structures & spectres

structures & spectres is a place where I put images. 

Images that I have taken sometime ago, 

not long ago, 

or even yesterday.
No words, 

just images left to speak for themselves.   

Have a look: 

structures & spectres

Imagining the Cinema Project

The bio box at the Strand Cinema, Creswick

While I am based in Australia I am working on a research project tracking down the sites of historic cinemas in regional Victoria. It’s a rewarding project, which have so far lead me to unearthed more than 300 spaces that have been used to show film at one time or another since the early 1900s. Somewhat like Islington’s Lost Cinemas, a project of mine that focuses on the history of movie-theatres in the London Borough of Islington, many of the old cinemas, public halls or Mechanics Institutes that have brought people together to watch moving images have long gone. Yet both in Islington and the regional towns in Victoria that we are visiting traces of the buildings still exist; be this in the bricks that still stand, in the remembrance of local people or through their imagined projection onto the contemporary spaces of the everyday, such as my aim when photographically documenting the sites as they stand today.

Imaging the Cinema Project is part of a larger and ongoing curatorial and commissioning programme (The Cinemas Project) by Bridget Crone that is developed in partnership with NETS, Victoria and supported by Monash University Faculty of Art and Design.

There is a blog that charts the research project as we journey both into cinema history and across the regional towns in Victoria, Australia. The Imaging the Cinema Project blog can be found here.


ABOUT “THE CINEMAS PROJECT”
The Cinemas Project is an exciting new framework for the commissioning and development of projects by contemporary artists working with the moving image and live performance in relation to the sites of historic cinemas across regional Victoria. The Cinemas Project addresses cinemas as spectral sites, places that are in existence or existing only in memory, and so are full of spirited visions and ghostly images. The Cinemas Project will focus on commissioning new contemporary art work that involves aspects of live performance or the moving image in order to address the type of work initially presented in these spaces.

The Cinemas Project takes these various possibilities as a starting point to invite artists who take these differing approaches to participation and spectatorship, matching one artist to one of the six participating locations across Victoria.

Phantom Rides and Lantau Island

The relationship between the train and cinema go back along way – in fact to the very beginning of cinema. The train window with its fleeting images has often been compared to the cinema screen (something that I explored in Traversal – First Passage) offering passengers something akin to a cinematic experience; so with this in mind, it is little wonder that one of the first subjects that cinema pictured was train travel. From around 1897 a popular film genre involving a different type of view from the train emerged known as ‘phantom rides’. In these films both the cameraperson and the camera would be strapped to the front of a moving train, the resulting film gave the viewer an exciting experience that was both dynamic (cameras in early film were generally completely static and fixed only in one place) and offered a unique perspective, that is, the view from the front of the train as it accelerated along train tracks, entered tunnels and went round corners. What was exhilarating about phantom rides, and hence its name, was that the movement filmed appeared to be powered by an invisible force.

'Hale's Tours of the World'

To start with the journey’s pictured in phantom rides stayed close to home, such as the one seen above in View from an Engine Front – Barnstaple (1898) by the Warwick Trading Company, shown here courtesy of the fantastic BFI film channel. Before long, however, the entertainment possibilities of these films was to be explored in a much more ambitious way in 'Hale's Tours of the World'. In these attractions the phantom ride would screen in a specially designed cinema styled on a train carriage, with cinemagoers seated on train benches to watch films depicting ‘exotic’ scenes from around the world. Sight, however, was not the only sense to be stimulated in these events as the fake train carriage would vibrate, shake and tilt to simulate the movement of the train. While the film might be silent, plenty of other sound effects were on offer such as the noise of the train wheels grinding and the train whistle blowing. Following from a pre-cinema device - the moving panorama – out of the side windows viewers (passages) would see painted scenery roll by. You have to wonder if ‘Hale’s Tours of the World’ were not in fact the very first attempt at virtual reality.

During a recent stopover in Hong Kong, I had occasion to think of the phantom rides of early cinemas as I took a cable car ride from the top of Lantau Island. Looking out of the front of the glass encased car I glided gently through the air watching spectacular landscape pass me by, with my small photographic camera running on video mode and seated comfortably (and safely) I thought about those pioneer filmmakers who strapped themselves to the front of steam trains and ambitiously powered themselves towards the future.

Lantau Island - Phantom Ride

East Pop Red

The other week it was west -  this week its red.

Olympic Changes: an inadequate document of life will screen again from the 12th - 18th October at East Pop Red in the heart of Shoreditch at Red Gallery.

Location: Red Gallery, 3 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3DT
Dates: October 12th - 18th 2011

East Pop West

 

Olympic Changes an inadequate document of life will screen as part of a film programme currated by Alexa Kusber for East Pop West, from 30th September - 2nd October. If you have not seen Olympic Changes get down to the 20,000 sq ft warehouse space at Unit 1, Goldhawk Industrial Estate, Vinery Way (off Brackenbury Road), London W6 0BE to take part in a three day art event that is taking East London art West. 

Details:

EAST POP WEST is a celebration of contemporary creative collaborations, during a three-day event at the 20,000 sq ft former Innocent Smoothies HQ. It is set to be a rare chance for West London to engage directly with East London’s artists and designers – to make an investment and be part of the first EAST POP venture.

EAST POP films curated by Alexa Kusber
EAST POP art curated by Alice Herrick & Kate Kotcheff with Red Gallery
+ Box Circle Arts’ Children’s Creative Space + Rosy Lee Tea Cafe + Red Gallery Bar + Live Art + DJs
Admission price £5     Concessions £3      Under 12s Free

Date: Sep 30th & Oct 1st 12-10pm, Oct 2nd 12-6pm 

Location: Unit 1, Goldhawk Industrial Estate, Vinery Way (off Brackenbury Road), London W6 0BE

http://eastpop.co.uk/about/

Two Kent Cinema Delights

I came across two lovely little cinemas last weekend when visiting Deal, Kent.

The Empire, Sandwich

The Empire

The Empire

The New Empire in Sandwich originally opened on 26th June 1937, operating as a cinema until the 1960s, then like many old cinemas, became a bingo hall for a number of years before been closed down completely (with a brief spell as a snooker club). In 1993 the Empire reopened as a cinema and continues to date to have daily screenings.

The Regent, Deal

The Regent

The Regent cinema in Deal started operating as a cinema on the 13th July 1933, having previously been a theatre (The Pavilion Theatre, Opened: 1928). Again in the 1960s the cinema closed down and it became a bingo hall that operated until 2009. The building currently stands vacant, however, there are plans afoot to turn it back into a cinema again in the near future.

Two views of water

The Image - Imploded Action, Contagion, Affect

A talk by Bridget Crone at the Photographer's Gallery, 2nd March 2011.

This talk takes as its starting point the idea of 'image' as marked by the speed of its dissemination, its velocity and pervasive effects. An idea of 'image' not marked by representation or by its representative capacities.

Drawing on Brian Massumiʼs demonstration of 'affective modulation' in relation to the terror alert system in the US, Bridget Crone will look at the way in which the image can be a tool for affective control particular in the invocation (and modulation) of scales of fear.

'I'm still standing'

This cinema originally opened as the 'Empress Electric Theatre' in 1910. Situated on Upper Street in the London Borough of Islington, the 'Screen on the Green', as it is known today, is one of the few cinemas still standing in the Islington - a borough which has been home to more than 45 cinemas since 1900.

Cinemas, beautiful forgotten cinemas...

 

I am currently working on a project about Islington's forgotten cinemas and its early cinematic history. These photographs are of the Carlton cinema on Essex Road. The Carlton originally opened in 1930 and operated as a cinema until 1972, then becoming a bingo hall for a number of years. It is now completely closed up awaits another life. 

The Carlton in 1963, when it was known as the ABC.

 

Shortlisted for Westphoto Photography Prize

I am happy to say one of my photographs has been short listed for the Westphoto Photography Prize; this year's competition is jointly hosted by the University of Westminster Aalto University, Helsinki and Lette Verein, Berlin.

The Private View and Awards Ceremony will take place at Ambike P3 Exhibition Space, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS on Thursday, 18 November - 5.30pm
The London strand of show will run from 19-24 November (11.30 - 6pm)

James Benning - RUHR

 

Still from RUHR, James Benning 2010


I saw RUHR by James Benning on Saturday as part of the London Film Festival.

Comprising seven fixed frame composition that range in length from seven minutes to one hour, the film is primarily an exercise (as Benning himself proclaims) in looking and listening. The footage is all shot in the heavily industrialized region of Ruhr in Germany; however, these images could be of anywhere in the world, as the intention here is not really about place, but about the viewers relationship to observing place.

Watching the film, which at times can be challenging, (as you are watching the same scene/object/setting for up to one hour with very little change taking place) is what I can only describe as what it might be like to watch the world with your eyes closed. To explain what I mean by this it is first necessary to consider the way the philosopher Henri Bergson chose to talk not of things or appearances, but rather to speak everything in the world as ‘images’ and how images can be both matter and perceptions at the same time (see Bergson: Matter and Memory). Therefore, as I watched RUHR the line from the first page of Matter and Memory came to mind, ‘Here I am in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my senses are open to them, unperceived when they are closed.’ What I experienced in RHUR felt like what it might be like to see what happens in the world when my eyes are closed, in other words to perceive (to see) without perception. For Bergson perception serves action; that is, unable to take in all sensory information in the world, perception filters images that make up the external world; meaning that the images that do not concern our needs and actions pass right by us. What I see or perceive in the images on the screen in RHUR is that which is present, but without potentiality for action - in other words that which perception normally filters out.

A different way of thinking about the seven fixed framed composition that make up RUHR is to consider them as 'animated photographs'. Animated photography was the name frequently given to very early films in the period 1895 - 1906. These films normally lasted from anything from 20 seconds to 3 minutes and were fixed frame (the camera did not move) and the action, which was usually of a simple city scene, unfolded gradually in front of the camera. The movement that was witnessed by those early audiences often seemed to take place as if by magic. In these films, which were also referred to as living pictures, the movement was not the big movement that cinema would soon be so proud of as it demonstrated it’s array of techniques; instead, these were the detailed movements of smoke drifting out of a factory chimney (just as smoke drifts out of the coke quenching tower in RUHR) or leaves blowing down the road (just as in watching RUHR attention falls on the subtle rustling of a leaf blowing in The Matenastraße Tunnel). Animated photographs did not yet have the techniques of pan, zoom, edit and montage that came with the 'movement-image'. Another comparison between RUHR and animated photographs could be seen as both having durational equivalence between the time taken to film and the time taken to play back the film to audience. In many ways RUHR could be compared to animated photograph; however a big difference is technology and its ability for manipulation. Benning made it very clear in the Q&A that followed the screening that in this film small manipulations had taken place to give a truer feel of the place being portrayed. Elsewhere he has stated ‘sometimes irregular events give a false sense of reality and by removing them the truth becomes more apparent; but of course any truth is only the perception of the viewer ...’ What that perception might be brings us back to my starting point ...