Film Screening - Olympic Changes: an inadequate document of life

My short film Olympic Changes: an inadequate document of life will be screening this weekend 31st October – 1st November at:

OBLONG

Weekend Screenings

24 short films
31st October – 1st November

Two screenings per day
1st screening – 12pm-2pm
2nd screening- 3pm – 5pm

Oblong Gallery
69a Southgate Road
London N1 3JS

020 7354 8330
www.oblonggallery.com

Olympic Changes: an inadequate document of life entwines the banality of a personal, everyday suburban train journey with the structural changes taking place to the urban environment around the Olympic site in East London. It is an experimental film that takes the analogue photograph as its source and transforms the still-ness of photography into the movement of film, in away attempting to mix structural film making with digital technology.

Olympic Changes originates from six medium-format photographic negatives; each celluloid negative digitally scanned and repeatedly divided to make in total 600 separate images – these individual images becoming the frames for the film. Movement is re-animated through digital video to reflect the motion present at the original moment of capture by the medium-format camera.

The work is also concerned with questioning the notion of truth and ‘document’ in relation to the photographic image. The notion of ‘truth’ is questioned through the layering of journeys and mixing of ‘modes of translation’ – what is defined here as the movement from experience to representation.

Excerpt: Olympic Changes: an inadequate document of life from Samuel Nightingale on Vimeo.

Ideas / thoughts on Traversal: A work in progess part two

I have been thinking about the work of Tacita Dean and how it relates to some of the concerns I am interested to explore in the project Traversal. While researching Dean’s work recently, I came across a number of short texts she has written that are included in the final section of a book published by Phaidon. The text that I found most interesting and perhaps most enlightening about her practice is entitled Tristan da Cunha. In it Dean writes of her fantasy of visiting the most remote island in the world, which is apparently Tristan da Cunha, to be left there for a year without any form of communication with the outside world, apart from the mail boat which appears once a year. She re-tells a dream, where she had the realisation that when the mail boat arrived, it would also be the same boat that would mark the end of her year and facilitate her return home; this thought of leaving panicked her and she felt disappointed at the letters she could not send or receive – of all the news she could not get.

Not only is the journey (so far) an unrealised fantasy, but also a fantasy of a world where you can get lost; as Dean explains, even Tristan da Cunha has a satellite public phone and the governor now has email. So time moves relentlessly on for this remote and distant land too. It is clear to see from the text that Dean hungers for these spaces where one can dream of becoming lost, where linear time has little meaning and the past and the future are all somehow present in the now. In conclusion Dean writes, ‘So I realize, suddenly, what is at the heart of this draw to the Earth’s edges – to the desert and to the sea, or to the ice at the bottom of the world, or the volcano risen out of the ocean. In these places, we are not bound by the rules of human time; we can be free of a history that cannot mark a surface in constant flux like that of the sea or the or the shifting dunes of the desert, or one brutalized by weather or extremity. In these places, we can imagine millennia; we can image prehistory and can see the future.’

Accompanying the text are reproductions of an old postcard and photograph, both images of an unstated location or date, both have German words painted in white across them indicating aspects of what is pictured.


Tacita Dean, Himmel/See, 2005.


Tacita Dean, Luft/Immergrune/Sandboden, 2005.

For me Dean’s fascination with time resonates with Henri Bergson concept of durée (duration): the dynamic movement of passing yet continuing time, in other words time that is not divisible into past and future, but is qualitative rather than quantitative. It is this concept of durée that is in my mind when I consider some of the still images from Traversal.


Sam Nightingale, Untitled (Traversal series)

A Small Project on Australian Cinemas

A small project on Australian cinemas stems from a curiosity and appreciation for 1930's cinema architecture. The era of these buildings has gone, but many of the buildings still remain in Australia's cities and towns - though now disappearing at a fast pace. This project document's a small sample of these buildings that housed the special occasion that going to the picture palace once was. At that time, the event of going to the cinema was not only about the image projected on the screen, but also an engagement with the building in which the film was shown, an engagement that was to transport the patron to another world; separated from the realism and drudgery of daily life they found themselves in a splendid and out-of-the-ordinary environment in which to escape for a few hours. The buildings photographed stand in varying conditions and some no longer operate even as cinemas, however, each façade is embedded with a glamorous memory of the silver-screen.

See parts 1-3 of the project below.

A Small Project on Australian Cinemas: Part Three

Capri Theater, Adelaide. Still in use as a cinema


Glenelg Cinema Center, Adelaide. No longer in use as a cinema


Westgarth Theater, Melbourne. Still in use as a cinema


Coburg Drive-in, Melbourne. Still in use as a cinema

Ideas / thoughts on Traversal: A work in progress part one

Traverse (verb)

Move across an area: transitive verb to travel or move across, over, or through an area or a place

To go back and forth across something: transitive and intransitive verb to move backwards and forwards across something

Traverse (noun)

Movement across an area: a movement or journey across, over, or through something

Route taken: a route or way across, over, or through something


Traversal is a new project that I am working on that intends to explore the relationship between the embodied and disembodied travel experience.

The framework for this project is grounded in historical changes that took place in the 19th century with the emergence of the railroad as a dominant form of transportation - taking over from the stage coach and walking, for example. I am particularly interested the effect this development had on perception for those traveling. Wolfgang Schivelbusch1 has suggested that the railway journey made possible a new way of perceiving the landscape that was very different from earlier forms of travel experience. Schivelbusch claims that, for the passenger, rail travel supported a panoramic perception of the terrain; this suggestion is put at odds to a multi-sensual engagement with the environment that was much more the case in pre-industrialized forms of transportation. In panoramic perception, Schivelbusch suggests, the traveler sees objects and landscapes mediated through the apparatus of the train. In this, the space of the traveler and the space of the perceived objects is separated and there is dissolution of the embodied experience. The landscape becomes a moving panorama, passing at speed outside the train window - one could imagine this like a movie projected on the window, where the only sensory experience of the landscape is vision - a vision that is separated from any further bodily experience.

To explore these ideas I undertook to traverse the landmass of Australia by train - from the bottom of the country to the top and back again. A journey of 6786km, comprising three train journeys, totaling 124 hours of train travel made during seven days travel. The journey started in Melbourne, Victoria; traveling to Darwin in the Northern Territory and ended in Adelaide, South Australia. All the railroads taken had played a historical role in the industrialization of Australia's transportation system; the earliest route taken was completed in 1888.

The experience of the journey was translated to visual, sonic and written representation using various apparatus, such as: still photography - digital and celluloid, moving image - video, field recordings and written observations.

My main attention was directed to the grand vista and the subtle detail.


1. Schivelbusch, W., The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, New ed., Leamington Spa, UK: Berg. 1986.

A Small Project on Australian Cinemas: Part Two

Rivolio, Melbourne, Victoria. Still in use as a cinema



Palais Theater, Melbourne, Victoria. No longer in use as a cinema



Palace Brighton Bay, Melbourne. Still in use as a cinema



The Astor, Melbourne. Still in use as a cinema

Melbourne Mist

Sydney Nights

Laurenze Berges

A small selection of Laurenz Berges' photography is currently exhibited at the Monash Gallery of Art as part of: presentation/representation: photography from Germany

Berges' large colour prints focus on the details of living space that are no longer inhabited. The spaces photographed are of abandoned homes in former coal mining towns in Germany; as the coal mining industry was closed down, essentially, so was the town. Berges' employs a formalist aesthetic to document these empty living spaces, which highlight the absence of the human life where signs indicate there once life. It is as if the emptiness within the image is attempting to speak of an existence that was previously present, but is dissolving with time.

Laurenz Berges is a former student of Bernd Becher at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf.

presentation/representation: photography from Germany is on show at the Monash Gallery of Art, Victoria, Australia until 30 August 2009.

Laurenze Berges


Laurenze Berges


Laurenze Berges

A Small Project on Australian Cinemas: Part One

Theater Royal, Castlemaine, Victoria. Still in use as a cinema



The Palais, Hepburn Springs, Victoria. No longer in use as a cinema



The Rex, Daylesford, Victoria. No longer in use as a cinema



Alpha Hall, Daylesford, Victoria. No longer in use as a cinema

Tacita Dean

Still from Prisoner Pair, 16mm colour film, Tacita Dean 2008.

Tacita Dean makes beautiful films. Her small observation speak in such a way that you taste, feel, hear and see the subject matter of her film making. Tacita Dean's films are about the past, the present and the future all at the same time. They are the about the materiality of the film they are made on, they are about the light that is reflected and refracted off the surface of the objects that her gaze falls upon. The repeated long takes within her films tell us she is in no rush. Time just takes its course; stillness stays still.

A major survey of Tacita Dean's work appeared at the Australia Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA) from 6 June - 2 August 2009.

Len Lye: an artist in perpetual motion

Len Lye (1901-1980) was an experimental filmmaker, sculptor, photographer and writer originating from New Zealand; he move to London in the 1920's and later to New York in the 1940's.

Many of Lye films are made without a camera, rather applying paint marks (and later scratching) directly onto the film's surface to make abstract imagery. This imagery was often combined with fast paced jazz music to create works of vibrant colour and rhythmic beats. Movement, light and sound all combine in Lye's films making them dynamic forerunners in the structural film movement that would soon emerge in the 1960's and 70's.



Len Lye: an artist in perpetual motion, is showing at the Australian Center for the Moving Image, in Melbourne until mid October.

Melbourne, when I arrive

Light
28th July 2009.

London, before I leave

A reflection on Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival

I attended Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in the south of France during it's opening week: 7th - 12th July. This is one of the largest photography festivals in the world and attracts a varied crowd both in terms of those actively participating, be that photographers exhibiting their work, publishers looking for the next new talent or those attending portfolio reviews hoping to be discovered as the next new talent. For many others visiting Les Roncontres it is to see a plethora of work from both familiar and unfamiliar names in the word of photography. During the opening week Arles becomes a town that is unable to hide from an onslaught of cameras; every time you turn a corner someone is photographing something. The festival and those attending became a spectacle - framed by the medium it is celebrating.

The image appears highly privileged at Les Rencontres. An image which is frequently detached from the context of it's making. It seems an image that relies on itself alone and without desire for much self-reflexivity.

Can we really put this much trust or emphasis in the image alone? Should we not expect some critical investigation of the who/why/where of it's making? I know that I expected this to be the case for a photography festival who states in its strap-line celebrating 40 year of its existence, that it is also a festival offering '40 years of disruption'. I wonder about this claim, as surely the act of disruption is also in its nature questioning the thing it is attempting to unsettle? Yet very little is questioned here.

The countless images depicting people's hardship and distress, displayed as prints on the exhibition walls and massively projected onto the external walls of the disused railway sheds in the Parc des Ateliers during what is called the 'Night of the Year' - are unsettling to me. I feel repeatedly bombard with snippets of people's lives that are divorced from reality of the situation they were made in. It feels as the most important matter here is the production and display of powerful images. But these powerful images, which many of them are without a doubt, seem presented as entertainment, designed to create an emotional response so brief and digestible that it can be quickly replaced by the next photograph in the production line of image consumption.

Not all the work at Les Rencontrs d'Arles left me feeling this way, much of the work curated by Nan Goldin, along with her own work on show, were notable exceptions; as was the insightful photographs of Eugene Richard's new colour work: The Blue Room, which thoughtfully details abandoned houses across America. Other work that stays in my mind is Paulo Nozolino's Far Cry and Michal Ackerman's Half Life, both of which were displayed as slideshows with sonic accompaniment.

Whilst I enjoyed Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival, I did leave wondering where I fit in this world - if at all.

A stop off before Les Rencontres d'Arles

Unité d’Habitation le Courbusier, Marseille
7th July 2009.

Le Courbusier proposed the house should be a machine for living in.

The purpose of this space

From the start of July until early October I have taken some time out to develop thoughts and ideas around my art practice. During this time I have planned to slow life down, think, process and travel; in the second part of the travel I intend to work on a new project which I have so far called Tra-verse-al.
Here, I intend to post some of the images that I make during the time, which I hope act as a kind of visual essay. At times I will also write a little something.
Of course I am already behind schedule before I have even begun.

Olympic Development site, East London, UK

Taken during a workshop and seminar that was run in conjunction with the exhibition; A Line is There to be Broken, Viewfinder Photography Gallery, London. The workshop which included walking around the boundary of the Olympic development site in east London, was offered as part of 'Urban Edge' series of workshops and events organised by CUCR, Goldsmiths, University of London