Past Screenings: Page 10

Past Screenings

Wow and Flutter

Jenny Brady

Wow and Flutter

2013, 13’03”

21 April – 27 April 2015

Synopsis

A portrait of a magnificent bird formed over the course of three acts employs strategies of translation, performance and rhetoric to ‘give voice’ to its central protagonist, only to reveal a troubling anthropocentric bind. Drawing on research into the thirty year scientific collaboration between animal cognition scientist Irene Pepperberg and an African Grey she trained in elements of human language, Wow and Flutter considers the various forms of displacement often at play in our understanding of animals. It features a score made in collaboration with musician Andrew Fogarty, which uses a mixture of field recordings, electronics and found material to conjure a unique sound world.

Wow and Flutter at VIDEONALE.15

“»I have acquired English«. The white cockatoo stands out against the black background. »You might think what use are words to a bird?« »I’m lost«. At no time does the bird articulate these words itself. Sentences are laid in its mouth by subtitles. Does it not want to speak or can’t it? Who is the originator of these noises, this speech? Is the cockatoo lost or are we? To what extent does spoken communication function between man and beast? A setting, made by people. The beast confronted by…[read full text here].”

Courtesy VIDEONALE.15 and Marcel Schleyer,

Bio

Jenny Brady works with the moving image to explore ideas around translation, perception and language. She completed an M.A in Visual Arts Practices, IADT in 2010 and recent presentations include Primal Architecture: Roadkill at IMMA, Pallas Periodical Review #4, Wade-In curated by Chris Clarke, EVA International 2014, Limerick curated by Bassam El Baroni, Images Festival 2014, Toronto, Futures ’13 RHA, Dublin, TULCA Golden Mountain (2013), curated by Valerie Connor and Make Shift (2013) Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh curated by Modern Edinburgh Film School. She will present her work at Videonale 15 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn and she is currently working on the Curatorial Team of PLASTIK Festival of Artists’ Moving Image.

She has undertaken commissions for Dublin City Council (2013) and Mayo County Council (2012). Recent awards include Visual Arts Bursary Award (2014), Arts Council Project Award (2013), Travel and Training Award (2014, 2013,2012) and Visual Arts bursary (2011). Her work features in the Arts Council collection.

Links

http://jennifer-brady.com/

http://v15.videonale.org/

A Minimal Difference

Jean-Paul Kelly

A Minimal Difference

2012, 5’00”

14 April – 20 April

A Minimal Difference is shot using a multi-plane camera setup and features receding cell paintings referenced from widely circulated press images (barricades from political protests in Bangkok, bodies piled after the 2010 Haitian earthquake, furniture from an eviction in Cleveland, destruction in Gaza) and more metaphoric pictures (a logjam, clouds or smoke). Each tableau is separated into visual planes that, when filmed with movement, mimic the perception of optical distance.

“Within and against these cartoon-like settings, four figures recur: a blue square (or cube), a yellow triangle (or pyramid), a green circle (or sphere), and a red rectangle (or rectangular solid). They show up against a neutral gray background (Suprematist painting, basically), accompanied by a synthesizer note. But they also hijack the scenes of “realist” concern (poverty, war, violence) by asserting themselves – their flatness, their geometrical universality – over the “local” scenes. Kelly is not leveling tired charges against high modernism and its evacuation of History. Rather, A Minimal Difference introduces abstraction, as typically understood, into the realm of social representation, which always entails its own, less obvious substitutions.” – Michael Sicinski (from an interview with Jean-Paul here).

BIO

“Jean-Paul Kelly (Canadian, b. 1977) is an artist exploring the relationship between materiality and perception. The videos, drawings, and photographs that Kelly makes pose questions about the limits of representation by examining complex associations between found photographs, videos, and sounds from documentaries, photojournalism, and online media streams. His work has exhibited at the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), The Power Plant (Toronto), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Scrap Metal Gallery (Toronto), Mercer Union (Toronto), Gallery TPW (Toronto) and Tokyo Wonder Site. Recent screenings include New York Film Festival,Toronto International Film Festival, SBC Gallery (Montreal), Nightingale Cinema (Chicago), the Seoul Museum of Art, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. He was a Guest Artist at the 2013 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar and will be a resident at the Delfina Foundation (London) in 2015. Kelly received the 2014 Kazuko Trust Award from the Kazuko Trust and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.” (from the artist’s website).

LINKS

It’s worth spending some time exploring Jean- Paul Kelly’s playful website, www.jeanpaulkelly.com.

Here’s a short discussion between Jean-Paul Kelly and Chris Stults, Associate Curator of Film/Video, Wexner Center for the Arts, and there’s a longer text, Three Recent Works By Jean-Paul Kelly, by Michael Sicinski here.

Image: Jean-Paul Kelly, Dwelling, 2008

Let Them Believe

Eva and Franco Mattes with Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark

Let Them Believe

2010, 15’17”

31 March – 13 April

“The idea came after meeting sculptor James Acord, the only individual licensed to work with radioactive materials. He thinks that it’s inevitable that artists use the materials of their age. I was ten when Chernobyl’s radioactive cloud flew over my head, and into my thyroid” Eva Mattes.

On 26 April 1986 there was a catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe, and resulted in the creation of a 30km radius exclusion zone – the ‘zone of alienation’ – around the reactor. Today, the zone of alienation is largely uninhabited, except for about 300 residents who have refused to leave. The area has largely reverted to forest, and has been overrun by wildlife. The radiation levels remain so high that the workers responsible for ensuring the safety of the ruined reactor are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest. Ukrainian officials estimate the area will not be safe for human life again for another 20,000 years.

The accident is one of only two – the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 – classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) by the International Atomic Energy Association.

In the Summer 2010, inspired by Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker, Eva and Franco Mattes, along with collaborators Ryan C. Doyle, Todd Chandler, Tod Seelie, Jeff Stark and Steve Valdez, embarked on a journey to Chernobyl, to develop a secretive Plan C. After obtaining permissions to enter the highly radioactive zone of alienation they ventured into the ghost town of Pripyat and found an abandoned amusement park. Built for May Day 1986 as a gift to the power plant workers from the grateful Soviet authorities, the amusement park was never officially opened, the reactor exploded five days before. Finally, the group found what they were looking for: the Red Ride. The group picked through the irradiated remains. A load of scavenged materials left the Zone on a dilapidated tractor, leading west. A month later the scrap metal was sitting in an anonymous warehouse in a railway arch in Manchester, UK, where the group started secretly working day and night on The Liquidator – a replica of the Red Ride. The sinister-looking sculpture-ride was installed overnight in Manchester’s Whitworth Park. The ride operated daily for a week at the beginning of October, with thousands of enthusiastic visitors of all ages and origins enjoying . It than disappeared as fast as it had appeared.

Let Them Believe is a short film by Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark, in collaboration with Eva and Franco, documenting Plan C.

“Thousands of tons of radioactive scrap metal leave the Zone everyday to be sold to the Russian and Chinese market and eventually come back to us in the form of spoons, pots and sinks. Radioactivity has no border. So we must probably just get used to it, starting from the younger generations” Franco Mattes.

“The whole 30 km Zone is highly contaminated, but eventually everything will go back to normality, it’s just a matter of time, it’ll take about 55 thousand years.” Eva and Franco Mattes

“Maybe we are attracted by things we don’t like because we want to discover how those monsters came about.” Eva and Franco Mattes

Don’t Follow the Wind

After 3 years of planning the Mattes project on Fukushima has finally started: http://dontfollowthewind.info

– Image courtesy of Tokyo Times

LINKS

Eva and Franco Mattes: 0100101110101101.ORG
Todd Chandler: floodtidefilm.com
Tod Seelie: todseelie.com
Jeff Stark: jeffstark.org

Plan C was commissioned by AND Festival and dispari&dispari project