Stigmart VideoFocus Special Edition ESP

12th Edition STIGMART 10.PRESS

From experimental cinema to fashion videography, fourteen artists breaking the boundaries Since its foundation, Stigmart10 has encouraged a conception of art based on a dynamic dialogue between artists and audience, reflecting the interactive nature of the creative act itself.

A winning formula, according to the doubled number of submissions - more than 3000 applicants have submitted their video works and CV in 2014 - and the increasing popularity of our project.

We are glad to present this year's edition of Videofocus, our special Stigmart10 review focused on experimental cinema, original fashion videography and courageous documentary.

Stigmart10 Team

4

Enrique Verdugo

"A broken compass, where east and west lose all sense of direction, leaves the space open to the traveler, to chase the perpetuate with the vanishing moment. There are no directions, in the battle to free the senses of all references or possessions. Toward that place to set the psychomagic act, in the search for personal alchemy."

16

Diana Taylor

"When I decide to make a film I think about the project a lot before I even start filming.

How its going to be shaped and what are the main points I’m going to put over, The film has to say something different and specific in a new and interesting way "

30

Tânia Dinis

"The Super 8 support brings us to the past. For a memory. It is a device associated with the family affective universe. The Super 8 gives us have another color texture, grain, noise, very similar to old photographs that have been spent over time. Despite having help friends and family at various times, I was always alone film. "

40

Scott Morrison

"Scott Morrison intertwines video installation and intricate sound compositions to create new ways of viewing both natural and synthetic environments. Morrison’s small choir, is a single channel video that moves into an increasingly complex yet seemingly familiar world of natural elements. "

50

Slawomir Milewski

"I had started to work with Ecstasy of St. Agnes in this same manner. Initialy I planned to work with 2 screens at the same time. There were many doubled or twined scenes which you can't see in final single channel version. Also the first version was 50 minutes long. "

60

Isabelle Vorle

"There is water, or rather waters, for beyond its material aspect, charged with its context and sediments, it becomes plural.In a puddle, reflecting a graphical image of branches; then swooping in the natural slope of the landscape, they bounce over mossy rocks, like that apple floating, diving and reappearing in the swirls."

Johan Parent

72

"Self lavage is a short film which shows the putting into service, vacuous, the night, of an automobile car wash point. The video lasts the time of the temporal process of the machine; wiever contemplate in a performance.The karcher starts in rhythm, as a dance show. "

Su Ling Gyr

80

"Fashion Bone is a performance-based video art piece shot in 2013.Exploring ongoing themes in my work, investigating cultural projections of identity through fashion, body and dolls, the animate and inanimate, Fashion Bone is the first performance-based piece of video work I have conceived. "

Harold Charre

92

"A new project is a response to the previous films I’ve made. It is both an extension of it and a clear cut from it, because each project should be carried by a will for renewal, a revolutionary momentum. I came to realize that every film I’ve made was influenced and driven by the discovery of new musical harmonies, new sounds that I wanted to explore. "

Dmitry Kmelnitsky

104

"SOURCE is an audio-visual meditation on the mystical origins of creation and future states of consciousness.

This short motion graphics film presents a coded ambient journey laden with inspiration from quantum physics, Kabbalah, and science fiction."

Leonardo Selvaggio

116

"As I was “walking,” I couldn’t help but take notice of all the faceless people in Google Street View. I found them haunting and had a very visceral desire to provide these bodies with an identity, a surrogate if you will. More profound to me was the algorithm used to erase these faces. ."

Mariam Eqbal

126

"In-Between Frames is a part of a series of works that are experimental and explore the fundamentals of animated motion through repetition.The work is an inquiry into the unlimited in-betweens of movement. All the images are created using a scanner as the primary tool for the transcription of motion. "

H.C. Turk

138

I began by making music videos based on some of my songs (I have created 2 albums of über-rock music, 1 of abstracted sound art, and 1 of voice-based sound art, which I term Voxart). Though I have been making images and writing fiction for decades, movies/filmmaking/cinema (the first is the most accurate term regarding my work) is a relatively new discipline for me, despite being a combinatorial extension of my previously established interests and achievements.

Natalie Goldman The past and future are obliterated and obscured through speed and perpetual movement, allowing the traveler to stay focused on the very immediate present as the landscape tumbles and unfolds itself, one image into the next. Lucy Lippard, when writing about walking as a form of meditation, describes that, “motion allows a certain type of mental freedom that translates a place to a person kinesthetically."

148

Enrique Verdugo An artist's statement

A broken compass, where east and west lose all sense of direction, leaves the space open to the traveler, to chase the perpetuate with the vanishing moment.

There are no directions, in the battle to free the senses of all references or possessions. Toward that place to set the psychomagic act, in the search for personal alchemy.

Time infuses garments with parts of life and memories.

I believe that what creates iconic fashion is social phenomena. Fashion appears and is reinforced through the passing of time, thereby creating a style, often born from social movements or related phenomena. It amuses me how the fashion industry struggles every season of the year, year after year, attempting to reinvent itself, borrowing from social phenomena and the arts.

There is a lack of substance in this industry and its chronic reinvention, which attempts to camouflage the real core of an ethos of profit based in consumerism. True fashion comes from real people, with individual self� expression.

Time infuses garments with parts of life and memories.

Looking how time passes behind a personal garment, clothes, the possibility to recall memories, experiences, and attachments appears as a bridge to cross. Connecting our past and the world around us.

This film glimpses a metaphor about departure and emigration. What does it mean to leave behind emotional bonds and bury them in a ritual or sort of poetic act, perhaps a way to emancipate emotions.

My short film ‘Broken Compass’ was not meant to deal with any aspects of fashion. It does happen however, that the ‘noir’ aesthetic of the film is part of the narrative and coincides with the characters dressing.

I was attracted to the idea of producing a work using stop frame animation. Sometimes still images in sequences can give a bigger emphasis in nuances and describing action than can continuous footage. I think the film is quite open, because it offers the possibility of multiple interpretations.

Enrique Verdugo

An interview with

Enrique Verdugo Enrique, how did you get into experimental cinema?

As a photographer, experimentation has always been the key in developing my ideas and informing my creative process.

Time, motion and space were the main inspirations in my series of work “Body and Flux”, which sought to explore the inner connection between movement and energy that can be expressed in a still image.

Photography started to synthesise my ideas which eventually led me to work increasingly with concepts, leaving behind the “in a second” physicality of the medium.

Eventually, I became more interested in experimenting with story telling by combining genres in my personal approach to documentary films and story telling, by attempting to open other channels to relate the viewer to the films.

For me, memory and images are what remains after viewing a film. Experimenting how to associate these elements is the seductive essence of making films.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Broken compass?

The idea for the film was born while talking to an my very good friend Ricardo Gaete, an artist mime of the physical theatre tradition, who was having difficulties with his visa status in the UK. He could see the possibilities of staying near his son Lautaro were beginning to dissolve as the immigration policies in the UK became tougher and tougher.

As he related this to me one autumn evening, his problems, emotions and his frustrations, he suddenly exclaimed, “I have been wearing this coat for the whole four years I have lived in this country. This coat is full of my experiences, good and bad. I want to bury it!”

Enrique Verdugo

After some time of sitting in silence, I suggested to him that we make a film with the coat. I felt the constellation of narratives, emotional and visual elements were there, and like a ball ready to roll.

What was the most challenging thing about making Broken compass?

I felt Broken Compass would be mainly marked by ‘time and emotions’ shaping its form in a linear narrative.

The silent film allows the viewer to focus on the characters’ presence and their gestures to convey their emotions. Broken Compass portrays a feeling of abandonment and departure and love, which at once gives all, and lets everything go.

I felt that a video camera would diminish the power of my idea, as 25 frames per second would not be necessary. I was looking to break with the logic of sequences,

I wanted the film to convey the same feeling to the viewer as it might in a comic strip format.

As I had never worked with stop frame animation before, it took me a long while to sense the pace of the film, and distil how the photographs would unfold to give the rhythm I wanted for the story. There is no common timing in the sequences, each frame was worked individually to sense its potential and accent its expression. With help from my fantastic editor Roter Su, we shaped the final form of the film.

Once the film was made, I had the privilege of collaborating with Andria Degens (Pantaleimon), with her music and influences to create the soundtrack. She developed a sound with a crescendo intensity. The resonance of the Indian harmonium instrument gave the film its final touches, fine tuning the emotionality of the scenes.

We have been impressed by your clear story telling. In Broken compass you create a time-based work that allow the viewer to abandon himself to his associations. That gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of Hollywood productions. Can you introduce our readers to your vision of time in cinema?

I believe that any film is shaped by a conjunction of different elements, which trigger in the viewer channels of associations and experiences. Using time, the director can play with the idea that the film represents or symbolizes.

experimenting with a timing perspective, and resolved to use a synthesis of photographs for the film.

I chose to work with stop frame animation to be in control of the timing and story telling, unfolding the narrative of the film as it developed, and to emphasize the emotional content in the sequences.

We live in a hectic world that has shaped us at such speed that compromises our capacity of observation; this is tremendously present in the film industry. When a film deprives the viewer with a fast pace of storytelling, editing, etc, then the viewer loses the opportunity to relate and judge what the director intends to say, and is carried away with the ‘action’.

Personally I believe that by allowing time to exist within the elements of a film, the viewer can participate and gain a higher experience of the moving picture, giving a better understanding of the story, images and sound.

Time allows the elements composing a film to breathe.

What was the reasoning behind shooting in a desaturated palette?

Broken Compass is a story which can take place anywhere at any time, it can be recent or it can be really old. There are not many associations of time and space in the soundtrack or the visuals because I was looking for a feeling of atemporality.

has a high contrast effect, resembling the tradition of comic trips in their black and white shades.

Are you as interested in the camera as you are in the screenplay or the actors?

Black and white format has the quality of being both real and abstract, giving what is necessary for a film like this to exist. The film

Yes, the camera is my intrinsic medium relating to the image. Whether still or moving, I have a subconscious approach with camera in

of creating a film prevails over many factors, mainly financial. This reminds me of the beauty of the film “ Man with the movie camera”. This personal approach is more popular today than ever.

Stylistically, your film owes more to the surreal fantasy world of Jean Cocteau than to the expressionism of Arrabal's cinema.

Who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

Naturally I am drawn to eastern European cinema. Their way to observe and the passing of time is something that has always enchanted me. It is hard to think about directors who have influenced me, so I would rather describe the work of directors who I admire.

Andrei Tarkovsky, for the power of observation and simplicity of his films. I admire the way that he relates his vision to time, history and poetry, his view to electronic music and his approach to author cinema.

The work of David Lynch is surreal and rich in audiovisual realms, the loss of conventional storytelling is something that has always been amazing to me.

Satyajit Ray’s excellent Apu Trilogy portrays life in Bangladesh working with an amateur crew, limited budgets and mixing documentary with feature film, creating a compelling view of the country and its people, which is loaded with emotion and reality.

Thanks for sharing your time, Enrique, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Enrique Verdugo?

Have you a particular film in mind?

hand, developed after many years of experience. The camera is a natural extension of my person, and I don’t need to think that much about it as a result. I understand how it works and behaves, which allows me more freedom to focus on the actors, the story and locations etc.

I think that guerrilla filmmaking has its own signature style and comes with the proliferation of technology where the necessity

I am researching and developing ideas for a film that explores ecological issues, which are emerging in both the African and South American continents. There exists a contradiction amongst international communities who are developing a massive environmental alternative in the Sahara desert, whilst ignoring rainforest devastation in South America. I want to portray these contradictions in an experimental documentary.

Diana Taylor

An interview with

Diana Taylor From the first time we watched Diana Taylor's work Clifton to Easton we were impressed by her unique filmmaking style that combines documentary and poetry.

Clifton to Easton, a short film screened at the Zebra Film Festival in Berlin - an institution for poetry filmmakers all over the world - is based on a David C Johnson's poem dealing with the economic divide in Bristol. Diana's cinema takes to heart Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's lesson, revealing a strong effort to find a place where documentary, poetry and narrative cinema merge. Diana, could you introduce our readers to the history of Redcliffe Film Productions?

Redcliffe Films came about because my sister who had worked at the BBC in London as a Set Designer and Art Director and I decided to team up and make a documentary drama film about WW1 Poet and Composer Ivor Gurney.

We chose to use local people and set up a community based film company employing volunteers as actors and crew . We had to make the film on a very low budget so I worked the camera , sound research and editing and my sister wrote the script , made the costumes and researched the locations.

Creating a community based film company is one of the strongest political act a filmmaker can do: the operation of "rescuing" local resources is not but a sort of "political act", to quote the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, a step toward a "minoritarian history of the world" (Toward a Minor Literature, G. Deleuze and F. Guattari). Could you introduce our reader to this aspect of your work in Bristol?

We felt that by using volunteers we could give students at film and drama school a chance to develop their skills which would help towards finding a job at the end of their courses.

The students found that it was worthwhile for them to learn that you can make good films on

Diana Taylor

a very low budget by a team of people pulling their skills together and each bringing something special to the production.

We endeavored to encourage and evaluate each individuals contribution to the film and to learn from each other.

I feel that we have a wide range of skills and and also a background in different genres having made documentary, drama docu, biopics, and poetry films. The poetry and documentary films have been showcased internationally at festivals.

See website Redcliffe Films.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

When I decide to make a film I think about the project a lot before I even start filming. How its going to be shaped and what are the main points I’m going to put over, The film has to say something different and specific in a new and interesting way The main focus at this point is thinking about how to make the images and sound have a dramatic impact bringing the viewer subconsciously into the film and how to create the emotional impact.

For me the most important part of making a film is to include the audience ,so they are

immersed in and engaged with the film subjectively getting a response rather than viewing the film as an object and being outside of the frame. Its the same as any artist, I’m painting with dark and light as a contrast and a film has to have that too in a range of contrasts in mood and feeling.

You are currently working on a full length feature film inspired by the figure of Hannah More, a poet and philanthropist from Bristol. The story of Hannah More is incredible. When did you get in contact with her biography for the first time?

The story of Hannah More was discovered by a journalist friend and my sister Anthea Page was very keen to make this film.

It tells the story of a young educated woman from Bristol, who used her intelligence to climb up socially in Georgian Society and although thwarted in making a rich marriage with a local wealthy landowner was able to pursue her career from the annuity he gave her.

She was highly influential in educating thousands of poor children in Somerset . Her aim was to stop the French revolution from spreading to England and she wrote hundreds of pamphlets to influence people against revolt. She was also a friend of William Wilberforce and Dr Johnson , eminent figures of Georgian Society.

She joined the anti slave movement and she must have seen much of the effects of slavery whilst living in Bristol.

The first scenes from Hannah More available online present a refined cinematography evoking the charming atmosphere of the eighteenth century: rembrandt lighting and primary colors are mainly used. An interesting behind the scenes of Making of Hannah More has been filmed by Charlotte Hai. What technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work?

The film has taken over three years to film and we have used locations in and around Bristol.

We have used a camera which as cinematic quality and we are fortunate to have an x BBC crew working with us in some spectacular locations.

The whole film has been especially crafted to give the feel of the Georgian times using muted colours for the costumes and

authentic props and locations.

The script has been very carefully written to create the language of that period , again we have used drama students and a whole team of volunteers have been making the costumes which have been specially designed for the film.

I have been directing this film and my main focus has been to create the feel of the period by using natural light and setting the figures in the landscape creating a world rich in its historical context.

In Cuba Sun Sex and Socialism your explore the reality behind the tourist tinsel. Selected for the Irish Latin American Film Festival in Dublin and at the Portobello Film Festival in London, this documentary seems to take to heart Bresson's idea “RENDRE VISIBLE CE QUI,

SANS VOUS, POURRAIT PEUT-ÊTRE JAMAIS ÉTÉ VU", highliting the dramatic condition of women in Cuba. Could you introduce our readers to this film?

In my film Cuba Sun Sex and Socialism, I was trying to define expose and transfer the social realities behind the tourist façade.

Because the country is so politically controlled and there is a lack of freedom for any political views it was very difficult to get any one to talk to me about their feelings so by using a tiny compact camera I decided to observe what was really going on and draw my conclusions from that as well as researching other material.

and that the government actively encourage their exploitation by acknowledging it, but not taking any action because these women are creating wealth for the country.

Paradoxically the same government is encouraging women in every possible way to be better educated and have professional jobs that were once dominated by men , a good example of this is in training doctors and engineers.

The film also shows the huge inequality between those that work in the service industry and earn far more than those working for the state so it questions the validity of the socialist state.

I think that one of the most important points to come out of the film is the shocking way that women are exploited in a socialist society,

Your film Hidden in History, Women in St Ives Industry was part of a project for the Women's History Network'. We would like

to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera for decades, however in the last decaded there are signs that something is changing. Elle Schneider, filmmaker and creator of Digital Bolex, tries to reverse this trend offering D16 camera packages for free to productions that are lensed by women cinematographers, a little revolutionary act. What is your view on the future of women filmmakers?

The future for women film makers has improved a great deal over the last 10 years but it is still an industry dominated by men.

It hasn’t been helpful that women who worked in the tv industry as technical operators were paid 20% less than the men for doing the same job as late as 1990.

There were always fewer women working in the film industry but there is a problem with the type of work which the film industry creates which is not compatible for normal family life.

In TV and film today technical staff are expected to work very long hours and give up weekends.

However€with the price of technology getting cheaper and better it is far easier for women to work making films in small independent companies .

We find that your art is rich of references.

Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

I have always been influenced by art as my grandfather Albert Sidney Howell was a well known artist and worked

carving and making carousels for the fairgrounds so I grew up with the oil paints , gold leaf and paintings.

The artist which has had most influence on me has been Van Gough because his paintings have so much energy and contrast about them, the canvasses reflects a radiance which is hard to describe but I get a huge emotional response from looking at the way he blends colour and light.

It can be considered a specious question, however we have to do it: what is the future of independent cinema in your opinion?

The future of independent cinema is going to become much more localized.Bristol has been given a license to produce local a tv called ‘Made in Bristol ‘and this will give a lever to independent film makers to have more say about getting their films screened.

The big TV channels might in the future give a slot for independent filmmakers but with the growth of independent cinemas outside the mainstream circuit many film and video makers are getting their films shown and this is proving to be very popular.

I think many more people will be able to get to Hollywood Status and will be able to get their films selected through the benefits of highly regarded independent film festivals.

Audiences are beginning to get bored with the same old formulas churned out from Hollywood and they are looking for unusual different and creative stories with actors who are brilliant but not celebrities.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Diana. What's next for Diana Taylor?

The next film I am making is a drama about a WW1 poet and composer returning from war and the problems he encounters in post war Britain.

A still from NÃO SÃO FAVAS, SÃO FEIJOCAS - They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans.

T창nia Dinis

An interview with

Tânia Dinis Tânia Dinis's work focuses on the passage, duration and experience of time. Her experimental documentary titled They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans is marked by a stunning cinematography reminding us of the atmospheres of the films by Victor Erice, in particular El Sol del Membrillo. We are pleased to present Tânia Dinis's film for this Videofocus Edition. Tânia, how did you get started in cinema?

I can only say thank you for the invitation to participate in this Videofocus Edition, as well as the relevant and interesting questions that make my movie. Thank you.

I took a degree in theater as an actress in 2006 and now I'm finishing a Masters in Contemporary Artistic Practices in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, Portugal.

I work regularly as an actress in theater and cinema. But in recent years I started to develop my artistic projects exploring the universe of performance, film, video, photography and installation, often assuming an itinerant nature which were presented in Portugal, Spain, London, Chicago, Mexico, Argentina, Australia and Brazil in various institutions and festivals. I enjoy and watch a lot of movies, in particular documentaries. But it is with the creation of video performance and facilities that there is a need to create a short films. Working in a two-dimensional and three-dimensional performance schedule using during presentations to the dialogue between the analog and digital images. Between the performer and the screen. In these early projects, as is the case of my FEMALE performance and super 8 - Femmes doing integrand part of the performance, sparked up the interest in starting to post short intimateprivate moments. A shared intimacy. Then it was only continue to explore more.

Oscillating between the documentary and autobiography, They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans deals with theIntergenerational conflict between people. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come

Tânia Dinis

up with the idea for your experimental documentary?

I grew up and lived in my grandmother's house for many years. My childhood and adolescence was spent there. One day, my grandmother said she wanted to visit the your child's new home. We decided to do a family outing Sunday to this village. It was the whole family.

My great-uncle used to photograph these meetings. But at that time, as I was working

with super8, I decided to take the camera and record that moment, it was very important for my grandmother: The family all together. The images led me to past memories. I decide at that moment, I want to shoot my grandmother in her routine in their day to day. They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans is my first film. In 2011 and 2013 my only concern was the registration of images and audio moments of their to day to day, their relationship with me, the days we spent

together, the passage of time in her life, in my life, in their animals in nature. Sign little moments, quirky images, that when I was a kid fascinated me, such as how to hold your hair.

Your film reveals a clean storytelling reminding us of Chantal Akerman's slow narration. That gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of most Hollywood

productions. could you introduce our readers to this peculiar narrative style?

I think this slowness, the emptiness that you speak of, is related to the time of shooting the film, which is based on the action of my grandmother's time, the moment of my reaction of it, and the moment after, their reaction, to the image. I did not want provoke or cause any reaction. I wanted it to take its own course. In editing the film I also tried not to manipulate anything, by not using any editing strategies. So the film is practically edited almost as was filmed. I had several ideas for the audio of the film. A poem, a song or so a number of record stories from my grandmother and sounds I was recording during the three years. I tried a few things but the feeling I had, was to create a narrative that did not provide me the same feeling of the days I spent with her but still now whenever I pass by to have lunch with her. Its clarity, objectivity, intimacy, sense of humor, the relationship of grandmother and granddaughter. So I decided to show the pictures to my grandmother and without her realizing it, I recorded her reaction to the image. Which was a big surprise for me. I'm expected to say this about my movie, but I think its strength is exactly the sound relationship with the image. Giving the viewer a specific moment and a peculiar atmosphere.

You use an anemic palette of dirty greys and yellows that recall bleached out photographs or faded newspaper clippings. How did you develop your visual style?

The Super 8 support brings us to the past. For a memory. It is a device associated with the family affective universe. The Super 8 gives us have another color texture, grain, noise, very similar to old photographs that have been spent over time. Despite having help friends and family at various times, I was always alone film. Only then it would make sense to me, nothing to interfere with the environment and family atmosphere. As I wanted to record the moment, could not turn the light projectors and other accessories, So could only shoot with the light of day. So enjoyed the most to film the light of the morning and afternoon. But in reality all the routines of my grandmother take place between 5 am until 15h in the afternoon.

After going to rest and sleep in your kitchen bench. Just to have also different shades because it was filmed over the seasons,

creating very different color rhythms. When shooting in Super 8 I know I'm to give the film a sense of the past, associated with a memory but at the same time bring it to the real images, to the present and that should your story.

We find that your art is rich of references.

Besides Chantal Akerman and Victor Erice we have mentioned in this interview, can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Thank you for telling me that my film reminds you of the work of Victor Erice and Chantal Akerman. It is an honor. They have beautiful movies. We all have, consciously or unconsciously references that influence our

work and think they are really very important for our development and growth as an artists.

We could speak of Godardยง, Jonas Mekas and many other filmmakers and artists, but in this case my concern was to register the instant moment. If I wanted to register a specific moment, I have to react immediately. I could not ask my grandmother to repeat. Then she would be representing. Uncompromising camera, without any aesthetic or cosmetic concern, but a concern for their content.

In your director's statement you say "The clash of the image with those it represented." Could you comment this fundamental concept of your cinema?

Confronting my grandmother with these pictures allowed me to have a different

perspective of how we see things. The images I shot for me has one meaning and for her it has another. She looks at things in a completely differente way. She sees things I had not seen. It was her who named the film, because it really makes you wonder if what you are seeing are fava beans or scarlet runner beans. And that made me think a lot about the issue of the image. That an image is not closed.

The memory that is associated with the image can be confronted, questioned and there may be new approaches. So then I started following-up on my work and I ended up developing an Upward Curve performance, where I worked with the photographic estate of my family. Which clashed again with photographs of my grandmother and other family members. Images then revisited by me

and presented through devices associated with a family affective universe. Providing the viewer for the first time, the ritual of viewing photos, listening to the stories of the images at the same time while they create their own images, reminiscing their past and memories.

The film is taking an interesting route at the film festivals and video art. However the first showing of the film was in Experimental Jet Set (Super 8) in the CAAA - Center for Art and Architecture Affairs and it was a performance. My projection was hanging up clothes, the same as in the movie. I put a bundle of clothes the kitchen infront of the washing rack and my grandma and I were sitting on the bench watching the movie and the rest of the family was behind us being confronted for the first time with those images. They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans it has a more experimental side because of its intimate character at the moment. It is a fragmented captured film in a familiar universe. It is a film of love for my grandmother.

Thanks for sharing your time, Tânia, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Tânia Dinis? Have you a particular film in mind?

Well, it's impossible to stop filming my grandmother. I think I will continue to shoot(film her) forever. She is a true inspiration, with their stories, wisdom and especially the way she faces life. Her unconditional love for the countryside and for her family. But this is a project that takes time. I do not want to feel presured to create a new movie. I want to go filming and experimenting. Trying to capture the moment. Noting new memories and stories. Filming the time spent in her life and therefore in mine. And it can only be done in that way. My grandmother is not an actress. It's just my grandmother.

In the meantime, I am currently working on a new project that I hope still present this year. The work is of research and a collection of family archives. Today we find lost, abandoned or for sale, fair use, complete or incomplete files of families who for various reasons got rid of those images related to their intimate and family life. The purpose for the moment is to build one or more works. (Photos or a movie). I'm concentrating now on a trial based, on ownership of these photos and videos with stops memories in time. Revisit them, manipulating them through small narrative conflicts, moving them to other contexts as well. Reinterpret these images, see what you see and be curious of what is not seen. Multiplying memories that can be expanded in time.

Thank you for the invitation. It has been a pleasure to participate and share this with you.

Scott Morrison Scott Morrison intertwines video installation and intricate sound compositions to create new ways of viewing both natural and synthetic environments. Morrison’s small choir, is a single channel video that moves into an increasingly complex yet seemingly familiar world of natural elements.

This rhythmic and undulating work combines his interest in the aesthetics of rural landscape, with his ability to bend an audience’s perception of spatial density and time. In small choir, light streams through surrounding woodland, its hazy spectrum of color coaxing the viewer to squint their eyes and attempt to focus on the landscape in the distance.

Here, Morrison is encouraging us to locate the familiar and experience it through the act of looking, and looking again. The work is a continuation of Morrison’s interest in the re-imagining of natural occurrence and the interweaving of time and place through the use of the moving image.

He currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

An interview with

Scott Morrison Scott Morrison's vision is at the same time mulecular and cosmogonic: his approach to video installation is absolutely unique.

In his work he explore nature itself of the act of looking, heightening and altering individuals' experiences of space and time.

Sound has a huge rule in Scott's art research: he makes the images react synaesthetically to the film's soundtrack which means that various elements inside the picture plane and pulsate toward the viewer in three dimensions. We are pleased to present Scott Morrison for this year's Videofocus Edition. Scott, how did you get into video installation?

My work and its context within video installation came about through studying video and sound production at University with an original intent of somehow getting into filmmaking in some form or manner. The real learning and future directions came about through the video loops I would make and setup at rave parties and club nights throughout my studies. This led to live video mixing and more elaborate physical configurations of the video playback. All the while I became more interested in working and producing audiovisual material in a more exploratory way, without specific rules or professional restraints of production. As I moved towards using the natural world and focusing on nature in its seen and heard, the gallery seemed a more focused context for the work being made and how I wanted it presented.

Scott Morrison We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your video installation: how did you come up with the idea for Small Choir?

The original flicker of small choir came about as I travelled through the outer forest areas of Seattle in 2010. A particular moment of the trip had the setting sun puncturing the long and deeply clustered arrangement of trees.

Whilst very simple, its impression affected me greatly. I thought about it often afterwards and still do. The rhythm and warmth of the visual spectacle resonated with me quite profoundly.

A couple of years later I decided to capture this experience as best I could by ways of a pine forest near my place of birth in rural NSW, Australia. I spent a few days in this forest, rising and setting with sun daily. Chasing the light in how it fell and danced about me with my equipment. The piece then looked to weave many of these instances of light being captured into a whole. The trees acted as an anchor for the light, the anchor to the piece somewhat.

The approach was towards pulling apart time, light and instance and reworking it into a recreated sensation of passing moment and imagined memory. The title loosely references the genesis of the initial moment and then the combined elements in the final piece. A choir of instance, a choir of light and time.

small choir?). By definition cinema is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity, however rarely in mainstream or narrative cinema we assist to such a spectacular dance like in your films, besides from Kenneth Anger's films. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

The rhythmical element is extremely important in No signal detected(you mean

First of all to be referenced along side and to see a likeness to Kenneth Anger is humbling to

say the least. To liken my work to a dance is also somewhat encouraging, I try to create tensions and marriages through a piece, in the looping elements, the loops within loops and also how we are seeing and hearing the reconfigured footage. The rhythm comes through a process of exploration of content, through looking at what I’ve shot and how its framing and length has a cadence to it. When I find these moments I then work around and through them. Repetition of a section, how it’s start and end can be expanded, contracted and built upon. It’s an exploration totally. The trick is finding the resonance of the movement, the particular something about what it is in front of me. A section that sings a little louder than others is usually what any given piece gets built upon. Keep in mind also that I always have a lingering (oft deafening) resonance of the original moment too- from the time when the material was filmed and experienced by my person.

Small Choir reveals a remarkable effort to extend the boundaries of human perception or to be more precise, to manipulate it and release it from its most primitive parameters in its search for physiological sensations. Can you introduce our readers to this fundamental concept of your art research?

The concept of my work is not fixed or defined as yet, I’m confident in its development through practice, experience and refinement.

My practice and its root concern are evolving and developing very much as I, a person, an adventurer are also. Fundamentally I’m interested in how the moving image can be used as a vessel for how we see and hear the world around us.

I see the use of the natural world as offering an infinite palette that can be used to shape and alter perceptions of place and our appreciation of time. I’m totally into a seduction of the senses, a bewilderment and a celebration in what the natural environment offers us and then in turn reshaping these moments for my audience. I think that we can use the framed world, the captured moments that we may not pay much attention to and charge them with meaning and potential for interrogation and exploration. Periphery and the sidelines of our encounters of experience interest me greatly. Using the natural landscape is in a way a portal for me to focus my feelings, emotions and concerns of my own life and my observations and growing concerns with how the world spins current.

Your films often use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional and philosophical inquires. Rural landscapes are no doubt a topos, a recurring element, of your cinema...We find stimulating the way you explore the boundaries between natural and synthetic environments in Small Choir. Can you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of our work?

Let’s think about how we see, and what we are seeing. Re-working somewhat known experiences or understood visual cues offers a platform in which the audience can engage with the work. When the perception of something acts outside of its natural order, its significance can start to become something else entirely. Locations have often for me been a vessel and container of emotions and memory. They can be the impulse to change

and carriers of the aspects of our experience that make us, us. I find myself processing and challenging my views and internal directions by focusing these energies into the exploration via the framed lens. In turn I process these internal rhythms as I film, then re-work and resolve, attempt to articulate these concerns when I work with the captured material. The synthetic element of the work comes through the abstraction of these moments, I rarely use

effects beyond grading footage or manipulating what is within the frame. The abstractions are for the most part, are created within the camera, and in the sequencing of the edited footage. The landscape for me offers drama, tension and an embracement of the sublime very much so. When I collect material I do so with an acknowledgement and embracement of the changing weathers and how my location can change and cannot be

planned. I can just react and engage with these locations. It is a physical exercise actively exploring and experiencing via the lens.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

Flickers of images, flickers of words, something I’ve had, something I’ve lost,

internal tensions and rhythms. But more practically, I arrive on location, I spend time with location and be open and committed to its changing state, in a way the intent is to get lost within the process of capturing material and to let myself by infused to the material in the process. This process has allowed for some of the more sublime memories of my life, and they enrich the working process ongoing.

We dare say that starting point of your art research is not sound itself, but musical thinking, which is at the same time gestural and architectonic. Can you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art?

In trying to approximate and manipulate perceptions of time, I need to utilize processes and develop a compositional logic towards the shape and structure of a piece. Musical strategies like repetition and looping are the foundations of much of my work. In fact I look to music often as a reference and source of inspiration. Using sound also allows another opportunity towards the emotion or theme of a piece. It has the ability to provide a thematic coloring of a work. Your statement is very much on point, I think towards the seen very much with a musical consideration. Using sound in the way I do also refers to the original source location, and allows another layer of abstraction and point of departure. It brings a physicality to the space also. It creates synergies and alignments of the two senses. I can then play around with this dynamic both in the making and the presentation of.

Your art is rich of references. We have previously mentioned Kenneth Anger, however your visual imagery seems to be closer to Sergei Paradjanov's atmospheres. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

something I’ve got. It’s tricky to articulate the genesis of a particular work. It can sometimes be an urge for a encounter of location or a representation of a particular place and time, sometimes reflecting a personal moment and sometimes very much a person. It comes oft from the heart initially and is processed very much as such. It is also about my love for solitude in nature and how I use this as catharsis and processing of my own constant

Many of my art heroes are in fact musicians or composers of music. Steve Reich and his Music for 18 Musicians piece is by far and away the (to date) most impressionable piece of art and one I still find much inspiration from. His approach to composition has impacted my approach incredibly. Stephan Mathieu is a magician of texture and stasis, his works fill my ears constantly. The american artist Doug Aitken and his approach to multi-channel video (and use of audio within) also shaped my considerations of using the gallery space.

Making video work more of a sculptural work.

He articulates time so wonderfully and with such lush production. The writings of Stan Brakhage, “Metaphors of Vision� is a bible to me, as is the P Adams Sitney Visionary Film book. I re-read and take reference to these almost as spirit guides for how I explore the moving-image via the camera lens. They blow my mind still. Closer to home David Noonan mystifies me with his beautiful work and

Daniel Crooks constantly lifts the standard of what video can achieve in exploding concepts of time.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Scott, we wish you all the best with your video artist career. What's next for Scott Morrison? Have you a particular work in mind?

I’ve just finished installing the first major work from a 2014 residency period in Canada and America. It’s a two channel work that articulates the incredible impact that this time had on my person. I’m creating a new approach to my practice by exploring making smaller short loops as an ongoing series of studies called Tension Sketches. The material from this period is being worked on ongoing and constantly. I’m intrigued and in demand of

contrasts and am planning a January exploration into the Nordic regions of the world to record new landscapes and embrace the variations to what I know current. I’m actively wanting to challenge myself, my practice and in turn, my audience.

A still from ELAN

Slawomir Milewski

An interview with

Slawomir Milewski Slawomir Milewski displays an extraordinary cinematography in this intensive, poetic and visionary film. In Ecstasy of St. Agnes the fantastic and the absurd are rendered in clear and precise images. Indeed, it would be interesting to compare his films to the cinema of Bela Tarr, where images progress moment by moment, conveying a purely subjective, yet modernist, sensibility where the form conveys its meaning directly, and fully. We are glad to present for this year's Videofocus Edition Slawomir Milewski.

Slawomir, how did you get into experimental cinema?

Accidently. I thought I would be the painter.

At university I had to make some work in order to pass the subject. I could choose any medium. I started to make some animations and videos. I found I was able to express in them things which were difficult to articulate in a still picture. But I had never named it as a film or video or whatever. Many years after when I made Ecstasy of St. Agnes I realized I made the film... And even now it still seems to be weird for me I make films.

multichannel screening that you are not able to watch all screens at the same time. But my approach to the picture is more traditional, like icons in Byzantium - where the spectactor was subordinated to the picture. The picture were the light itself. This approach were completely opposite to the Reneissance's where perspective priciples subordinated the picture to the spectactor. However besides history of art, this shift from multichannel to single channel made me more a filmmaker than a video artist I think.

The natural settings you have chosen are expansive, while the stories that you film are very intimate. It is as if you were searching constantly for a confrontation between the exterior and interior of things. Can you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of your work?

That is actually interesting.. The confrontation you are asking about wasn't intentional really.

It just simply happened - rather as a result of 'accidenting at work'. Of course it is propably tempting to speak about inner-, outer- matter, introversy - extraversy and so on. But it is not me. Let's leave this matter for Mr. Lynch for instance.

The first scenes I filmmed indoor and when I had realized I was not able to make the whole project interesting without outdoor scenes I went with my camcorder onto the London streets. The one thing which I was interested in doing was how could I change the meaning of filmed sequences or wipe out any cliches from a semantic point of view. Afterwards, composing - like you said exterior and interior

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with idea for this work?

Well, first of all I need to say this work was my first one after moving from Poland to the UK. Being abroad you are different. And this work was different from everything else which I had done before. In Poland at university I was interested more in multichannel video. I had started to work with Ecstasy of St. Agnes in this same manner. Initialy I planned to work with 2 screens at the same time. There were many doubled or twined scenes which you can't see in final single channel version. Also the first version was 50 minutes long. Then I realized there is no difference between watching two screens at the same time then from watching one screen so I gave up. I started to reduce everything to one screen.

You can say of course it is quite essential in

An artist's statement

I was 27 or 28 when I first started working on Ecstasy of St. Agnes. There were a lot of changes in my life in that time and I had the need to express my state of mind in - let’s say –a complete way.

Thus Ecstasy of St. Agnes became the visual ‘poem’ about transgression and my personal erratum of youth also.

‘The picture is impossible’ says one of the characters of Ecstasy of St. Agnes. This kind of impossibility I am showing by libidinal energy expressed in rhythm of pictures and juxtaposing them.

Slawomir Milewski

of things - I really cared about achiving something which I would call 'semantic symmetry'.

You have a peculiar sense of time nad rythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking. How do you conceive the rhytm of your works?

Rythm and repetition are parts of human rites.

By saying human rites I mean really a wide range of activities: from mystic or religious rituals to somebody's every day's jogging habit for instance. This is the shamanism which we are treating ourselves or others. The purpose of it is very simple - it is like building bridges over dangerous river. Rits are like very short, intense explosion of thoughts or state of mind which are giving answers in the situation of individual or common anxiety. Rythm, repeatability and exaggeration awake the brain which sends endorphins to the blood system, achiving releasing of pain, sensation of power and so on. It is not without reason that many rits are the rits of transgression.

Ecstasy of St. Agnes is an essay about transgression. .. and consequently, Poor People Must Die, my next movie became an essay about the posttransgressed situation.

Your shots reveal a strong sense of composition: when you write a scene, do you keep in mind the place of the actors on the screen?

Film is still a picure and must be treated as a picture. And it is more important for me than let's say - the dialogues. That's why you can find in my works spoken parts which are completely not related to what is shown. And in this funny, paradoxical way they are connected even more.

And, yes, before the shot I used to sketch the composition of the scenes.

We have been really impressed by the balance you have been capable of achieving in this work between classical sensibility and a futuristic vision. We find that your art is rich of references, from Bernini to avant-garde cinema: can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Mourice Bejart said the classic (past) is for the artist the same as grammar is for the

language. And creativity is just the deformation of this classic. When deformation becomes stronger the rules of grammar must be respected more strongly also.

When I was 12, Polish TV showed the Twin Peaks series. I think I belong to last generation which spent its childhood outdoor. But once per week at 6pm all the kids from the neighbourhood including myself were leaving their bikes, footballs and basketballs in the middle of the street and running home to watch Twin Peaks. I think Lynch's series put us on a different, twisted track, discovering the dark side or - using Camille's Paglia expression -'chtonian nature, west's dirty secret.'

One of the characters of your film says 'The picture is impossible'. Could you comment this fundamental concept of 'impossibility' in Ecstasy of St. Agnes?

When I was working with Ecstasy of St. Agnes I thought I would not be able to screen it anywhere because of the content. I treated it very personal, nearly intimate. Some parts was done with not good quality of resolution and I thought it never will be treated as a professional work. Working with it was like writing my own life. Anything which happened in my life in this time immedietaly was transferred to this picture. There are a lot of reminiscences from my past, experiencing new places, new persons etc. Thus Ecstasy of St.

Agnes became a kind of erratum of my youth.

Although I think I expressed myself in this picture, it was temporary only. Impossibility is involved into the creativity process. I think the purpose of artistic deed is not possibility but impossibility. The result of the activity is the object only, eg picture. This is kind of compromise: I am creating a possible picture which assumes 'unexpressed', which I can articulate only by revealing I am concealing or assuming it. Propably it is quite metaphysical but in Dionistic way or - again - chtonian.

What was the most challenging thing about making this film?

Connecting so many different scenes in one composition was defenitely very exciting. 20 minutes of this kind of 'narration' might be boring or might overwhelm. Experimenting with rythm helped me to avoid this situation I hope.

As I mentioned first version of Ecstasy of St. Agnes had nearly 50 minutes and it didn't work. I lost the clearness of meaning. Keeping the balance of readability was a chalange as I wanted to say too many things at the same time. And I had to cut.

The final version is 20 minutes long but if I could make it again I would close the whole composition within 10 -13 minutes and it will look much stronger. Now it is too late..

The first minutes could have been the minutes of Bela Tarr's film too, if it wouldn't have been for the filming way, the warm atmosphere. Since the first scene, the viewer is not asked to meditate on the action in progress decrypting a series of hidden symbols, but to follow the logic of sensation. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project.

I have never had the oportunity to watch Bela Tarr's films. I have never had the oportunity to watch any Hungarian film really...

Creativity process in my filmmaking begins within editing. And I am just editing. Of course

accidental juxtapositions of pictures or scenes which just blows my mind and I know this is what I was looking for. The process is simmilar to painting.

And regarding 'the logic of sensation'.. You don't have to understand everything watching this kind of movie because you will understand it in certain way anyway. When you are going to funfair you don't need to undrestand the mechanism of certain machines there in order to enjoy it - if you enjoy this kind of stuff of course. I don't (laugh). Film is like the funfair full of sad clowns, like somebody said ages ago.

Thanks for sharing your time, Slawomir, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Slawomir Milewski? Have you a particular film in mind?

Well, after Ecstasy of St Agnes I made 23 minutes long Poor People Must Die which I still consider to be my best made composition regarding not even the content but the structure and timing. And recently I made several very short forms which are kind of sketches which prepare me to much larger project, maybe full-lengh future form. In this work I will try to explore our needs for excess in a bit Georges Bataille's manner.

I have to shot, set lighting for shoting and so on but it is less interesting.

I am this Vertov's 'the man with a movie camera'. I film at the streets, I film my friends when I prepare staging scenes. I film friends of my friends. I film people who are not my friends at all and sometimes I film really unfriendly people too. (laugh) I have quite large archive of shots. Some of them were made intentionaly for certain ideas or project, some of them were not. Many of them are the back stages which sometimes became main scenes as they seem to be more interesting. Sometimes I edit for long hours and I cannot find anything. Sometimes I open the software and straight away I find

Thank you so much. I loved your questions.

Isabelle Vorle What are waters, what are winds

There is water, or rather waters, for beyond its material aspect, charged with its context and sediments, it becomes plural.

In a puddle, reflecting a graphical image of branches; then swooping in the natural slope of the landscape, they bounce over mossy rocks, like that apple floating, diving and reappearing in the swirls.

This is a succession of tightly framed short shots until the appearance of a peaceful sea image of which we see moments taken from a full day, in fades-out. No human presence in the frameworks just the sound connecting our breaths to a fluid universe.

The winds are breaths, snippets of respiratory and instrumental sound waves: from a note, I only keep the resonance of it, and from a word I only keep the moments where the being breathes in.

These sound materials are the source of the film; I have used them as physical materials, gave them thickness by concentrating them, overlapping them to create an arrhythmia. Two waves end up crashing over the pebbles.

The contemplative spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema and his relation to landscape have always inspired me as well as video artist Robert Cahen's freedom of tone in a powerful relationship between image and music.

Contrasting with most of my films in which one can hear an uttered or sung poem, the connection to poetry of What are waters, what are winds get through the title, taken from a book of Hilda Morley (Black Mountain College), who herself borrowed it from W.B. Yeats, in an endless artistic genealogy just as life is spread by breath, water and wind.

Isabelle Vorle

An interview with

Isabelle Vorle The hallmark of Isabelle Vorle's talent resides in her acute sensitivity. Her experimental cinema reveals a highly original and consistent vision of time and space: in her refined film "What are waters, what are winds" she develops, through a sapient use of tight shots, a reflective style of fimmaking close to Tarkovsky's notion of editing subservient to the time-thrust. We are pleased to present Isabelle Vorle for this Videofocus Edition. Isabelle, you are a multidisciplinary artist, your work ranges from painting to video: how did you get into experimental cinema?

In France, art schools deliver a comprehensive education and up to my degree (1994) I have experienced all disciplines of the visual arts. I predominately did painting, drawing and installations, and I realized a 3 minutes video.

This first production was a kind of self-portrait through the multiplicity of my activities; I first worked on the soundtrack on which I wanted to place the images, in order to establish a precise synchronization (difficult with the vintages editing tables!). I still work the same way: starting my film projects most often by the sound, and then establishing a clocked editing.

Then I continued painting, made sound installations, and in 2001, embarked on a new film project following the discovery of a crubling building - an old icehouse - which inspired and fascinated me, but was "unplayable" in my painting practice. At this time I shot the pictures, but I finished editing Froid Sylans 9 years later, in 2010.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for “What are waters, what are winds�?

Initially I had a soundtrack project only, no idea of images. I intented to work in the infrathin, to resume Marcel Duchamp word: breaths each emits differently between sentences,

catching your breath; and the resonance in the case of a musical instrument, each note is first audible by "attack", then this sound spreading around, decreasing gradually.

I first composed the soundtrack, which made me think about the notion of cycle, and I treated these sounds as physical materials.

This breath constantly taken up by us reminded me of pictures I shot last summer: from a fixed overhanging point I had filmed the waves crashing on the shingle, from dawn to dusk , along a quiet day.

At that moment, I thought about this fascinating Yeats's verses ' What are winds / What are waters? " which is also the title of a book by the poet Hilda Morley, devoted to her husband the composer Stefan Wolpe (both spent many years at Black Mountain College).

And I decided that in the film we would see nothing but water, from a puddle to the sea, through the river....

Your sapient use of temps mort is indeed an attempt at a more abstract narrative cinema: your films often approaches the sheer lyrical quality of visual music. The recurrent use of static shots marked by barely perceivable inner movements Ă la Tsai Ming Liang highlights the dualism between movement and fixation. Could you introduce our readers to this concept characterizing your cinema?

Indeed, although I shoot real things, there is probably an abstract dimension in my films; and there is certainly a poetic and musical dimension. I often work with poets and musicians, and this dimension initiates most of my film projects.

My downtimes separate rather dense sequences, so that the viewer has time to let him off the image before being ready for what's next. Recently for "What are waters, what are winds" and "Badami Song" I created monochrome plans, whose color will result from the last image seen, and slowly change hues to enter the following sequence.

It's a bit like when you read a book that makes you think: sometimes you look up, sometimes you close your eyes to digest what you just read.

The River of Tsai Ming Liang is one of those films that has remained a long time in my mind, I love the way he slowly let the audience

Isabelle Vorle

get into the understanding of the causes and consequences, I think it should be left to the viewer his way with his own sensibility. That's why I integrate various tempo; if I make a static shot of a landscape, I leave you the time to see things, and there is always something going on in a landscape! As the amazing director Sergei Parajanov used to say: "It seemed to me that a static image, in cinema, may have a depth, like a miniature, a plastic, an internal dynamic ...".

Your deeply personal films often use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional and philosophical inquires.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

When I'm shooting, I am very concentrated and simultaneously in a contemplation process, present to what is here, to life in front of me. I intend to film some things, but others may happen, that's even what happens most of the time: there is always something happening in the landscape, whatever the landscape is (for this reason I never think in terms of setting but always in terms of landscape ).

It is very different when I'm in the editing phase, since things do not occur like that, it is the juxtaposition of sequences that constructs the film!

What are waters, what are winds contains a clear reference to W.B. Yeats, yet your filmmaking style seems to take at heart Wordsworth's concept of poetic creation, embracing the aesthetics of visual clarity.

How did you develop your visual style?

I read and rubs poets since I was 20. This has brought in my work a particular artistic approach of the world, through ellipse and density (unless this has coinceded with a penchant!).

I met Wordsworth's poetry first by visiting his home in the Lake District, when I was preparing my film about the artist Kurt Schwitters, who had lived in exile in the nearby village until his death. The sense of wonder of the poet from the world around us, the details that makes reality so amazing, that sometimes one could forget to look at, are close to me. On the whole, poetry has helped me to find a way to organize and edit sequences of my films, which are rarely

connected by a linear story, a realistic narrative. Each sequence probably has it's own clearness, even if their relationship are not necessarily obvious. One could possibly talk about a poetic arrangement in this case, where

the emotion, as in Wordsworth's poems, comes first?

history. No time unit, but either no space unit:

This would then immediately highlights a temporality other than biological life or

in several locations.

the sequences of What are winds were filmed

Can you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art research?

involved. But my artistic curiosity embraces a variety of fields, which nourishes my work directly or indirectly.

Henceforce I introduce myself as a painter and filmmaker, although other areas are regularly

The paintings I realize are related to "Colorfield" and the gesture in my practice is

significantly controlled (I sometimes say that I "dance my painting"), abstract shapes whose lines are traces. I draw a lot, most of the time in watercolor, in continuation of this pictorial practice.

We have found really stimulating the soundscape of your work. Leoš Janáček's music, in particular Diary of one who disappeared, has deeply influenced your work, When did you get in touch with his music for the first time?

I think I heard this piece for the first time in the early 90s on a vinyl record, and I remember having instantly loved it. I studied the piano a few years in my childhood and I am always looking for weird piano or vocal works; yet the topic interests me hugely: racism and preconceived ideas that prevents a love story.

Gypsies are bullied in Europe, moreover the economic crisis boost violent impulses against them. My film, and first Janáček's work, are there to take apart that fear of difference.

Can you introduce our readers to your work Diary of one who disappeared?

I've been thinking at length about this film; I had to avoid just illustrating the music. I had to put the team of musicians for the interpretation of this difficult work, this project required more than four years of work.

I have chosen to focus on the character of the Gypsy, and I wanted us to hear the opera entirely without seeing the musicians singing, yet without theater stage; the cycle of poems that constitute the libretto is very beautiful to

me, and I wanted to give it a real place, so that we can read the translation, which I have included in the image. I learned the basics of the Czech language in order to give a new translation that suits me, and I shot in the living places of Janáček and poet Ozef Kalda in Moravia (Central Europe).

I filmed the singer A. von Arx mute in natural situations, in mountains and forests. Without systematically reflecting to the situations set forth by the poem, I searched a kind of timeless atmosphere, to talk about themes also timeless. I do not think that one can really detect it, but in this project I was inspired by the spirit of Sergei Parajanov’s films.

In your cinema drama is stripped down to its essential elements to introduce space, gaps and temps mort, in which the viewer project his own emotions. Indeed, it would be interesting to compare your films to the experimental cinema of Robert Cahen.

Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Oh! I could cite a hundred! While I was still a student, I met David Tremlett, AurĂŠlie Nemours, then the red monochrome painter Rupprecht Geiger; their works resonate with my keen interest in the work on color. Of course, teachers have also influenced my artistic process, especially GĂŠrard Cairaschi, who makes beautiful videos using images flicker complex.

The painter, poet, sculptor, performer and "father" of installation, Kurt Schwitters, focused my research for many years, and led to Schwitttrace movie in 2005. I often gazed at artists like James Turrell, Bill Viola, Helio Oiticica, Anish Kapoor and Gary Hill, and also Anna Halprin, Merce Cunningham, for example. They share a kind of plastic simplicity joint to concentration.

Robert Cahen and Hannes SchĂźpbach's films are probably the closest to my work although they do not share the same drive and stakes. I also watched a lot Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Andrei Tarkovsky, Abbas

Kiarostami, Agnes Varda, David Lynch and Marguerite Duras movies ...

One of the most important films for me is Chris Marker's Sans Soleil; I love his poetic way to connect dozens of things related to different times and places, I also like the need to watch the film many times to capture its different sides. I'm bored if I immediately understand a film, or a painting!

Thanks for sharing your time, Isabelle, we wish you all the best with your artist career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

Currently, I am working on a video installation project for the St Denis's Cathedral (where the kings of France are buried), which will be showed for the Night of the Cathedrals, 9th of May 2015, although I have several film projects in preparation, including one about the famous Basel's carnival (Switzerland).

Johan Parent An artist's statement

Self lavage is a short film which shows the putting into service, vacuous, the night, of an automobile car wash point. The video lasts the time of the temporal process of the machine; wiever contemplate in a performance.

The karcher starts in rhythm, as a dance show. It refer to the first machinist creations of the beginning of the 20th century, as the movie « The mechanical Ballet « of Fernand Léger ( 1924 ). This movie shows a fascination, for the manufactured objects and for the ideal harmony between the man and the machine But here the ballet is made without the man, the machine conquered its autonomy, up to the absurd. The action has no end and temporality: This vision commonplace of the work of machines, becomes at night, disturbing and wild, in a ‘‘ urban scene’’ which we do not control. ( Extracted from the communiqué of the exhibition Asphalt, La Serre. Galerie Nomade, Institute of Contemporary Art of Villeurbanne)

Johan Parent

An interview with

Johan Parent Johan Parent’s cinema reveals a reflective, interior style of fimmaking close to Tarkovsky’s notion of editing subservient to the time-thrust. In Self Lavage he creates a time-based works that allow the viewer to abandon himself to his associations, like in the early films by the Korean master Tsai Ming Liang.

We are pleased to pre- sent Johan Parent fot this Videofocus Edition. Johan, how did you get started in experimental cinema?

I have begun an experimental cinema when I was student in school of fine arts. Teachers showed films of the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, we have been meeting many art contemporary artist and video maker. Art school had interest for new media and experimentation in cinema and others installations.

The recurrent use of static shots marked by barely perceivable inner movements à la Bela Tarr highlight the dualism between movement and fixation.

We have been impressed by your peculiar use of temps mort and static shots reminding us of Antonioni’s films. You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European cinema. Could you comment this peculiar aspect of your work?

The dualism between movement and fixation are present in my work.

In Self Lavage, the shot is fixed and frontal. I think it’s more immersive for the viewer. It allows me to pay more attention to the running action, that’s to say to the machine’s movement. In this film, the static point of view reveals a poetic and strange vision. With the static shot, the viewer becomes a voyeur.

In some movies of Bela Tarr and and Antonioni, the movement shows the importance of visual situations so strongly, that it is impossible to react by an action. In Self Lavage, t emps mort brings a kind of contemplation.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for this Self La- vage ?

I wanted to associate the documentary film aspect (of object’s performance) to a cinematographic universe, strange and contemplative. Time notion is very important because I wanted the performance of objects to be autonomous. In this film, the recording of video camera corresponds to machine process. Film begins when the machine is starting, and it shuts down when machines shut off. It’s an autonomous sequence shot.

I’ve chosen to film this movie in car wash station because I’m fascinated by machine’s movements and I like car travel.

Self Lavage contains a clear reference to Fernand Léger’s work. When did you get in touch with his pioneristic cinema?

Fernand Léger’s work is an older reference. I have known his work when I was young. Self lavage refers to the first machinist creations of the beginning of the 20th century, as the movie « The mechanical Ballet» of this artist.

This title is for me very poetic, and it reflects the machine movement in my film. Léger’s film shows a fascination, for the manufactured objects and for the ideal harmony between the man and the machine. But in my work, the ballet is made without people. This vision of the work of machines becomes at night, disturbing and wild, in an ‘‘ urban scene’’ which we do not control.

The status of objects in our society is a fundamental starting point of your art research: can you introduce our readers to this aspect of your work?

I am interested in the object and its relationship to space, to introduce activity (movement, sound wave...) or a kind of malfunction. It reveals autonomy and autarky of object which shows detachment between people, object and environ- ment. With this autonomous systems, I try to express two opposite ideas: First, I introduce a kind of life in the objects. The second idea is that people feels a dehumanized sensation when it looks works that I produced. It creates a double meaning and a distance.

Johan Parent

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

There is no rule. I observe and think. I make the creative process according to my projects

We have previously mentioned Fernand LĂŠger, yet your work is rich of cinematic influences, from Tsai Ming Liang to Antonioni. Can you tell us your biggest

and Rebecca Horn. These two people work in contemporary art and video art. Their mechanical and industrial universe are very poetic. They push to work on the condition of the object, the malfunction, the autonomy.

Like in mirror, this aspect reflects our human condition and shows a poetic, absurd and strange vision of the world surrounding us.

Thanks for sharing your time, Johan, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What’s next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

My work is multiform. I’m working on several projects. I have actually a project of movie: It’s a thought on the time recording film, like Self Lavage. Thanks to an organic matter, the idea is to film directly the dematerialization and di- sappearance of a scenery to reveal the medium which allows us to look at images in movement. I want to speak about the screen of viewing.

influences in art and how they have affected your work?

I have many references in art and cinema, but I always mention two artists: Roman Signer

Su Ling Gyr An artist's statement Fashion Bone is a performance-based video art piece shot in 2013.

Exploring ongoing themes in my work, investigating cultural projections of identity through fashion, body and dolls, the animate and inanimate, Fashion Bone is the first performance-based piece of video work I have conceived.

Resting on elements of my early illustration where I analyze cyclical, multi-layered identities, developing an innate visual iconography such as serpentlike structures in addition to sculpture around mirrors and dolls and other video work, I have further developed my practice-based research around

identity’s multi-layering, this time through a performative approach.

Deliberately shot by a fashion photographer and edited by myself, Fashion Bone inspects the multilayered ideas of objectification and subjectification in fashion, culture and art.

The sound to the piece, which includes a poem by myself, read by Artist Norah Dineen and a soundrack by Antony Hequet, was recorded in the old GDR propaganda radio station in East Berlin, a historic place of cultural indoctrination.

The aesthetic of the video, brightly and diffusely lit, white-blending and minimalistic, shot by Fashion Photographer Nick West (Nick & Chloe) and performed and edited by myself, creates a clinical,

artificial atmosphere suggestive of the intention fashion has to alter or to homogenize.

this through indoctrination, monotone poetry and homogenous colour.

On the one hand the video aesthetic represents the clinically clean, the ideologically sterile, the beautiful, while on the other hand it deals with the existential component of our physical being, which is bone. This bone however, ironically being fake yet again. The sound is also recorded in a rhythmic, monotonous tone, reminiscent of religious chanting, on the contrary the words being confrontational.

It is in the tension between order and chaos, where our thirst for cultural perfection is inextricably tangled together in an ever-evolving pattern.

This pattern is complex and diffuse, on the outside seemingly monochrome, and on the inside a myriad of patterns, colour and a construction of raw biological elements. Just like everything else in Molecular biology, it is not what it seems at first glance. The closer you inspect it, the more you see, and the more you get confused.

Fashion Bone therefore presents a cyclical, inevitable ritual, metaphorical for death and rebirth channeling the existential nature of fashion and vanity in relation to our cultural codes. It is about skin and surface in contrast to bone and substance. The ideology of renewal or eternal life, and preserving

Fashion Bone is about revealing fundamentals, yet packaging the whole thing in a pleasant way, so the viewers can choose themselves how far they want to go under the microscope and ultimately question the nature of the video.

An interview with

Su Ling Gyr Multi-media Artist Su Ling Gyr's effort to explore the concepts of objectification and subjectification in fashion, culture and art reveals a sophisticated and personal reinvention of visual identity in the 21st century. In her refined performance video Fashion Bone, the traditional language of film is blown up to mimic clichés while she takes on the conventions of mainstream cinema. We are pleased to present Su Ling Gyr for this year's Videofocus Edition.

Su ling, how did you get into filmmaking?

I was always interested in film and the moving image, I watch at least one movie every day, so I am obsessed with movies! I got into film making, by filming myself a few years ago. I wanted to do a monologue titled ‘multidirectionals’ and so I had to film it myself, since I would be too self conscious being filmed by someone else and that would influence the quality of the work and its honesty. After that, I tought myself some editing programs, and then I started to really like working with video.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Fashion Bone?

Fashion Bone is actually a multi-media project and spans different media to convey quite a diverse theme. I made sculptures, photography and a film for Fashion Bone.

The video, ‘Fashion Bone’, which I am going to talk about here, came about quite early in the project and is what I think, most directly addresses the theme. I actually came up with the starting concept for Fashion Bone many years ago, long before I decided to flesh out the idea and call it by its name. I studied fashion and worked in fashion, so fashion has always been of interest to me, but as it turned out, not necessarily from a commercial perspective, more from an anthropological-sociological-psychological perspective. I think that if you follow your intuition, it will lead you into things you might not know why you might be doing them in the beginning, but if you look back it all makes sense. I was always drawn to clothes,

Su Ling Gyr the body and the relation of the two in a very strong way. The concepts of adornment and vanity, sexuality and how these can be viewed, distorted, fetishized. There were several pivotal moments in my early formation, that marked my interest in what later would be Fashion Bone. I remember the first show I worked on when I was 20, it was a Dior charity show at the Royal Opera House in London, and I was

assisting in dressing the models backstage. I remember them being very drunk before they went down the catwalk, almost as if they had to be intoxicated in order to objectify themselves and be confident. To me it all seemed bizarre; they were proud and beautiful, magnificent in their couture and all the hard work that went into creating it. On the other hand there was a dark and merciless energy; the

atmosphere backstage was a mix of contradictory concepts. Depending on how you would view it, it could be wonderful or horrendous; I am interested in opposites, distortions and dispositions. There were some projects that I did at college that unconsciously preluded the Fashion Bone idea; in one, I used hand stitching on clothing, that looked like stitches of scars holding together flesh, so I was always

interested in an underlying dark energy that I felt echoing from the happy world of fashion.

My very first project, was about myself flying around in space, like a supernova, wearing my own space-age creations, so I essentially objectified myself and created a photo-story and pinned it on a wall for viewers to see, when other students were presenting actual commercially viable collections on models. Another time I tied myself to a pole, wearing a dress that I had created, looking something like Tarzan Jane from biblical times..I liked that mix of total opposites, fashion and the ugly, beautiful and brutal, I felt an urge to express something that I felt originating from what we call ‘fashion’.

So to answer your question, I think that Fashion Bone was therefore born long ago.

The rhythmical element is extremely important in Fashion Bone. By definition cinema is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

I am drawn to rhythm and replication in my work in general. Perhaps that is also something that you can see in fashion, there are a lot of cyclical elements and repetition. In Fashion Bone, I wanted to use rhyme for the voiceover, and rhyme creates rhythm. I have funnily always been rhyming a lot. I create rhymes about friends, my pet, my online facebook character, but this time, I wanted the humorous aspect of rhyme to talk about something that is not funny at all. Rhyme is also used to indoctrinate in political ideologies, it is equally used for childrens nursery rhymes. Because it’s easy to understand and to memorize it was also used to entertain uneducated people in popular slang in the middle ages, and so I thought it fitting to use rhyme when talking about Fashion Bone, since fashion is also a kind of indoctrination and classification, one that we learn from a very early age. Rhyme is great to accompany moving images, and you can abstract it really well too. There is something contained about rhyme. It has a beat, a flow and its often predicting the next line, similarly as film and cinema does a scene. Rhyme also limits you somewhat, because you have to look for words that fit, like in film, you also make a scene that makes sense and fits the story and in the end feeds into the rhythm of the plot. I cut the images to match the text. We did however shoot the performance before we did the text. Originally I had intended a totally

different text. Initially, I wanted to have prose like a beauty commercial, but then we tried it and it didn’t work at all. It seemed contrived and annoying, so a few weeks later, I wrote the rhyme to Fashion.

So the rhythm and rhyme of Fashion Bone you could argue came from somewhere existing already, and was then elaborated into the artwork. So in essence the rhythm is also very intuitive.

You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking. How did you develop your filmmaking style?

My background is not really in film, more in art and fashion, so I use film to express something, that does not necessarily start of as a filmic concept. Its not really a matter of a specific medium for me, its more about the vision, then comes the choice of medium; stylistic aspects follow. I think the creative sensibility on a conceptual plane as well as an aesthetic one can be applied to anything; you see that when you look at early movies from filmmakers before they have big budgets and top crews, sometimes these are some of their best works, in other words, its not the skill, technicality or even budget that make an intriguing piece it’s the vision behind it, the feeling, the atmosphere. Many filmmakers also make art, although they are not noted so much for it.

A strong vision or message which precedes a strong style, can not really be developed as such, either you have it or you don’t. I am hoping the style of my videos is genuine and not too much influenced by style trends, since it is really a style based on a concept, an idea.

Since everything has already been done, it’s a matter of finding your inner sensibilities and following that as best you can. A good way for me to create this was through performing in the video myself, that really gave me a strong connection to my subject. I choose the style of my videos relating to the subject, rather than a subject relating to a style.

Time in Fashion Bone is flat. I tried to create a sense of timelessness because the subject Fashion Bone is timeless yet talking about something that is very much about contemporaneity, fashion is of its time, it is contemporaneity. Again the concept of opposites. In the video, I ritualistically get dressed, and ‘groom’ a bone, so there is some sequential action, but the rhythmic monotonous voice-over kills this sense of progression and fixates the whole thing in time.

Similarly fashion, although always innovating, always about novelty, is essentially also always the same timeless fixation on the themes that Fashion Bone discusses, such as vanity, sexuality, beauty and so on. I think the style and sense of time for Fashion Bone came about in

really focusing on my subject and my innate vision for it as best I could.

Defining your artistic vision, the theme of objectification and subjectification is a starting point of your filmmaking, reminding us of Harun Farocki's cinema.

Could you introduce our readers to this concept?

I respect Harun Farocki’s work a lot, but I was not thinking of it when I was making Fashion Bone. I think for one, I am a woman, so the theme is relevant to us women in many ways.

There is something incredibly romantic in objectification, but only if you choose to do it.

Fashion projects gender tension and its socio-

objectifies us without our permission, it’s a different story. It’s a total loss of control. Sometimes this role playing between object and subject can be very stimulating and rewarding, other times, it’s not desired and imprisons the person who is being objectified either by him/herself or by another person.

In our culture fashion has been used both positively and also negatively to objectify us, women especially. This struggle between being in control and being controlled is a theme that is relevant to fashion but also to my work, since the process of making art, is in itself also about objectification and subjectification, taking control over your ideas, and turning them into something. The artist is in a wider sense also objectifying him/herself by selling something highly personal; for me this is also a type of self-objectification. So the theme is very multifold. In general, when I work with themes, they are often multi-fold and pop up in several different contexts. As I mentioned above, I am interested in opposites, and objectification and subjectification is a bit like two flip sides of the same coin, which depending on your disposition, can be viewed one way or another.

Your art is rich of references. From the first time we watched your film, it reminded us of William Klein's imagery, even though your filmmaking and composing style is very far from what is generally considered 'academic'. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work? Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your art?

logical and cultural implications. It also conveys contemporaneity differently from other cultural expressions such as music or literature, because it speaks politically through the body, and the body is one of my main interests.

I have always used the body as a springing point for my work. The body is a prime example of subject vs. object, especially from a female perspective. Objectification and subjectification, can be voluntary or involuntary, they can be empowering or degrading.

When we think of out-of-body experiences, it can be very empowering to be able to self-objectify, to see ourselves as an object, or also when we have to switch on auto-pilot and take control of ourselves and manipulate and manage the self and the body. When someone else

William Klein also uses humour and surrealism in his work. On a cinematic level, Mathew Barney’s Cremaster, Mika Rottenberg’s Dough, Sergei Parajanov’s Pommegranate, but also David Lynch’s Lost Highway, there are many.

As for Multi-media, I think Tracy Emin really impressed me in the beginning, Cindy Sherman, Wangechi Mutu, again there are many. I think what unites artists I am drawn to, is a very autobiographical approach. You can feel that they are feeling their work very strongly and that is beautiful, inspiring and intense to witness. Not all work of any given artist speaks to me; generally I don’t really follow artists per se because I don’t follow brands, rather the individual work and not all work can be appealing. For artists themselves and in terms of being influenced, I think its better you go and meditate on a rock somewhere. I do know that the art world is always trying to connect your

work with previous artists, and that kind of makes sense if you think of art history. But to answer your question, although I greatly respect certain artists and love some of their work, I do not really draw inspiration from other artists. I am more interested to try and recreate an atmosphere I have witnessed, dreamt about or felt. Atmospheres are pivotal to my work. I also try to create something that is genuine and profoundly researched in a personal way. My work is quite personal, while hopefully also addressing things that are felt by others; I also hope to maintain a sense of humility while addressing my ideas. The creative process can take you very high and very low, which is in itself quite humbling. I think out of all artforms, I am most drawn to multimedia installations and artists that cross fertilize disciplines and media to create their worlds. I like when other artists can invite me as a viewer into their world. Because we are all individual yet all the same in many ways, so we think we are doing something so different, when actually its just natural and many people are feeling the same.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

I think one thing that all projects have in common is that they have been ripening for quite some time. Usually its something that keeps interesting me and that I keep relating to. The relation can be a personal one, or it can also be relating different concepts to one another, contextualizing something. My projects always start with an intuitive pondering, followed by a dominant thought process that precedes anything else. I then start to do some research and focus my activities around that theme.

Then I start to see things, gather information, meet people who I think would to bring my idea further consciously or subconsciously.

Then I usually start to crystallize the idea visually, however the visuals can change quite a lot through the stages; the idea is what holds everything together in the end.

So in short, it’s a lengthy process that often starts very intuitive, without much thinking, the thought process follows the intuition: I need to examine why I am interested and it’s a bit like playing detective. I am on the look out for answers, signs and clues to create the finished project about something that has been bugging me for some time. Sometimes the whole project is about the question mark, rather than the answer.

Harold Charre "This hybrid movie, arisen from a journey in Myanmar, has been created thanks to the Internet users who sustain for free some data banks of images and sounds. By using them, with an immersive original music I wanted to propose a veritable narrative –an initiatory journey.

The movie is constructed with various images: -Images free of rights on which I mix various techniques.

-Images of a personal journey.

-Images that I shot specifically with a comedian and that I inlayed in certain parts of the journey.

The famous digital revolution is not only a question of technological progress and reduction cinematic tools, it is especially the arrival of the notion of exchange. It is then followed by the evolution of the copyright. Stock footages offered for themselves by Internet users, hundreds of movies fallen in the public domain, belong to us from now, as well as the sound banks exchanged by sound engineers or directors. The free access and the exchange are notions which come to upset our relationship to the image.

And today it is possible to make movies without camera.

I use filters and effects to “bloom” these images, I triturated them, redraw them, fix them, sometimes resuscitate them. I don’t think add something, but on the contrary I have the sensation to dig them, again and again, to see what they contain. In this kind of cinema, it is not thus question of captation, but emergence.

The production of image is not any more in the shooting but in the manipulation of pre-existent images.

This clearly brings cinema and literature. The editing, the heart of the elaboration of the movie, becomes a solitary experience, juggling with images and sounds, like a writer does with words and concepts.

The sound is essential in my work. It is almost the spine of the movie. Beyond creating an universe –a dreamlike, both disturbing and luminous-, the conception of the music was inseparable from the image during the editing.

In very first, I chose the virtual instruments that would build the general atmosphere. Then I created the images. I improvised in the keyboard in front of an unrefined editing, allowing me to be free and to seek first emotion that can appear from the unexpected rather than trying to follow a visual narrative. The last step, the final editing of the images on music.

This chronology has allowed me to bring a freedom –close to the jazz- as well in the stage of the sound recording as during the editing of the images.

The image and the music can thus respond, sometimes gently, sometimes more violently, the one being able to sometimes get the upper hand over the other one.

We do not know any more which is the most important. This results in a profound union of these two arts.

Because of this, “In Between” is a Lied. A trip to both narrative and musical."

An interview with

How did you get into filmmaking?

It came to me very naturally.

Harold Charre Harold Charre's work echoes the oldest forms of cinema, revealing a unique visual and aural imagination. The style of his films - the instantaneous frame bursts, filter and static takes -becomes a record of his own emotional and subjective interaction with his material, whatever it comes from: his film In Between invite the viewer into a haunted, subjective flow of figurative images, featuring surreal and psychedelic imagery.

We are pleased to present Harold's work for this Videofocus Edition. Harold, could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

Every project I choose to work on comes from a reaction. It can be a reaction to the surrounding world – in all its vastness - or to a more intimate space, within my immediate circle of acquaintance.

First of all, I need to question this reaction.

A new project is also a response to the previous films I’ve made. It is both an extension of it and a clear cut from it, because each project should be carried by a will for renewal, a revolutionary momentum. I came to realize that every film I’ve made was influenced and driven by the discovery of new musical harmonies, new sounds that I wanted to explore.

But there is of course a pragmatic aspect to the entire process.

I need to know what I have at my disposal to start on a new project, so I gather information.

If I choose to direct a low budget film, I wonder how many actors would be available, which locations, camera and sound recording equipment...

I go through this kind of check-list and then decide upon which film I’m going to make according to these production tools – which ever they are, I will make a decision and carry on with an idea.

Between my passion for music and my love for folktales and legends, I discovered video-art at an early age and cinema appeared to be the ideal medium to combine all these disciplines.

The world of Opera has also always fascinated me and cinema is somehow close to the modern opera. It mixes storytelling, music and staging.

Cinema has the ability to juggle with all these different art forms. It can put one forward, then another, make them communicate with one another - echoing themselves, fading or even melting. This kind of “dance of the arts” still seems to be at its premises – considering that cinema is an extremely young art...

When I spoke about “storytelling”, I’d rather talk about “myths” because it seems to me that this fusion of different art forms, has been – and will always be - conducive to the birth of new cosmogonies.

For this Videofocus Edition we have selected In Between, a refined work evoking a visionary imagery reminding us of Kenneth Anger's cinema. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your experimental film: how did you come up with the idea for this work?

A few years ago, I came back from a journey to Myanmar with some footage. Not a lot because it was not the purpose of this trip – but somehow I knew I wanted to use those images.

At first, it was a way to pay tribute to an intimate experience but later, I saw how this footage could be the starting point of a roadmovie kind of film - a genre which I particularly like (because of how it is linked to many initiation tales).

My plan was to inlay an actor in these images and use it as a dreamlike scenery. The hero of the film would cross various lands and events like one walks through a dream, without any kind of grips or landmarks.

I wanted the inlay of the character to be somehow disturbing; credible but with few inconsistencies and flaws, so that the viewer identifies with the character who feels displaced, disconnected from the world

surrounding him. The main character is immersed in misunderstanding. He does not know what he is, what he is doing and what is even happening to him.

But this technique had to go beyond a mere stylistic effect. Those images had to be fed by one another and somehow be haunted. So I decided to add long dream sequences. Some eerie and enticing sequences that will make you feel a bit dazed and which will echo the Myanmar’s images.

Early on, I figured that those images should be drawn. I wanted to picture a reality transformed by visible pencil strokes, create a particular texture to balance the digital images of Asia. Those images had to have a telluric quality and evoke a wild force, both beautiful and disturbing.

Ultimately, I found the adequate technique for the dream sequences through the discovery of the beauty of animated gifs – even though the final result is quite remote from it.

I find that there is a disturbing poetry in animated gifs. This isolated movement lost in a modified space and time - a static scrap of life that keeps on looping - immediately connects us to the uncanny.

So I froze some frames, printed them and drew over it. Once scanned, I isolated the movement that interested me in my original sequence and inserted it in my drawing. It's a long but very simple method.

I also wanted to bring to these scenes an omnipresent and lively music, a kind of musical trip which reverberated unconsciously beyond these sequences. A melodic music that would contrast with the harsh concrete sounds laid on the images of Myanmar.

What was the most challenging thing about making this film?

Of course, working with visual effects gave a lot of work. But ultimately, I think that the narrative was for me the biggest challenge - or more precisely, keeping a narrative thread throughout the film. Even though this film is experimental, it still remains a “classic” narrative.

My aim was to present the viewer with a story that will run through the entire film – and its

different textures – without losing its attention.

I didn’t want to make a purely psychedelic film, a closed film with a restricted access.

In Between tells the story of a man sickened by his mistakes, a man who when facing the marvellous and incomprehensible, is unable to restrain his fear. It is a moral tale. All my technical and formal researches are only valuable if they serve the story – stylisation is not an end in itself.

For me, the preservation of a classic narrative allows you to bring novelty through experiment (rhythm, visual, sound, etc.) The old carrying the new on its shoulders and supporting it, is another way of picturing it.

Also, when you want that the spectator to lose ground, you need to mind that he does not fall into a gap and runs away!

The music of my films is like a lunar blues, slightly oriental which also results from my love for the music of Terry Riley.

We have found really stimulating the soundscape of your work: you make the images react synaesthetically to the film's soundtrack. Audio has a huge importance in your works, the use of soundtrack has not a diegethical aims, yet it tend to catalyze the process of dematerializating of the image. Can you introduce our readers to your musical background?

I play on a keyboard all the musical parts of my pieces with different sounds I create on a computer. And it is very important to me that there is a part of improvisation. It is a way to keep in the editing process a space of vibration, a danger area where all is not binding. This allows me to bring unpredictable emotions – as I feel that images feed well from unexpected sounds and can complement it.

I attended classical music training from my youngest age at the Academy and turned to jazz when I discovered Duke Ellington and the old rural blues of the early twentieth century.

In Between juggles between dream sequences where the music is intense - almost omnipotent - and travel footage from Asia, in which I’ve only used concrete sounds. Location and

ambiance sound of the streets, laughters, screams are essential elements that I wanted to use musically in order to recreate this emotional journey that one goes through when travelling.

The evolution of the copyright in the digital era is a fundamental theme of your work: can you better explain this concept behind In Between?

It is very easy today to get copyright free images. A lot of movies from the public domain or stock footages given by Internet users are available. There are also platforms for exchanging sounds and sound effects. This mutual aid is interesting on several points.

Obviously, there is something refreshing in witnessing those selfless approaches which do not make money their goal. This approach brings something fundamentally playful in the making of a film. But at the same time, it upsets the economic system of cinema. The creation of new copyrights, free licenses, creative commons, show a need to shake the powerful industry of images.

Behind this, there is a beautiful idea: the fact that copyright does not exist only to prohibit but also to allow. This is a bit like the jazz standards. A composer creates a theme, and anyone can take it back.

The theme calls for variations. It is a base which can support an infinite number of

I use images I gleaned on the net and insert them into the images I shot.

First, I planned a precise way of organising them – a bit like a shot-breakdown - which allows me to know my needs, fill the gap and go hunting for images. This process can take a long time because at all times I’m looking for something accurate and quite defined.

Let’s take the priest character in In Between.

His role was written and clear. So I had to find a film that will gives me enough priest images with different shot values, expressions and actions.

Searching through many horror films of the 60’s, I came across an uncanny beauty, a movie called City of Death. There were some shots of an old priest. Not a lot. But the actor was so evocative and convincing that I hired him immediately!

So I isolated him, cutting him from the original frames and embedded him in my drawings. I had to readjust my editing according to the possibilities offered by these images: a real "exchange" was happening! That’s why I cannot say that this film has no directing of actors involved - which is rather strange!

All the images I’ve collected are of course, linked through the narrative but also graphically, working on the lighting. The light is what binds them....

constructions. It is not made to be locked in a sacred bubble which would isolate it of the risk of being interpreted in various ways. The same goes for images: it becomes a flexible material.

Regarding the use of movies belonging to the public domain, there is also the idea of revitalizing the image. We revive it by a new treatment. There is also this disturbing phenomenon of bringing back to life dead actors which infuses a touch of poetry to the entire approach!

Where do your materials come from, and how do you go about putting them together?

Your art practice is multidisciplinary. In your artist's statement, you highlight the encounter between cinema and literature in your work. Can you introduce our readers to this apsect of In Between?

Beyond the screenwriting work involved in film making, I mentionned literature in reference to the working method. Making a film can become a solo act, as much as writing.

We can do a movie without camera (which is not my case) building everything at the editing stage. Images become sentences which can be nuanced in multiple ways and which can always be rearranged to produce a speech, a story.

This process calls for the same dedication, the same tenacity than the one involved in the practice of literature but it also induces

something close to a total freedom of expression.

This is not an end in itself and personally I like varying methods of creation (teamwork is fabulous; production and self-production have both interests). But there is something new in this opportunity of making films, and I am convinced that this solitary approach to the cinematographic act - if it is not a last resort but a true choice - is going to bring great and exciting inventions.

Your art is rich of reference: just think of Guy Debord's theories on Detournement, which has never been more relevant. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

It's not so easy to answer this question. Maybe the biggest influences are the most unconscious. In any case this is how I feel about my visual work. My culture is heterogeneous because I devour a lot of movies! Both small movies lost in the history of cinema and pure entertainment films ... I think the "deviant Cinema enthusiast’s box” suits me fine.

But to describe my artistic universe, I would speak more easily of my literary influences. I am very influenced by the fantastic literature of nineteenth, early twentieth. Ambrose Bierce, Poe, Kubin ... and later Borges, K. Dick ... The thick and abundant writing of Malcolm Lowry and Ernst Jünger, written by Tonie

Morrisson or Zora Neale Hurston joining my passion for the blues ...

Make a list would be meaningless! But I think Alan Moore is one of the writers I feel the closest to, in his will to combine several myths and his questioning about what binds magic and art.

Thanks for sharing your time, Harold, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

Thanks to you. Currently, I am writing a project which is very dear to me and which, this time, is calling for some financing. It is

concert-movie reinterpreting very freely the myth of Dracula.

After going through some extensive researches around this character, I would like the film to deal with the history of magic – or more specifically, the ill-treatment of magic.

The music that will be played live will go beyond the mere illustration of the images displayed on the screen. The editing will be thought of in such a way that it will allow the music to act as a motor.

This process would be conducive to a kind of musical trance that will be created without us knowing who from the story or the music is leading us through the film. And it seems that Dracula would be an ideal figure to speak about freedom, enchantment and wonder!

An artist's statement

"SPaRks" that is a larger investigation of the theme of creation.

SOURCE is an audio-visual meditation on the mystical origins of creation and future states of consciousness. This short motion graphics film presents a coded ambient journey laden with inspiration from quantum physics, Kabbalah, and science fiction. SOURCE is a prologue for the multichannel multimedia installation

SOURCE propagates the genre of visual-music poetry. The vernacular of visual effects and motion graphic techniques espoused in commercial filmmaking and music video production is utilized to present abstracted musings on the nature of humanity and its search for meaning and purpose through the

creative act. The piece does not focus on any specific process, but is rather a visualization of a stream of consciousness of inspired notions and questions. Thematically, the piece tackles several interwoven concepts such as the exploration of digitization of human culturetranscoding of the human journey into a virtual realm of information, the co-habiting of the physical and virtual worlds, and the blending of mythology, mysticism and technology. It plays

off the notion of trying to discover the source code of existence in a world that is divided between open source and proprietary enterprises.

SOURCE presents a kind of looking-back-fromthe-future vision onto the artifacts of human culture and takes one on an iconographic journey from the particle level(micro) to the cosmic (macro)level.

An interview with

Dmitry Kmelnitsky Dmitry Kmelnitsky's vision is at the same time molecular and cosmogonic. In his audiovisual work SOURCE he offers a heady mix of mythology, quantum physics, Kabbalah, and science fiction, composing the film through a series of freeassociation exercises that are as rigorous as they are radical: any image that could be attributed to a remembrance or a specific cultural/mythical source is rejected though. He seems to take at heart Michael Snow's lessons "I wish to abandon imitation and illusion and enter directly into the higher drama of celluloid". We are pleased to present Dmitry Kmelnitsky for this Videofocus Edition. Dmitry, how did you get started in experimental cinema and motion graphics?

It’s a long story with many seeds and breadcrumbs along the way and probably took root when I was a curious toddler running up to touch movie theater screen in an attempt to uncover the magic behind moving pictures.

Flash-forward two decades: In my undergraduate studies at UCLA I had the good fortune of taking a course on “film auteurs” that really drew me into the world of cinema, particularly highly aesthetic films that blurred the lines between the world of art and film such as those of Kubrick and Godard. I was actually an art history major but really fell in love with cinema and ended up doing a thesis on early Soviet Avant-Garde film. That research really uncovered a treasure trove of pioneering cinema work from Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov through Tarkovsky that paved the way for experimental cinema and video art on a global scale. I then immersed myself in Italian Neorealism and more of the French New Wave. The more I watched great films the more I wanted to explore making my own. My only tangible creative skills at the time were writing music and poetry. As a kid I spend many years playing piano but really learned how to compose music from starting my own band after high school. I always wanted to find a way to connect music to art. Film seemed to offer the doorway into that world. I decided I had to acquire some “art skills”. I spend

several years taking different studio courses from photography, to drawing to graphic design and kept on exploring the art of writing.

Some years later I returned to UCLA to pursue graduate studies in Design|Media Arts. I was determined to fuse all of my creative interests in the time-based medium. During that time I was exposed to many new directions in art and technology across new and old media and became particularly entranced by the traditions of visual music and expanded cinema. From Oskar Fischinger, Saul Bass and Pablo Ferro to art house filmmakers and artists such as Peter Greenaway, David Lynch and Wong Kar Wai, Mathew Barney, Bill Viola and Gary Hill I began to see astounding visual possibilities that connected to my sensibilities.

Additionally, the late 90s and early 2000s was an exciting time for creative production and dissemination of digital film. I recall being an avid attendee at the Res Fest, one of the pioneering digital film festivals that toured the world. It provided me with lots of inspiration and motivation to make my own experimental films that combined a vast array of techniques across live-action and animated computer graphics. I was exposed to a whole new generation of amazing artists/filmmakers such as Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, and Floria Sigismondi. All of these influences paved the way for my own explorations of the moving image.

Can you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art practice?

During grad school I became particularly drawn to the notion of spatializing a cinematic world within the physical dimension. I became interested in architecture and the poetics of space, especially as facilitated by the creative fusion of virtual media and physical form. For my MFA thesis project I ended up creating an interactive installation, entitled “SublimeConcrete” that functioned as mythic storybook that consisted of an elaborate electronic music score, poetry, graphics, typography, dance, video as well as a haptic interface to the world of the screen. It was an experiment in fusing all my passions.

Throughout the production process I thrived on two modes of creativity- the personal/solitary and the collective/collaborative. Straddling both modes became a model for my art making. While I like to immerse myself in every aspect of a project, I also recognize that there is tremendous satisfaction in the expanding

Dmitry Kmelnitsky

vision of a project by involving other creative players- be they dancers, singers, musicians, architects, designers, etc. Over the years I’ve produced work under the moniker/art studio “Lustre”. It functions as a representation of a more collaborative and collective art praxis.

The projects that I have undertaken span video art, experimental animations, music videos, concert visuals, site-specific installations, and AV performance. It seems natural for me to explore new combinations of media and form rather to work within one specific area. I also believe that there is a very strong connectivity of ideas across disciplines yielding salient, new forms of expression. I thrive on the dynamic nature of the field that allows me to create works for the screen, the gallery, the stage and the city.

Additionally, the multidisciplinary experiences feed into my job as a professor of multimedia arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Being an educator allows me to further my own creative growth as well as contribute to the development of a new generation of creatives who are trying to find their voice and express it via a panoply of new toolsets and media.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for SOURCE? Essentially the film SOURCE is about interconnectedness and the process of unraveling into oneness. SOURCE represents a stream of consciousness of inspired notions. I wanted to use the vernacular of visual effects and motion techniques borrowed from commercial filmmaking to present abstracted musings on the nature of humanity and its search for origins and ultimate destinations.

It’s a play on trying to find the source code in a convoluted coded world where human culture is becoming more digitalized, more virtual.

The figure that emerges out of the particlegenerated vulva represents a kind of Alice in Wonderland or rather, Byteland, and is rather confused by her virtual state, unsure of where to go. What follows is a journey through mystical topographies and iconographies- a cosmic dance through the wonder of creation.

The film explores micro and macro worldsfrom atomic particles to ultrasound visions of life in the body, from the neural landscape to that of the spiral galaxy. The dandelion featured within the film represents the ephemerality and vulnerability of the human

realm as well as its resilience and mastery of survival. The transparency of its puffball can be likened to a holographic universe that brings out the inner child in everyone. It’s a form that I find to be really captivating both conceptually and aesthetically.

SOURCE is a prologue for your installation "SPaRks". Could you tell us a particular episode that has helped the birth of this project?

Working on SOURCE allowed me to approach the vast material and subject matter (cosmology/cosmogony, mysticism, particle physics) behind the audio-visual installation “SPaRks”. SOURCE functioned as the initial attempt at assimilating and processing some of the concepts that were to become part of

“SPaRks”. Perhaps, the word “prologue” is a bit misleading in that it is associated with either a book or possibly some kind of episodic TV or video series. In my case I had an opportunity to develop a large-scale installation for a solo exhibition at Gallery 825 in Los Angeles. The final form of the installation consisted of 22 projection-mapped acrylic glass shards suspended and dispersed throughout an exhibition space- a representation of the “Tree of Life” in an exploded “Big Bang” state. While I was doing research to prepare myself for the development of the “SPaRks” I was presented with an opportunity to do an artist residency at the Digital Graffiti Festival in Alys Beach, Florida and develop a video work that could be presented at the festival as a projection upon the town’s white walls and architectural forms.

This provided further stimuli to take small but higher paced steps into the subject matter and create a short linear audio-visual representation of some of the ideas that were informing the conception of “SPaRks”. In the end the piece that emerged became it’s own entity, independent but connected as a sisterpiece to “SPaRks”. By the way, the reason that SPR are capitalized is to invoke their reference to the three letters derived from The Book of Formation (one of the seminal Kabbalistic texts) and found in Hebrew words sepher (form), s’phar (number), and sipur (process), as well as the English latin-based words “spiritual” and “inspiration”. As an artist I find this connection/connectivity to be fascinating, as it becomes a metaphor that encompasses the creative process, act and final form.

Your cinematographic language features a stunning balance between a highly individualistic futuristic vision, and an original investigation of mythology. Can you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of your art?

I am interested in how mythology reflects the character of a culture and how its representation can create parallels with our own time. The narrative and the associated iconography of a particular myth provide an artist with the tools and seeds to build bridges across cultures and time periods. The exploration or reference to mythological themes has been a very persistent thread within many of my works. The artwork that emerges out of the process of colliding and

interweaving the ideas with the visual style serves as a kind of time machine between the distant past and the unknown future. In SOURCE I wanted to present the artifacts of present human culture as if seen from the future. At the same time I am a product of my time and can’t help but be influenced by the tools and developments in the fields of media art, motion graphics, and digital filmmaking. I carry the experiences from the past as well as the curiosity for the future. The world has become transparent in many ways. It’s amazing how we can see the latest creations from all across the globe on platforms such as Vimeo and YouTube. The creative zeitgeist seems to be “look what I just made- show me what you can do”. And even more amazing is that sometimes it’s more like “here’s how I did it, now how can you expand on it?” It’s that

elements that are informing the project into some form of a script or loose scenario. Once I start building things, it’s an organic process full of challenges along the way and often founded on trial and error to get the desired results.

Your cinema reveals a remarkable attempt at a more abstract narrative cinema: in your films you often approach the sheer lyrical quality of visual music. How did you develop your visual style?

I think my visual style grew out of my desire to create a synesthetic relationship between music and visuals as well as language. My work is always audio-visual in nature.

Additionally, in terms of writing I was always more adapt at poetry, lyrics or creative prose rather than developing dialogue-based work. I think this is the reason I veered towards art film, music videos and video art in general rather than screenwriting-based traditional narrative films. I could always see myself as the guy who made the dream sequence within the larger film. So abstraction is more of my natural tendency. I think I am always trying to achieve a kind of audio-visual poetry. So symbolism, metaphor, metonymy, analogy, rhyme, meter, and counterpoint give way to their audio-visual counterparts such as harmony, unity, polyphony, texture, pattern, symmetry, etc.

Motion graphics is a long and hard process. How long does it usually take to finish a piece? kind of open-source thinking that is creating communities of sharing that are fueling progress.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

The creative process varies depending upon the nature of the project, however, it’s always important for me to delve into the subject matter by doing extensive research so that I can gain a better grasp on how to best approach it creatively. I usually assemble a vast archive of ideas and references- some that are spawn from each other and some that intuitively flash in my mind. This brainstormed list of concepts, references and images serves a mood board for the project to come. The next step is to fuse the essence of all those

Projects can vary from a span of a week to many months depending upon the scope and nature of the work. It also depends on the technical complexity involved in achieving the look for a specific sequence. I tend to work in a variety of software and combine handcrafted elements with camera work and cgi. Also when working in an inspired state, the speed of progress is infinitely increased. Trying to stay in a focused state of mind is always challenging when the same computer used to created or assemble the work can serve as a pandora’s box with infinite distractions.

However, one of the tricks that I find useful is to leave that little bit that you want to finish at the end of the day for the following day. That way there is a clear entry point into the project the next time you jump into it- allowing for a continuity of purpose. Also there is nothing like a deadline, whether self-imposed or one

dictated by a commission, festival or client to motivate the production of new work. While the deadline serves as a means to deliver work, I believe that the work is finished when you feel more or less satisfied with it. I often obsess and fine-tune works past their initial deadline. Also the passage of time allows you to be more critical and objective with your work, so it’s a good idea give yourself some time in between the production and final delivery to refresh your vision.

We find that your art is rich of references.

In SOURCE there are many references to mythology and quantum physics. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Prior to developing SOURCE and SPaRks, I spend approximately a year immersing myself in the research for the projects. I watched documentaries and read books, articles and all sorts of writing from fictions, to scientific, critical and philosophical essays on topics ranging from the particle physics work going on at CERN, search for the unified field theory, string theories, multiverse, holographic universe, God and the Big Bang, Kabbalah and its connections to other mystical traditions such as Zen and Sufism well as to art, philosophy, architecture, mathematics and science. By no stretch of the imagination would I ever admit to being remotely fluent in

any of these complex areas. For me the process of creating an artwork functions as a lens or a personal journey of enrichment or discovery- it’s a way of trying to make sense of the richness of existence in a world full of contradictions.

As an artist I see my role being as that of a person who makes connections between diverse ideas and processes.

While it may not be fully clear how and where these ideas are specifically present in a film such as SOURCE , their aura and intent inhabit the work. Ultimately, I hope that what people take away from the work is a sense of their own connection to the world that sparks on

their awareness of the many exquisite processes underlying the surface of things.

Thanks for sharing your time, Dmitry, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Dmitry Kmelnitsky? Have you a particular film in mind?

I have some personal cultural journeys that I’d like to explore in an animated form as well as some songs that I would like to create visual films for. Additionally, I am looking forward to doing more collaborative performance-based multimedia work either with dance or theater.

Leonardo Selvaggio Leo

An interview with

Leonardo Selvaggio We have selected for this year's Videofocus edition Selvaggio's video IMU: Google Street Portraits. Leonardo, could you tell us a particular episode that has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany, a sudden illumination?

IMU: Google Street Portraits started with an opportunity to do a public work with the Chicago Loop Alliance, an organization that negotiates retail spaces for artists, in which they can show experimental work. I wanted to visit the space to begin thinking about what I would propose but unfortunately it was raining that day, and not wanting to travel in the rain, I decided to take a Google walk to the location using Google Street View. As I was “walking,” I couldn’t help but take notice of all the faceless people in Google Street View. I found them haunting and had a very visceral desire to provide these bodies with an identity, a surrogate if you will. More profound to me was the algorithm used to erase these faces. It was created by Google as a way to mediate the public’s privacy in it’s maps. I couldn’t help wondering about the algorithm’s effectiveness.

I started asking questions like-- where are the original files? Who has access to them and how, if at all, are they being used? More importantly, can we really accept this; can we be so easily placated by surveillance that’s happening on a global scale by a multi-billion dollar corporation? We are talking about the same company that recently purchased drone technology.

This led me to the idea of symbolically shielding the public, using the material I had been working on over the past year: myself.

YouAreMe.net is a prior project involving my opening my cyber identity to the public, which includes providing passwords to my social media accounts, to be manipulated, curated, and proliferated. YouAreMe.net at its core asks who exactly could I be if my identity were open to public discourse. It was natural to extend the ideas in YouAreMe.net to IMU: Google Street Portraits. Once this conceptual bridge was formed, and I started seeing my face on all these different bodies in the context of

surveillance, it inspired me to think about how else I could protect the public from surveillance by using myself as material, which led to my newest work, URME Surveillance.

We have found really interesting the way you are able to explore the line between identity and mass-technology. In your statement, you say "I am developing my own identity as a defense technology others can use as protection against these technologies". Could you introduce our readers to this fascinating project?

Certainly. My recent work, URME Surveillance, uses myself as material to protect the public from surveillance, by allowing them to assume my identity through the use of a 3Dprinted photo-realistic prosthetic of my face.

“UR ME” challenges viewers to consider the malleability of their identities by misrepresenting and corrupting my own, while at the same time subverting the surveillance system through the creation of disinformation.

As I mentioned I was just realizing this connection between surveillance and identity in IMU: Google Street Portraits. To research this I started looking into how other artists and the public were dealing with Surveillance. Two large influences were Zach Blas and Adam Harvey, who both have amazing work, but I was left a little dissatisfied with what I saw as the prevailing strategy in both the art and nonart related interventions: hide the face. The majority of videos on YouTube and other websites are tutorials on how to hide from the camera by wearing hoodies and sunglasses.

The problem with this of course is that wearing hoodies and sunglasses is associated with criminality. Take the case in the USA of Trayvon Martin, a young man that was unjustly shot to death because he was wearing a hoodie at night and deemed suspicious.

This strategy of hiding, while successful against cameras, fails to take into consideration what I would call the “social” component of surveillance, which involves, well, us. We all surveil each other, and most cameras are set up in public places where putting on a ski mask will raise suspicion from other people. URME Surveillance uses a different strategy. URME Surveillance substitutes the wearer’s face with my own, so that facial recognition systems tag them and their actions as belonging to me. Because a

face is still visible, the prosthetic doesn’t cause suspicion, allowing the wearer to walk in a crowd without detection while still fooling cameras into thinking I am in the space rather than the wearer.

There are still a lot of problems with the work and even more questions, for instance what does it mean to ask anyone to present him or herself as a white man? This project is riddled with questions of beauty, class, privilege, ageism, sexism, and nationality, to name a few.

While I am only beginning to explore all of those questions, I would argue that these are the very same questions that we should be asking about surveillance as well.

Surveillance is a system based on fear that offers us the illusion of safety by sacrificing freedom. The source of this fear comes from the very questions stated above. We fear women. We fear minorities. We fear the lower class and old age and illegal immigrants. We fear a lot in the United States. URME Surveillance has the potential to bring all of these questions to the surface and expose the prejudicial architecture upon which our surveillance systems are built. What is at stake is nothing short of the freedom of our identities. URME Surveillance may never allow the user to be who they really are in public space, but neither does our current state of surveillance. We are fundamentally changed when we are watched. We perform prescribed acceptable versions of ourselves rather than simply being.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

My process is very iterative. I am one of those artists that thinks through making, so as I finish one project, connections are made which inspire the next project, building and building into a body of creative research that poses a lot of questions. I believe that to be my job, to ask questions. This is a very exciting time for artists. Aesthetics are no longer the unchallenged and predominant concern.

Artists everywhere are engaging in social change, specifically when examining technology. Like really good science fiction, I ask myself “What if?” “What will this tech, our society, look like in 5, 10, 20 years?”, and then I make work around those questions.

We find your art is rich in reference, for example your concept of identity remind us of Marshall McLuhan's theories. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

I am so happy to see that McLuhan is apparent in my work. A lot of his theories have influenced me. McLuhan was prophetic. In 1962, in his seminal book The Guttenberg Galaxy, he predicts not just the advent of the Internet but also the current state of social media: The next medium, whatever it is- it may be the extension of consciousness- will include television as its content, not as

its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip it into a private line of speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.

In fact, social media, or as McLuhan calls it, “a private line of speedily tailored data of a saleable kind�, is one of the biggest changes in how we think of identity as a culture. The Internet has done for our identities what email and texting have done for our communications: we are editable. Identity is no long this

permanent thing that we create for ourselves; it has become something that we curate online.

We decide what photos we show. We edit our posts to be wittier. We perform. Not only that, but who we are is just as much our doing as it is that of others these days. My reputation has as much do with what I post as it does with what others post and say about me. I am an amalgamation of interests and opinions, of which not all belong to me. In fact, I believe that navigating social media will soon become the most important skill for an individual to acquire. Even McLuhan predicted this when he wrote in his 1972 book Take Today: The Executive as Dropout:

Paradoxically electronic man has no choice but to understand processes, if he is to be free…. The only method for perceiving process and patterns is by inventory of effects obtained by the comparison and contrast of developing situations.

The Internet, technology, etc, are all systems; platforms that once understood can be used to reclaim one’s authorship. Artists working in this vein inspire me greatly. Historically some artists and works I look to are Bruce Nauman’s Video Corridor or Roy Ascott’s work in Telematics. More contemporary artists I follow are Ben Grosser and his works like Facebook Demetricator or ScareMail. Another incredible

artist I have had the privilege of learning from who is working in this vein is Tiffany Funk and her work Portraits (Terminators, 2011) along with her incredible blog, Fetal Circuit.

A recurrent characteristic of many of your artworks is experience as starting point of artistic production: in your opinion, is experience an absolutely necessary part of creative process?

Not at all. In fact, I think a complete lack of experience can be an advantage at times.

Some may say this leads to “bad” art, and maybe they are right, but what exactly is “good” art anyway? In my practice experience

It’s not predicated on knowledge, but the desire to discover.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Leonardo. What's next for Leonardo Selvaggio? Are there any video projects on the horizon?

Currently URME Surveillance is taking up the whole of my creative practice. I plan to continue developing it over the next few years.

I am also thinking about how social media fits within the context of surveillance. Facebook is a huge part of this conversation. It’s an amazing platform that also happens to be selling our information to marketing companies that profile us into a type of consumer-based identity. That is very interesting to me. I would love to work more with video. I love how video is both document and expression. I currently have a video related project that is part of URME Surveillance titled URME Facial Video Encryptor. URME FVE is a software program I have written that will create new versions of video files on your computer, in which your face will be digitally replaced with my own.

These versions can then be sent or posted on social media without fear of it being used as documentation against you, because it is my face the viewers will be seeing. The programming is very basic right now but I am hoping to collaborate with other programmers to continue improving its performance. Anyone interested in learning more about the URME Facial Video Encryptor can find it on the URME Surveillance wesbsite, www.urmesurveillance.com.

is not paramount, but investigation is, and good investigation starts with an unbiased approach. Experience can often cloud good creative research. The argument that experience is absolutely necessary to a creative practice stems from elitism and power. I am not an expert on Surveillance, though I have learned a thing or two about making this work, and I don’t need to be an expert. We often restrict ourselves from commenting or thinking about the things in which we lack experience. We leave it to the experts because they must be right. I disagree with that way of thinking. I am not interested in being “right;” I am interested in learning, experimenting, and moving forward. That’s what makes the creative process so important.

An artist's statement In-Between Frames is a part of a series of works that are experimental and explore the fundamentals of animated motion through repetition.

The work is an inquiry into the unlimited in-

betweens of movement. All the images are created using a scanner as the primary tool for the transcription of motion.

A simple gesture–a kind of a mark follows the path of the scanner wand and the repeated acts are captured, converting the analogous process into a digital image.

Mariam Eqbal The organic process and the unconventional use of such a technology create a stage for an image to dance and play forever without beginning or end. A complexity develops over time while simplicity is fundamental to the process. The scanner acts as a transcriber, translating motion into a still frame. It is in-between the computer and the artist–as a link between two languages.

The sound is intended to draw attention to the technologies that are at the root and fundamental to the creative process. It is another layer of gestures, partner to the image in lead, moving alongside while building the space for the visuals to sing.

Mariam Eqbal

An interview with

Mariam Eqbal In her quest to explore the hidden nature of movement, Mariam Eqbal produces something hypnotic and memorable with this piece. Her work echoes the oldest forms of cinema, as well as Eadweard Muybridge's experiments with motion photography.

Mariam, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for your InBetween?

As an animator, working frame by frame, the camera is one of the essential instruments in my practice. I regularly use a camera for research—to breakdown the movement into parts, to slow things down, and to move frame by frame through time. I can zoom into the details of a flower or choose to isolate the reflected light on the surface of the water.

The digital camera is as fast as it has ever been, making it possible to observe a bullet moving through air at the speed of a tortoise—but not Zeno’s tortoise. Even with the fastest camera, I wonder about the infinite in- betweens of movements that remain unseen.

I think of Leonard da Vinci watching water in an eddy, studying the motions and currents, gazing, and lost in its flow. Studying the curls of women’s hair and drawing their interwoven forms, perhaps, was a way of making the constant whirling of the water be still, because time in its stubborn continuity does not let it. I imagine how frustrating it must have been, wanting the movement to be motionless and for the waves to remain at crest. I wonder what Leonardo da Vinci would have done with a camera? Imaginably, he may have studied the wave frame by frame in order to understand the elements of its metamorphosis.

When Eadweard Muybridge created his experiments to investigate the movements of a running horse in order to satisfy an inquiry,

he was using the camera in the way da Vinci might have. Muybridge’s photographic studies of the human movement revealed the functions that are true to the forms in motion.

His cameras made it possible to see what da Vinci’s pencil could not.

The motion of the horse was too fast for the eye to extract a single pose out of a sequence. Muybridge used multiple cameras arranged in a line parallel to the subject in motion in order to understand the inbetweens that were just flashes in time and immensely temporal. The studies showed bodies suspended in the in- between stages of moving from point A to point B. They could be seen stretch and compressed, exaggerated, and defying the laws of physics, while functioning due to its cause. The stills composed on a grid, related a kind of measure of the body’s movement over distance and time. In a way, each camera was like a single frame of film, the arrangement of multiple cameras was similar and relevant to the subject in motion in its relationship to time and space.

The In-Betweens was a result of such thoughts recurring. The scanner took the place of the cameras arranged in space and my hand holding an image, moving along with the scanner-wand, became like the subjects in Muybridge’s experiments. The different scanner settings allowed me to move at various speeds, resulting in the image being pulled and stretched. The repetition, though monotonous, resulted in variables that are endless and in movements reinvented through the motion of the hand.

In your film you have used a peculiar technique: you use a scanner to transcript motion into a still frame.

Can you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of In-Beyween?

A couple of years before the In-Betweens I was exploring inquiries related to repetition and experimenting with movement using paint on glass animation technique. I worked with the scanner using it to capture images and had experimented with scanning paint on its glass surface. But I would get frustrated with the time it would take the device to scan an image. So, I used a camera. It made it easy

Mariam Eqbal

and it was fast. I was able to capture the small, quick movements in a fraction of a second, without a lot of distance or time inbetween. Although, the quickness of the camera was beneficial and saved time, my relationship with the image was always shortlived and crude. I had not considered the constraint of the scanner and its slow capture as a means for experiments with time.

Working with the scanner changed the way I think about drawing. I’d like to think of the experimental works with the scanner as investigational drawings of movements in time. The machine allowed the study of time to enter my work in ways observational drawing could never have. It is a way for me to draw in time and the captured image is a record of the changes. Though, the mechanisms of the scanner are beyond my comprehension, the simplicity of its utilities and the tactile process seems familiar. Its glass surface acts like a canvas and the wand plays the role of the camera. The combination of the two creates opportunities for

experimentation, bypassing the camera all together. Though the work, in some ways, is destructive and the record is only obtainable as a digital file, the process is tangible, closer to holding a pencil and having control over it’s movement—and closer to the media of film and drawing on its surface.

Can you describe your encounter with old analog media that inspired your cinematography? There is a particular reason linked to the ephemeral qualitities of scanner cameras?

I enjoy working with the camera and regularly use it in my works. I also love to draw, I come from a drawing background, and I like to think that drawing is the ultimate analogous process of capturing an image. I’m interested in unconventional and experimental approaches to drawing. I feel organically connected to physical processes and am drawn to styles and techniques that upholds the impressionistic identity of a work and that which represent the ephemeral

rather than the defined.

A lot of the images that are produced in my studio, through experimental processes, are low quality as a result of the process itself.

Though the image is ultimately digital, the rough edges, the grit and grain, and the raw quality carries with it the memory of its once physical state. As an animator I work with digital media, nevertheless, paint, charcoal, ink, paper, and various traditional mediums are actively used in the works. Each reacts to time in a unique way and is delicate to control—revealing the unpredictable, something unseen.

In working with the scanner, my physical relationship with its surface is recorded in every image and is the cause of the movement itself. The quality of the images does not disturb or take away from the process, as the result conveys the method in which it was created. The ephemeral quality of the medium or the image illuminates its relationship to me as something unrealized,

and I am reminded of my understanding of time and space.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

My works for the past few years have been exploring the relations between time and motion. Repetition is at the foundation of my inquiry. I believe my explorations are rooted in my desire to understand and to recognize the things I perceive as reality.

Therefore, I engage in the scientific method for a lot of my experiments.

I set up constraints with the intention of exploring the variables. I believe that the process should be simple in order to generate complexity. I employ the “straightahead� method and transformation is the inevitable outcome. The works are nonlinear and I usually struggle with declaring the works as complete. The process, along with the method, produces outcomes that are

without end or conclusion.

I like to go for walks, forget that I’m walking, and end up somewhere undetermined, removed, and yet I feel comfortable. Not sure how I got there, I try to trace my steps and think about missed opportunities. Sometimes I get lost in the process of searching to find where I’d gone off the tracks and that’s when I end up finding something unexpected.

Sound assumes a fundamental role in your work: you make the images react synaesthetically to the film's soundtrack, which means that various elements inside the picture plane -faces, body parts - react to certain sounds and pulsate toward the viewer in three dimensions. Can you introduce our readers to the synesthetic nature of your work=

A lot of the work I produce doesn’t always result in a finished piece. The experiments are continuously edited, some evolve into works or lead to extended processes, while most are stepping-stones and remain incomplete.

The sound is as important as the frame itself.

While existing outside the physical dimension, sound can help to inform the materiality of a thing in the process of evolution. Sound may be the extension of movement and transformation.

The sound, for the most part, entered the work at a much later stage in the process, after the visuals had been realized. The sound component in the work acts as a reminder of the instruments or tools that are fundamental to the process.

It is designed to move in unison with the visuals and recall the physicality that once existed. It embodies the machine that is equivalent to the image and primary for its transcription. The sound amplifies the relationships between the ephemeral and the physical, the instrument and the process, the object and its movement.

Let’s speak about influences. We have previously mentioned Muybridge's photographic studies. Have any artists from the older generation inspired you?

Inspiration has come from unexpected places but a lot of it has been a result of research and practice. Traditional media has been a key influence in my understanding of representative and interpretative image making. At a very young age I became obsessed with life drawing. My left hand was always the first to volunteer. I must have drawn it over a hundred times, yet I still need it as a reference. I was introduced to drawing when I was really young, I’d sit next to my father and watch him draw for hours. My

parents had an art studio where my dad instructed classes on drawing and painting and my mother hand printed textile for interiors.

I spent a lot of time in that studio and was introduced to a variety of practices. I learnt a lot about art from my parents.

I grew up consumed by the images in the painting catalogues and books in my parent’s studio. I gravitated towards the impressionist, simultaneously, the expressionistic interpretations and preferred abstraction over figurative.

I had a poster of one of Franz Kline’s painting on my wall as a teenager, which, once I learned about minimalism, got replaced by Sol Lewitt’s lines. Roman Polka’s paintings of numbers were influential, along with works by many illustrators, such as, Robert Heindel, Mark English, and Fred Otnes.

Animators, such as, Norman McLaren, impacted my work a great deal. His experimental animated works with paint on film changed the way I work with frames.

The role of metamorphosis in his work is something I require out of my own practice.

McLaren’s experiments with the figure, in works such as Pas de Deux, remind me of Muybridge and Jules Marey’s experiments with the camera.

When I was first introduced to Observational documentaries or actuality films, such as the first films by the Lumiere Borthers and Monkeyshines by Thomas Edison, I was unaware, therefore, unmoved. Ignorant at the time of how intensely the images would impact my research and possess me for months.

The serendipity was realized when I encountered Muybridge’s photographs.

Outside of the scientific approaches and linear representations of time and motion, the abstracted and more lyrical pictures of movement through time, applied in the style of poetic documentaries, where new association of image and time are created with the means of non-linear editing, I consider to be more informative of the different aspects of time.

Films, such as, At Land and A Study in Choreography for Camera by Maya Deren, continue to surprise and remain a works of inspiration, even while I’ve spent many hours with the scenes.

The wide shifts in continuity and distances between linearity are like a memory of a movement, which was once alive in a time and space, recalled in small gestures, though incomplete and unlinked, communicates the essence of the dance.

Thanks for sharing your time, Mariam , we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

Have you a particular film in mind?

In-Between Frames is part of a series created using a scanner.

Some of the works remain unedited and currently exist without sound. I plan on completing the series.

I’m also currently working on a pixilation animation and in the process of shooting. I plan on completing both works by this coming summer.

H. C. Turk

An interview with

H.C. Turk H. C. Turk's cinema reveals a remarkable effort to get under the skin of cinema: his work convey a purely subjective, yet modernist, sensibility where the form conveys its meaning directly. Abstraction in general is defined by a desire to intensify subjectivity, which is at heart of every artist's desire to go beyond the limits of imagination. In "Dear Idea" the image finds a particular state of grace when it moves closer to the rhyming structure of minimalist music. Harold, how did you get into experimental filmmaking?

I began by making music videos based on some of my songs (I have created 2 albums of 端berrock music, 1 of abstracted sound art, and 1 of voice-based sound art, which I term Voxart).

Though I have been making images and writing fiction for decades, movies/filmmaking/cinema (the first is the most accurate term regarding my work) is a relatively new discipline for me, despite being a combinatorial extension of my previously established interests and achievements.

Regarding "experimentalism," all new art is experimental in the sense of allowing established notions their place in the realm of mediocrity and anti-innovation while supplanting them with a vision that attempts to see beyond.

In your films you explore the boundaries between image and sound: can you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art?

The prime innovations of my initial videos are not only a uniquely audacious yet intelligent song, but a visual scheme wherein each frame is by intent a compelling composition, viewable individually. Essential to the literal vision is usage of the lyric's every word to create both a literary, verbal expression and a visual composition via a string of mutating elements.

The technique employed is animation wherein the still images remain discrete, and movement is directed by the lyric's progress. Going beyond this, replacing the voice with abstracted and/or natural sounds is an

innovative extension, achieving a reversed culmination by replacing that previous aspect of musical voice with words that are uttered, not sung.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Dear Idea?

Regarding this particular work, I began with sound. Right after concluding a music album

and determining I don’t like my singing, I advanced to the retrograde position of eliminating this superfluous component, following in what seemed a perfectly reasonable extension by eliminating music. My replacement for both became sound (neither tonal nor atonal): animal, insect, and other nature sounds along with electronic companions. The ultimate progression was to animate this with visual associations: Upon

encountering a scene with an aural theme redolent of quasi-natural sounds from animals that might have never lived and robotic voicings that seem part of the landscape instead of the speaking of its populace, a denouement of silence occurs when sound becomes a sight revealing that the ambience is ultimately human.

Dear Idea is marked by a striking use of light and color depicts emotions and feelings in places where dialogue could not even scratch the surface. Your cinematography seems to be deeply influenced by the emotional potential of color: could you better explain this aspect of your shooting style?

Human emotion is one of the dearest of all ideas, "dear" in the sense of being both precious and expensive (as well as expansive).

In the temporal universe, ideas provide monadic entities with essential identity.

Defined as existential essence, ideas are what’s left of us after we take ourselves away.

Emotion is a function of awareness, perhaps even an attribute.

Emotion is the brain’s self-awareness protocol recognizing effects more than knowledge, basically a set of mechanical, noncognitive provocations whose purpose is to abet the animal in its procedure. Danger triggers acute awareness, the bodily preparation of wide eyes, sensitized hearing, a hard-flapping heart.

Pleasure is an abstraction encouraging the animal to seek and/or continue beneficial activities such as eating and procreative intercourse.

Though seemingly too darn funny to contemplate, humor is no more than a reliefand-recognition sub-function allowing the aware animal to painlessly absorb unavoidable inconsistencies.

I feel that emotion is the mind recognizing effects more than knowledge, unlike thought in being related more to experience than examination; for thought is of strict facts, whereas emotion comprises those associated essences and relations that affect the person, body, mind, and soul.

Regarding color's application to emotion, the abstract overrides often accepted correlations such as hot/cold. In my work, color gives way to neutral views, though the emotions depicted always portray enhanced feelings.

In Dear Idea you try to extend the boundaries of human perception or to be more precise, to manipulate it and release it from its most primitive parameters in its search for physiological sensations. If we want to broaden our perceptual horizons, we must abandon our habits and certainties. Could you take us through

your creative process when starting a new project?

The beginning of each project is different, except within genres; that is, my music videos begin with a song, sound videos begin with a sound piece (sound e-scape [electronic soundscape]), and Voxart (new vocal art) begins prior to where singing begins (modified speech and other utterances). The challenge then is to create a flow of images that looks the way it should sound.

Your art is rich of references. From the first time we watched your film, it reminded us of Romeo Castellucci's imagery and use of sound, even though

your filmmaking and composing style is very far from what is generally considered 'academic'. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work? Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your art?

Without specific intent, when I began writing fiction, I stopped reading it (for the most part).

I think that paraconsciously I determined that I would progress better without significant external influence beyond which I had already absorbed. The same pertains to the visual arts, especially movie making. I watched a Shirley Temple movie recently, but the work has no bearing on my own.

Thanks for sharing your time, Harold, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

Thank you ohso very much for your interest in my work. What's next for me in the way of film? Actually, what I'm doing now is not creating any video, but creating screenplays.

My first best success was as a writer, an ability I am currently channeling in the way of adapting some of my novels into screenplays.

I'm not sure what I'll do with them, but writing them is fun!

Ruben Gutierrez Ruben Gutierrez's work consists in the production of a monumental time based fictional yet experiential universe that emerges in trans-media. Blurring the division between the realms of memory, fiction and experience, he makes works that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. To him merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, it is not more than an act of meditation. An act that challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves.

Ruben Gutierrez holds a Master degree in Visual Arts.

Academia de San Carlos, ENAP, UNAM. Since 1993 has shown his works and curatorial projects in Mexico, USA, Spain, Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador, Perú, Puerto Rico, The Netherlands, France, Czech Republic, China, Japan, India and Iran.

He represented Mexico at 7th Havana Biennal, Cuba 2001, First Buenos Aires Biennal, Argentina, 2001, IX Bienal Internacional de Cuenca, Ecuador, 2007 and Prague Biennale 4, 2009, Prague, Czech Republic.

His work has been credited to recognitions as First Prize in Painting, 1ª Bienal Regional de la Plástica Joven (Monterrey, Mexico, 1994) First Prize on 2ª Bienal Regional de la Plástica Joven (Monterrey, Mexico, 1996)

A still from Sickness of the present

He is the part of Sistemaof Nacional Creadores Arte,Bro Acquisition Prize of XXI Encuentro Nacional de A Arte stillJoven, from Through oceans space de and time I:deHey CONACULTA, FONCA since 2009.

(México, 2001) and Acquisition Prize BBVA-Bancomer, VI Was a fellowship holder of Fondo Nacional para la 2014 Cultura Bienal Monterrey-FEMSA (Monterrey, México, 2003), y las Artes (Mexico) in several programs during the years Mention of Honor in XIV Biennal Rufino Tamayo, (Museo 1998-99, 2000-01 y 2005-06. In 2006 he obtained the grant Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico, 2008) for emerging artists of CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA. Has participated in artist in residence programs in: Fundación Ludwig (Havana, Cuba, 2001), International As curator he has done projects for: Bronx River Art Studio and Curatorial Program, (NYC, USA, 2003) Art Omi Center, (New York, USA), CRIC Centre d’ Reflexion sur (Omi, NY, USA, 2004), Art dans l’ ville (Saint Ettienne, l’image et ses contextes (Sierre, Swiss), VAE10 Festival France, 2004), CRIC, Centre de réflexion sur l’image et ses Internacional de Video /Arte/Electrónica, (Lima, contexts (Sierre, Swiss, 2006), Cite Internationale des Arts Peru), Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, (Paris, France, 2007), Soma, (Mexico city, 2010), The Bag India) MUCA ROMA (Mexico city), Centro de las Artes (Monterrey, Mexico) THE END biennial (52, Factory, (Johannesburg, Southafrica, 2011) and EMAREOMR Gallery, Mexico), between others.

IMPAKT (Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2012).

An interview with

Ruben Gutierrez How did you come up with the idea for "Sickness of the present"?

Sickness of the present is the first exploration of a universe I’m trying to put together, a universe falling apart, where people had to runnaway from irrational violence in order to survive. It is a subject which I am kind of obsessed with, since my own hometown went through a stage of irrational violence and destruction. But my interest it is not to use violence to talk about violence, instead I want to use imagination as a way to remmember the experience of surviving our own hometown destruction and to inspire other people to find the strenght to recover that what has been lost. We can say that Sickness of the present was inspired, somehow, by real events. It is indeed an honest story.

The use of long static shots is peculiar of your shooting style. How did you develop your style?

One of my favorite directors is Andrei Tarkovski, he is well know for this kind of aesthetics. I kind of blame him for this. Time and memory are two spheres which I am exploring and, in this specific case, I wanted to give the spectator a chance to enjoy some quiet moments before the character start again with his endless monologue. I wanted to make a very simple film, our hero goes from a to b and while doing it he talks to the trees as if they were people, also we hear his toughts while he is wandering in the forest. To me it was very important to offer this pauses and give the audience the chance to contemplate what our character was going through. These silent moments are very important in life. We always should find time to contemplate and think before we start talking.

The subject from behind is a visual typos in your film: it remind us of Romeo Castellucci's Brentano, though your imaginery is very different from the Italian artist, more close to the French contemporary scene. Can you tell

us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Tom Friedman, Philippe Parreno, Douglas Gordon, Jean Luc Godard, Steve McQueen, Werner Herzog, Russ Meyer, Andrei Tarkovski, Lars Von Trier…there are many great artists that have influenced my mind and the way I construct or develop a project.

All of them have garbled my thoughts in so many levels, while inspiring me to have the strenght to say what I have to say. All of them have their own language, but all of them have the power to make you think and to make you feel alive. When I see their works they make me feel that I want to do something as powerfull as they did. It is just inspiring.

The faceless subject was a very important element in my film to me, the audience never gets to see the character’s face, and he is always moving away from the camera, therefore, from the audience. While doing it he denies the audience in some level; later I started reading some texts from an amazing french philosopher: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (which I discover thanks to my phd tutor Jose Luis Barrios) in his texts he talks about the body as a way to discover the world and about words and dreams as basic elements of that world, also he said that everything which remains behind oneself does not exist because it’s invisible in some way. This readings make me feel that I was intuitively going in the right direction.

You are a trans-media artist, writer and filmmaker too: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Off course, I strongly believe this crossing border phenomena, this cross-pollination of disciplines is what can make us have more complex ideas and better art works. Cinema is a multi disciplinary art form and the ideal work field where I can operate. There is no time to waste locking ourselves in a box, we need to leave home, our mental comfort zone, in order to start stories in the world.

My personal goal is to keep the dialogue with other disciplines in order to create a universe that will emerge in transmedia.

A still from Sickness of the present

In your work the blurry boundaries of perception and memory are deeply explored.

We are really interested in this aspect of your filmmaking: the reification of reality through the image, a concept which remind us of the French literary movement which created the nouveau roman in the late 50s, explored through a contemporary sensibility.

Could you introduce our readers to your personal vision of filmmaking?

Indeed there are some references in my works to the French new wave, specially the combination of different approaches to reality and the way my characters make commentaries and questions without getting any anwsers at the end. Someone said once that perception is mathematically impossible, which makes me ask myself if I can trust my senses and my memory. I think that as a culture, as a genre, we need to remmember our history and we need to know where we came from, maybe just to give a little sense to our world when we are surrounded by chaos. But memory functions as a puzzle, we constantly put pieces together without fully realizing that we have lost many of them and sometimes we also have many fake pieces: Elizabeth Loftus showed that it is relatively easy to make people remember events that never occurred. So I think we need to be aware that we do not see the world as it actually is.

To emphasize this fact is very important in my work.

On the other hand the use of what I like to call nano-crews during production it is something that those guys also did during his time. But to me this is more a matter of being practical and do not get frozen by limitations. It is more a question of what do I have and what can i do with it. Without being afraid and without limiting my imagination.

If everything can be imagine, then let’s give the audience something to make them imaging instead of giving them an illustrated story. Georges Didi-Huberman said it: in order to remmember we need to imagine.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts with us, Ruben .What's next for Ruben Gutierrez?

Thanks to you! I am actually working in a couple of projects, one to be filmed in the desert in the north of Mexico during this

A still from Sickness of the present

year and the other one in France during 2015. Both are new exercises around the same situation, characters forced by extreme conditions to suffer a transformation in order to survive, long shots and multi referencial dialogues taking place in bizarre but incredible locations.

The very next one have the next working title: Get Lost Among The Dead and its about a woman which is a writer who lives a solitary life, without family, without friends, absorbed in her work. Then, one

day, without knowing how or why, her hometown bursts into flames in a storm of death and destruction. She is forced to leave home if she wants to survive, so in her escape through the desert she meets a man who is buried up to his neck in the sand.

Unable to do anything to help him out, she is trapped by the buried man stories that talk about a mythical place, a threshold where she will find the ultimate truth. At the end of his story he reveals that he knows the location of the threshold. But to get that

information she must first cross the desert, deliver a message and get back with an answer. So we see her walking through the desert endlessly repeating the last words of the dying man while facing her own existential conflicts in a world falling apart.

That is my upcoming project‌very contemporary, right?