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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

Working Session 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?

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.

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.

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie

I was in Cairo in November 2008 to shoot a short film for an exhibition entitled Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie. It's in a ‘reality’ TV style. A broadcast ‘trailer’, in fact a synopsis of a future programme. Its a copy of Faking It.

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie explores issues of class in contemporary art. Faking It is all about class.

Immersion and violence

Thursday the 19th February, I went to listen to an interview at the Goethe Institute between the filmmaker Harun Farocki and artist Kodwo Eshun. Harun screened a rough-cut of a work-in-progress entitled Immersion. Immersion is based on a first-person shooter games engine developed by the US military to train troops for service in Iraq.

Clunky graphics pan, track and zoom to reveal pixilated deserts, palm trees, 'arab' avatars, explosions, smoke and ruined buildings. The games-engine, with head mounted display and (plastic) XM8 interface has been released to a consortium of software engineers and psychotherapists. Cut to a therapist. The therapist is using the software to lead a traumatized soldier back, back to a scene of explosion, mutilation and death, back to site of their trauma.

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