “Members of the Audience”. Juan’s poem is both, a cry for help and a doxology.

Untitled (Broniów Song) | Alicja Rogalska | Poland/UK 2011 | HD | 5 min

Untitled (Broniów Song) is a contemporary folk song written by Alicja Rogalska together with folk singing group Broniowianki (from the Polish village of Broniów). Largely based on conversations with local people the lyrics reflect the socio-economic situation of the area – unemployment, exploitation, emigration. As much as the song is immersed in the locality it also comments on wider issues affecting many communities around the world.
(Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw)

Beatbox, alternate take | Jani Ruscica | Finland 2007 | Video | 8 min 39s

Created in collaboration with the New York beatboxers Kid Lucky and Shockwave, and the spoken word artist Vocab, “Beatbox” portrays sound and movement as self-expressive navigational tools. In the style of city symphonies, the beatboxers have created the entire soundtrack of the film by interpreting and imitating the sounds of their surroundings. A mysterious spotlight shows the urban space as a stage where, in the words of Vocab, “every street corner has the ability to tell a thousand stories”.

Swan Song | Jani Ruscica | Finland 2004 | Video | 7 min 44s

A poetic depiction of Sicilian folklore traditions, Swan Song is a farewell to a time that no longer exists. Rinaldo, a traditional Sicilian marionette plays out his epic duel against fall into oblivion. A folk song, performed by old Sicilians, serves as the backbone of the piece. The song arouses memories and creates a sense of community.

The Consequence of Noise and Silence | Alison Ballard | UK 2012 | Video | 2 min 30s

On Christmas Eve in 1974, Cyclone Tracy hit the Australian city of Darwin leaving more than 41,000 of its 47,000 inhabitants homeless. Throughout the night they sought refuge any way they could as they listened to their world around them being physically torn apart. No-one saw the cyclon – but they all heard it.

The Yodeling Farmer | Michael Maryniuk & John Scoles | Canada 2011 | HD, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm | 6 min

In a wooden folk art universe, a crude internet search takes the viewer on a ride down the information super railroad, exploring the life of Manitoba cowboy yodeling legend Stew Clayton.

Testing Microphone | Bob Levene | UK 2005 | Video | 1 min 07s

Testing Microphone is one in a series of five short performances to camera titled Experiments for Microphones, exploring the relationship between sound, microphone, camera and action.

The Future Queen of the Screen | Helen Benigson | UK 2011 | HD

The Future Queen of the Screen is set in the Dead Sea, Peckham and a cyber desert. The story centres on 2 hip-hop girl dancers who engage in real and online dance battles. The girls both ‘practice’ for the dance competition but also perform live, within the narrative of the video. Notions of performance become visually divided into super-slick HD moving image and bad-quality phone video footage, referencing body language and every-day performances and gestures. In a parallel territory, a girl has cheated on her boyfriend and is floating in the Dead Sea.

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!