CIRCA Art Magazine - Winter 2003 - ni-film-art-docu-rama

C106 article

Based in Belfast and in Derry, respectively, artists who use film and video, and film-makers who are moving into gallery spaces talked with Declan Sheehan in Derry's Context Gallery in late September 2003. Cut to:

ni-film-art-docu-rama

INT

MS Office of Context Gallery. A messy space, full of stored art work and office desks, books, filing cabinets. Five people sit around a desk looking at a monitor showing a video.

TITLE SI appears rising onto the scene and off into infinity.

TITLE

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...there were film clubs and Super8mm splicers and a place for experimental film on late-night TV...

VO (male)

But today... has experimental film had its day, and been confined to the archive of once-upon-a-time archaic technologies and artforms, like cartes-de-visite, stereo photographs, and those string-drawings from the 1970s? Have film clubs been damned to past? Have 16mm, Super8mm, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, & The Kuchar Brothers been deemed irrelevant? How do emerging artists and filmmakers see this past, and how do they use film and video in the gallery, or in the screening room? Several young artists and filmmakers met at the Context Gallery in September 2003 and discussed their influences, resources, and practice.

KERRY PLUMMER looks at the monitor screen. The attention of the others follows her gaze. On the monitor screen are two adjacent EXTREME CLOSE UPS (ECU) of the lips of two talking women.

KERRY PLUMMER

I used this for my MA show last year. It's the culmination of a study on the Nature/Nurture debate. I'm using twins as they're used in experiments to study environmental changes - and I've also a real interest in twins because they're fascinating. The first set you see onscreen are people I've grown up with. I know their idiosyncrasies, they live out of each other's pockets.

CUT TO

Blank Slate 1 on monitor, showing two screens with ECU of lips answering questions from offscreen. There then appears a second set of ECU of two lips on two screens, Blank Slate 2.

KERRY PLUMMER (vo)

This other set of twins, although they're completely identical, by comparison they have completely different lives now. One has a family and husband, the other is waitressing and travelling.

DECLAN SHEEHAN (vo)

And this was set up as an installation?

KERRY PLUMMER (vo)

Yeah, this was projected onto a wall, 14ft high and formed a strip at eye level filling the width of the wall. I had thought of going backwards and forwards between their two voices, but then thought, I'll overlap them and see how it sounds. It was really melodic because their voices are so identical. When it's projected as an installation, you can focus your hearing between the screens and speakers.

CUT TO

INT Office. The focus of the group changes to JOHN MATTHEWS, as his piece "Tonight, let's get lost" begins playing on the monitor screen.

CUT TO

"Tonight, let's get lost" on monitor. A series of predominantly black-and-white images of nighttime and lone characters in the city, with an edgy electronic soundtrack and a poetic voiceover with an Eastern European female voice recounting thoughts and observations on the night and loneliness in the city.

DECLAN SHEEHAN (vo)

So, John, this is the second long video piece you've made.

JOHN MATTHEWS (vo)

Yeah the first video piece Twist, Tail, Burn was about twenty minutes and designed more as an installation, with the video projection and 150 slides on two carousels, which I'd spent a year making, featuring kind of static images in an urban environment. This piece, Tonight, let's get lost, features more movement. I was commissioned by Fullyformed Arts to make a work based on The Golden Mile in Belfast. I chose to shoot quite a lot at night, was very attracted to the area being commercial by day and chaotic at night, a very different environment. I'm drawn to the noir aspect of cities. This piece features extremes of light, it's dark, sinister. The musician Steven Dickie did the edgy electronic, synthy soundtrack.

DS (vo)

Was this screened as a film, which the audience sat and watched, or as an installation?

JM (vo)

For the opening, I screened it with a PA and screen on the roof of Queen Street Studios at dusk, as the sun was going down there was half an hour when you could see the film but also see the area it was based around, as the natural light was fading and the city lights coming up. So it was very much that the backdrop was part of it. But for the duration, and in terms of distribution, it's a film to be screened. In the exhibition I also had twenty-five photographs, from the shoot. The piece is very much a succession of micro-narratives. These black-and-white photographs onscreen now are old vaudeville photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, cabaret acts, contortionists, and jugglers. These photographs are in The Kitchen Bar in Belfast, which was next to the old Empire Music Hall. It's very much the ghost of entertainment. At one time, The Golden Mile would have been full of these venues, and then cinema took over, and now contemporary club/disco culture has taken over. So this is very much, the ghost of Saturday night.

VINCENT O'CALLAGHAN (vo)

And cinema would have been part of vaudeville to start with.

JM (vo)

Yeah, they would have just put up a screen between the acts.

A lot of this film, Twist, trail, burn, is made up of people looking at reflections, mirrors, and dark windows of abandoned shopping arcades at night, which would have been busy during the day. I'm drawn to the idea of psychogeography, using the ambience of the space to heighten aspects of the imagery. Turning areas which are commercial by the day into something sinister, by use of spotlights, small gestures into camera, turning people's perception of spaces around. Creating micro-narratives, like this scene of the weeping girl in the phone box at night. The narrative of the whole piece is made up of elements like that, acting in whole as a stream of consciousness. I like to use that film tradition of creating atmosphere through lighting, there's a tendency now to use action or very fast in-your-face editing. I like to get back to creating an atmosphere through film.

KP (vo)

Do you have a plan of what to shoot, or an idea of how the piece will look in the end?

JM (vo)

I would do shot lists and plans of lighting scenarios - but normally the location dictates what it's going to be. You have a basic structure but it inevitably changes. I like using advanced lighting set-ups, and I've started using theatre spot-lamps to highlight faces, and before now, I'd use torches or car lamps. For this shoot, I needed a lot more actors and assistants.

CUT TO

MS Office of Context Gallery. The five people now sit around a desk regarding each other, and the discussion is widened.

So where did you all start from - foundation art? - film studies?

In Dundee I did a course on Time Based Art, giving me a technical background, and then came back to Belfast and made a 3-minute short film, Falling.

Why did you go down that route instead of the film-school route?

There seemed to be more freedom in terms of what I could do. I don't generally work with scripts, I mostly work with voiceovers, because I like the way people have used them in the past - people like Terence Malick, the way he would create using landscape, combined with voiceover and minimal music. Or even the way voiceovers were used in Film Noir.

In art college, is there a pressure to move away from film?

Well, from an equipment point of view, it was difficult. I ended up shooting Super8mm and being quite low-tech.

And Kerry, were you committed to working with video from the start?

No, I started at college doing sculptural work and installation. It was in my final year that I worked on video for the first time, and then all throughout my Masters I was working solely with video. Before video, I was using a lot of materials that just weren't saying enough or doing enough. For example, I had been making sculptures with vines and ivy leaves, and then had the idea of going into a forest and start filming, which led on to other ideas and I got hooked. No other material really said enough for me after that.

And Vincent, you went to Film School.

VOC

Well before that I did still-life painting for a year. Then I did photography and video in Foundation. I always knew I'd go on to do film and video. After the Foundation I went straight to a Film and Video degree. With regard to the painting, I'd known that key cinematographers were often referencing painters, so that was part of just wanting to paint for a year, alongside not wanting to rush straight into video, getting a different experience.

OTTO VON SCHLINDHEIN

I started with computing and design, with an interest in the moving image, doing short narratives in design, but knowing that I'd move into video. Once I started working with Vincent I moved into video.

And now you both collaborate, with the painter Damien Duffy?

OVS

Yeah, over the past two years Vincent and I have been making documentaries; From Bogside to Brooklyn, on a band from New York who are involved in Irish politics and a Hip-Hop crew in Derry. We got a Commedia Millenmium award to produce that. And now we're working with recent material we've shot in New York. But they've been documentaries focusing on the visual, moving away from interviews. And we had an idea of moving that work into the gallery, as it's so much about the image, not talking heads.

VOC

And this year I've done a low-budget short, Stinger, with money from the NIFC. I was co-director and camera. I chose not to use any high-end equipment available, but to use the PD 150 dv camera, not because of any nostalgia, or lo-fi trend, but I suppose because of my experience of making documentaries, and that kind of imagery and style. I really like the look it gives. I think there's a more cinematic quality achieved.

John and Kerry, what about your resources?

Two years ago I got an ACNI grant to purchase my own DV equipment. Before that I was using Super8mm and VHS. Moving to digital made it all more affordable and easier to work. But most of my work would be self-funded, with the occasional equipment grant.

Was there Super8mm equipment in the college?

No, all the Super8mm was my own. At college, it's up to you to source equipment; 'cause the college equipment is shared between so many people.

Yeah, the demand really outweighs the supply. I used my grant and scrimped and saved to buy my own camera, and a computer to edit. I hated being dependent, waiting on college equipment, and it wasted so much time.

It seems that Belfast has a culture of emerging lo-fi, DIY film/video, both as productions and as screenings.

Yeah, there is a kind of video karma, with people helping each other. Groups like Cinilingus are crucial in promoting experimental film. They give a real service that's not provided by the galleries. And they're also involved in the Belfast Film Festival.

Is there any crossover between the Northern Ireland Film Commission and artists using film, between that kind of funded short film and artists. I'm not aware of any.

That's one of the problems with college, you're not really shown any of the opportunities for support and funds that exist.

There's no kind of career guidance.

Because it requires a major financial investment, for equipment alone, if as an artist you choose the medium of film and video.

Yeah, you can come out of college and then just be left. I have a studio, there's lots of painters there, so I use the studio mainly as a networking place, and I can use the computer there.

I think the Darklight Festival in Dublin gives a good model of a crossover project and resource between new media, film, video, and emerging artists. This is the first year the Context Gallery will be involved in the Foyle Film Festival, which should have been happening long ago.

To think about college again, and there is an interesting mix of backgrounds here for this question, are you given any education in experimental film - the likes of Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren?

Not at all in art college.

VOC

In film school, yeah.

In college it's even difficult to see each other's film or video work. I had to set up a few nights at the OMAC as screenings of people's college work.

In that same vein, the college would buy some of the degree show work for its own collection, and they'd never bought video work before they bought a piece of mine this year. But they've no way of permanently showing it. The other work could be hung on the walls. But my DVD will be lying at the bottom of someone's in tray.

Is film too expensive to use?

Way too expensive. I was offered a reasonably priced 16mm Rolliflex camera, but the film stock would have cost me more than the camera. That's why I'm still using Super8mm. Because there is still a wide aesthetic difference between film and video.

There are examples of a crossover between film and the gallery. Neil Jordan donated his Beckett film Not I, although it was made as a film for cinemas, to IMMA as part of their permanent collection.

Going back to the talk on film and video as media, I've always had the feeling that there will always be more of a craft to filmmaking than to using dv. You cannot lift a 16mm camera, hit a button and be sure of what you're getting, whereas with dv you can. Although I've noticed that people are now more involved in exploring the craft of video, manipulating exposure, aperture, making it richer. Vinny, and Otto, that seems to be the avenue your work is taking with the painter Damien Duffy.

VOC

Yeah, when Dogme95 appeared, it became frustrating that new media and dv seemed they always had to be linked to a quirky hand-held style.

Yeah, using dv as a medium doesn't mean you necessarily have to adopt a shoot from the hip aesthetic.

I think if you apply filmic aesthetics to video, it can be done quite well. But, sure, it would be great working in 16mm, aesthetically it's such a different result, you're basically taking thousands of photographs. Video's got a lot of catching up to do.

There seems to be an instant hit from using video. You hit record and you immediately have a result.

VOC

But Kerry's work, although it uses video, is very structured, very cinematic. I don't think that it's right to always associate dv with running around, making hand-held jumpy images. But I'm sure there was the same debate when portable 16mm film cameras first appeared.

And I think John's work is at a real crossover point, it could go in the direction of film, being screened in a cinema, or in the direction of the gallery installation.

VOC

But with regard to those divisions, in any case, I'm sure there are people doing Flash movies on the net, getting a major audience and doing great work. If we're looking at new media, then it all opens out; it asks the question - what is film?

END

Declan Sheehan is Director of the Context Gallery.