neil cummings

the enthusiast has the same relationship to capital as the gift to the commodity

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I saw Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush on Monday 3rd January 2011.

The Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carl Davis played a live accompaniment to Chaplin's silent classic in a special performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

Featuring Chaplin in his quintessential Little Tramp role, the film was described by The New York Times upon its 1925 release as

‘a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, and tenderness, [...] the outstanding gem of all Chaplin’s pictures’.

Lapdogs book

Its been a long time coming, but the book of the Lapdogs project is just published by Sternberg Press

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie
Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art

Edited by Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie investigates the latent issue of class underlying the field of contemporary visual art. On the one hand, it raises the question of whether a given socioeconomic background still helps define your artistic career—and to which point the said career might reflect or consolidate the hierarchies in question. On the other hand, the project asks whether the traditional analytical tools at our disposal are helpful in such an examination of the art world today.

Class inevitably raises awkward questions regarding the very participants, their backgrounds, patrons, and ideological partialities. This is perhaps the reason why the role of class structure has been so easily overlooked in the production and presentation of contemporary art, especially so in an era where artists are coaxed into anthropological framings of their practice.

What was it that made gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality eclipse the class issue with such ease?

Workers Leaving

1895, cast in period costume

1. Establishing shot:

Mid shot: Large wooden factory gates.

Fade from black

Gates swing open, and workers stream from the factory; women, men, children, dogs, a few bicycles and eventually a horse drawn carriage.

2. Floating camera pulls back and slightly-up

Extreme close-up: The scene unfolding is seen to be on-screen.

3. Floating camera continues to pull back

Close-up: The screen is of a mobile phone.

4. Floating camera continues to pull back

Medium close-up: Mobile phone recording the workers leaving the factory.

Fade to black

Total Duration: 47sec.

Timeline 2058 - 1851

The research timeline 2058 - 1851 that I produced for Museum Futures has been reprinted in

Concept Store: #2 Possible, Probable and Preferable Futures

Concept Store: is a bi-annual journal, published by Arnolfini, focusing on critical issues of contemporary art and their relationship to wider cultural, social and political contexts.

Concept Store: reflects upon ideas explored within Arnolfini’s artistic programme, while operating as a discursive space for commissioned texts, artists’ contributions, interviews and other experimental forms.

Uncertainty Principle

Museum Futures: Distributed will be screened as part of What are we going to do after we’ve done what we’re going to do next? is a curatorial film selection by Latitudes for The Uncertainty Principle, MACBA, Barcelona, Spain.

The Uncertainty Principle' is a programme produced by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) divided in four parts, which through conferences, performances, cinema, video programmes and artist presentations sets out to analyse the multiple ways of generating a hypothesis.

What are we going to do after we’ve done what we’re going to do next? consider the notion of memory in reverse, prognosis, doubt and strategic foresight within the arena of futurology, in particular narratives of time travel. How we might look beyond the present with or without recourse to established genres?

You can see a sliver of Museum Futures or read the transcribed machinima dialogue

Lapdogs

I intalled the Lapdogs film in the exhibition that produced it, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie at the Arnolfini in Bristol. Curated by Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr, the exhibition/research project has been peripatetically roving for the last two years; to London, Berlin, Stockholm, Istanbul and Cairo. For Bristol, I created an environment; part cheap but chic domestic interior, part Lapdogs Media stand at a media trade fair.

The other artists included Annika Eriksson, Dirk Fleischmann/Michele di Menna, Chris Evans, Liam Gillick, San Keller, Hassan Khan, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marion von Osten and Anup Mathew Thomas

The Class

Last week I went to see a film The Class - actually its called Entre Les Murs, by Laurent Catenet; it won the Golden Palm at Cannes. It's a riveting semi-autobiographical film with teacher François Bégaudeau - who wrote an initial film treatment, playing a version of himself - François. Its set between the walls of tough school in a suburb of Paris where François engages a class of 14-15 year olds, of differing cultures, ethnicities, attitudes and abilities in a microcosm of contemporary France.

Political economy 1

I was in Cairo in November 2008 to make a short film for an exhibition curated by Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr entitled Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie at the Townhouse Gallery.

Althought I had visited some twenty five years ago, Cairo is still an amazing experience.

In some downtime I went to visit two mosques side-by-side, the majestic Sultan Hassan and Ar Rifa’r which contains the tomb of the Shah of Iran. As a tourist you need tickets to enter. There was a wooden kiosk with a lady inside. I ask for a ticket.

Flooded McDonald's

I visited the South London Gallery on 25th February 2009, to see a new film by the Danish artists collective Superflex. Its entitled Flooded McDonald's. I've followed their work for sometime, because I'm interested in how they propose artworks as tools, capable of affecting change; with projects like Supergas, Free Beer - is a beer which is free in the sense of freedom, not in the sense of free (without a price) beer - its a FLOSS joke :-) - and CopyShop.