9 minute read
Screen Time: Glass Cinema Emerges Online
by David Schnuckel
One irony that I’m curious to hear more about one day is how the world’s shared experience of a pandemic culminated in billions of different and trying circumstances within it. Stories told by the billions of voices who have been navigating a world turned upside down in their own way. Narratives not only of constriction and crisis, but also of triumph and transformation.
Whether faring new obstacles personally, professionally, or creatively, the idea of a specific matter of shared adversity to overcome that we can all speak to during the pandemic is hard to imagine. But as we were locked down in 2020 – and have somewhat partially emerged into a foggy version of what normal used to be like here in 2021 – we’ve all made significant modifications to our day-to-day in order to still stay connected to each other (and our livelihoods) while obligated to keep our distance. But there is one thing we might have in common as we make our way to what appears to be some kind of light at the end of this COVID tunnel: we all internet differently now.
And by that, I mean we internet everything.
We’ve always internetted for leisure. That’s for sure. Prior to the COVID-19 thing, internetting was always about streaming and surfing, casual research and rabbit holes. But now we’ve adapted to the constrictions of distance and staying in to a point of learning how to internet beyond personal amusement. Now we do it for life stuff, professional stuff, and career stuff just the same. And us glass folks – as “handsy” as we are as makers, as communally-reliant as we are in both theory and practice – we’ve had an especially interesting evolution to the digital shift.
We internet our glass teaching and learning (for workshops and university alike). We internet our glass conferences and seminars. We internet our studio demos, our talks, our exhibitions. The cultural nuances within this shift of a glass-specific field to the digital realm really deserves its own series of essays, but what began as an impossible pill to swallow back in March 2020 – a place where the real space/real time/right-in-front-of-you realities of glass and glass culture had to somehow live in a remote modality – has lent way to incredible online loopholes ever since. Some that have been interesting. Some that have been unexpected. Some that have been important. And then a few that have been all the above…to a point of both broadening our field’s trajectory and deepening its effectiveness.
Woven Light, 2021, Madeline Rile Smith, United States. Artists Commission Award, GMTF 2021 Photo Credit: Jacob Polcyn Evans
Pool, 2021, Flora deBechi, Scotland Artists Commission Award, GMTF 2021
Flammable Statement No2, 2019, Romina Gonzales, Peru/ United States. Film Entry, GMTF 2021
AVA, 2021 Stella Brajterman, Brazil Film Entry, GMTF 2021
Here enters Glass, Meet the Future: a stunning collision of glass and cinema in the form of an online film festival. As a web-based glass offering, it not only extends from our field’s evolving relationship with performance art, but is delivered in a way that resonates with the binge-watching phenomenon exacerbated by the marriage between the internet and of being locked down indoors.
Yet, interestingly enough, the origin story of Glass, Meet the Future begins prior to the all-encompassing context of COVID-19… Back in September of 2019, Glass, Meet the Future (GMTF) was a creative vision penned and proposed by a partnership between the Scotland-based North Lands Creative and the Japanesebased Toyama Glass Art Museum and Toyama Institute of Glass Art to support an interesting place where glass and crossdisciplinary practices could thrive in film and/or through filmmaking. Originally, GMTF was planned to be a full-fledged film festival; an in-person cinematic experience during the months of May and June of 2020 to showcase an assortment of internationally diverse and broad ranging series of films curated and/or directed and/or featuring artists who identify as female as its predominant feature (and then expanding their call for submissions to also include non-binary identifying applicants in 2021). In a press release around December of 2019, Karen Phillips, Director of North Lands Creative, had stated the GMTF mission by saying, “We have spent a great deal of time considering curating programmes that reflect the diverse interests of our audiences. This project emphasizes identity, community, and the variety in the cross disciplinary approach emerging from the field of international contemporary glass in the last few years” (†).
Then, of course, as a seemingly nonchalant 2019 turned into the dawning of a pandemic-laden 2020, plans changed. For everybody. In so many ways. And the idea of making the shift from a very internationally planned, socially-engaged, and cinematically immersive festival experience in Japan to some sort of online version of that became a natural impulse. “As a team we agreed we had to waste no time in order to stay visible, to support the glass community,” says Phillips in an interview with Creative Scotland back in June 2020. “We had already completed the content for the festival so when we finally made the difficult decision to postpone our trip to Japan, we took the opportunity to develop a new strand to the programme and create a festival landing page on our website” (‡).
The timing of an online film festival offered in July of 2020, during a two-week window while the world was still somewhat locked down, was almost too perfect. So perfect that most of us in this glass community didn’t realize that the GMTF film festival wasn’t originally intended to be an online experience. “Everyone was being affected by the lockdown, so a way to tackle the transition was to involve everyone and really give the sector a voice at a time when most artists could not go into their studios and make-work. It [had] kept us sane, to feel like we had something important to deliver,” remembers Phillips (‡).
Secret, 2019 Inguna Audere Film Entry, GMTF 2020
The first festival had been prompted by an extra sense of motivation to not only remain visible in that very isolating time, but to give both artists and art enthusiasts a sense of resilience and community within the face of an unseen adversary that was (and still is) COVID-19. In turn, the 2020 iteration of GMTF was presented to the world through a wide variety of approaches to cinematic storytelling that was as versatile as was the integration of glass within those films (a stunning program 2020 GMTF catalog can be found here). Narrative, documentary, the abstract, the linear, the experimental, the processdriven, the informative, the lyrical… all of these approaches to filmmaking were not only provocative, but indicated a new frontier within the beginning of a new decade in which the intersection of performance art and glass practice might live.
As I began writing this article in early 2021, the second iteration of GMTF had dropped (March 20th – April 4th) just months after the first festival. Not only does the 2021 programming continue to feature a diversified collection of glassbased cinematic gems, but has diversified in ways that bring additional content to the platform such as interviews and podcasts, an instructional series of video workshops, and an assortment of commissioned video projects (another stunning program catalog for the 2021 GMTF can be found here).
And for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure yet, the experience of both the 2020 and 2021 GMTF film festivals are housed within the North Lands Creative website to still visit (…and revisit often). A kind of accessibility that I’ve found not only fulfilling as an art enthusiast, but as an educator. There have been many times this academic year where I’ve pointed students towards both festivals to not only recognize alternative methods of engaging with glass creatively, but of upping their game in their methods of documenting time-based ideas and projects. In turn, GMTF doesn’t seem to only be something to fall smitten with, but to study.
When asked about the film festival’s symbolic relationship to the idea of acclimating to unforeseen forces of change, Philips admits that there really wasn’t an alternative. “We have tried to embrace and understand all the buzzwords of 2020: adaptability, resilience, pivot, enablement,” she says in an email. “[B]ut it wasn't an option to do nothing or stand still until everything blew over. We feel very responsible to freelance artists and we were grateful to our funders to allow for 6 new commissions to be offered.”
Glass, Meet the Future 2020 promo. Courtesy of Karen Phillips, Director of North Lands Creative
I don’t want to discredit or understate the many traumatic truths and realities brought on at the hands of the global pandemic, but I also don’t want to overlook the innovative twists and turns within our field in response to COVID-19’s disruptive impact. I’ve often felt that the most essential part of an artist’s job is to make something meaningful out of any given moment, whether limited to only the things in reach or in making use of the confining circumstances we find ourselves in themself. And that creative excellence isn’t something measured by what one can do, but in how one can adapt. The Glass, Meet the Future film festival emerges as a much needed “Yes, and…” as we all find ourselves improvising alternative methods of media-specific art making, art thinking, and art engagement at the moment. Especially in an era of glass’s story defining itself through online strategies while navigating through such an unexpected terrain of constraint and constriction.
For those who need to dwell in a reality that is one part fact and one part fiction, do yourself the favor: connect deeper to glass (and your glass community) through the Glass, Meet the Future festival content found down below. It isn’t short of anything magical.
Access the 2020 GMTF program here. Access the 2021 GMTH program here.
David Schnuckel is an artist and educator, currently Assistant Professor of Glass at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
(†) https://northlandscreative. co.uk/2019/12/19/glass-meets-thefuture/
(‡) https://www.creativescotland.com/ explore/read/stories/features/2020/ glass-meet-the-future
www.TheFlowMagazine.com
