Experimental Film and Video Anthology

Description

For artists working with moving image in the late twentieth century, the past forty years of technological innovation has significantly altered the materials of production, revolutionising the possibilities for experiment and exhibition. Not since the invention of film has there been such a critical period of major change in the imaging technologies accessible to artists. Bringing together key artists in film, video and digital media this Anthology, Experimental Film and Video, revisits the divergent philosophical and critical discourses of the 1970s and in the light of the convergence technologies of digital media and paradigms encompassing the technological, narrative, expanded, performative, theatrical and sculptural, re-positions these debates relative to contemporary practice. Forty artists have contributed images, and twenty-five artists reflect on the diverse critical agendas, contexts, and communities that have affected their practice across the period from the late 1960s to date.

With an introduction by Jackie Hatfield and forewords by Sean Cubitt and Al Rees this illustrated anthology of artists’ writings includes interviews and recent essays by filmmakers, video artists, and pioneers of interactive cinema: Cate Elwes, Peter Gidal, David Hall, Malcolm LeGrice, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Tamara Krikorian, David Larcher, Anthony McCall, Jayne Parker, Stephen Partridge, Daniel Reeves, Lis Rhodes and Grahame Weinbren. As well as the critical texts, it includes stills and visuals from all the artists including: David Critchley, Nina Danino, Nicky Hamlyn, Tina Keane, Andrew Kötting, Mike Leggett, Jayne Parker, Kayla Parker, Sarah Pucill, William Raban, Daniel Reeves, Guy Sherwin, John Smith, Tony Sinden and Chris Welsby.

Picture Editor: Stephen Littman

Contents

Foreword by Sean Cubitt

Foreword by A.L. Rees
Introduction, by Jackie Hatfield

SECTION I Philosophies and Critical Histories of Avant-Garde Film and Current Practice

Chapter 1 Post Future Past Perfect, by Grahame Weinbren
Chapter 2 Matter’s Time Time For Material, by Peter Gidal
Chapter 3 Films and Installations – A Systems View of Nature, by Chris Welsby
Chapter 4 A Line Through My Work, by Nicky Hamlyn
Chapter 5 A Few Notes on Filmmaking, by Jayne Parker
Chapter 6 Film Noise Aesthetics, by Rob Gawthrop
Chapter 7 Line Describing a Cone and Related Films, by Anthony McCall

SECTION II Languages of Representation in Film and Video: Thresholds of Materiality

Chapter 8 Trilogical Distractions, by Lis Rhodes
Chapter 9 The ‘autoethnographic’ in Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, and an Analysis of Almost Out and Stages of Mourning, by Sarah Pucill
Chapter 10 Film, The Body, The Fold. An Interview with Nina Danino on Now I Am Yours, by Nina Danino and Susanna Poole
Chapter 11 Attitudes 1-8, by Katherine Meynell
Chapter 12 Video Works 1973–1983, by David Critchley
Chapter 13 Early Video Tapes 1978–1987, by Chris Meigh-Andrews
Chapter 14 Andrew Kõtting. What he does, how he does it and the context in which it has been done: An Alphabetarium of Kõtting, by Gareth Evans and Andrew Kõtting
Chapter 15 Ardent for Some Desperate Glory: Revisiting Smothering Dreams, by Daniel Reeves
Chapter 16 War Stories, or Why I Make Videos About Old Soldiers, by Cate Elwes
Chapter 17 Moving Parts: The Divergence of Practice, by Vicky Smith

SECTION III Philosophies and Critical Histories of Video Art to Cinema

Chapter 18 Mutation on a Form, by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler
Chapter 19 Video: Incorporeal, Incorporated, by Stephen Partridge
Chapter 20 Tamara Krikorian – Defending the Frontier, by Cate Elwes
Chapter 21 Another Place – David Hall, by Jackie Hatfield
Chapter 22 Alchemy and the Digital Imaginary, by David Larcher, interviewed by Stephen Littman
Chapter 23 Reflections on My Practice and Media Specificity, by Malcolm Le Grice
Chapter 24 Expanded Cinema – Proto, Post-Photo, by Jackie Hatfield
Chapter 25 Image Con Text (1978–2003): Film/Performance/Video/Digital, by Mike Leggett

SECTION IV Images

Work by George Barber, Jackie Hatfield, Stephen Hawley, Tina Keane, Tamara Krikorian, Stephen Littman, Jo Ann Millet, William Raban, Kayla Parker, Guy Sherwin, Tony Sinden, John Smith, Jeremy Welsh

Biography

Jackie Hatfield is an artist and writer who makes expanded and participatory cinematic artworks. She has contributed essays and co-edited two critical books around gender and technology in art practice, Desire by Design and Digital Desires, and has published essays concentrating on under-explored histories of experimental film and video practices: technological invention, gender and narrativity. She is Post Doctoral Research Fellow on REWIND: Artists’ Video in the 1970s and 1980s, University of Dundee, Scotland.
Picture Editor: Stephen Littman is an artist, visual theatre documentalist and academic based at University College for the Creative Arts at Farnham; he has been involved in the organisatiion of festivals such as Video Positive, National Review of Live Art (Video) and was a member of the LVA management committee from 1980 to 1987 running the screening programmes and technical workshops. He is currently curating the screening programme for the 2007 NRLA at the Tramway Gallery, Glasgow.