neil cummings

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

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screening

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.

Backsourcing

"We have to discuss speculation, because the ultimate test is not the probable, but the possible. The possible implies creation, and obliges us to move beyond the probable."

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitiques review

Capital is being screened as part of Backsourcing: a film program Video Lounge selected by Vincent Meessen, at the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC), Xiamen University, China, Dec 18-Jan 17, 2010.

In the world of enterprise, outsourcing delegates tasks that are no longer seen as profitable, or no longer core to a company's business, to an exterior contractor. Outsourcing enables a company to concentrate elsewhere, by diffusing risks, investments and costs to others. The recent economic collapse has necessitated ‘backsourcing’, when previously outsourced processes have had to be reappropriated.

Hinterland

I will be participating in the Hinterland Symposium at Broadway in Nottingham. This one day event will question the responsibilities of artists when creating work in the public realm. I will be in conversation with Emily Wilczek and Ian Nesbitt from Annexinema and will present the Social Cinema project.

Other speakers include John Newling, Jonathan Griffin, Latitudes (Max Andrews & Mariana Canepa Luna), S Mark Gubb, Joy Sleeman, Richard Grayson, Wallace Heim and Rebecca Beinart.

Broadway 14 - 18 Broad Street Nottingham NG1 3AL

bookings: Tel. 0115 952 6611 or online www.broadway.org.uk

tickets: £12.50, conc £7 .

download: programme

New School

Performa09 , the Vera List Center and Parsons present the American premiere of Museum Futures: Distributed at the New School auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY

Museum Futures: Distributed is a machinima record of the centenary interview with Moderna Museet’s executive Ayan Lindquist in June 2058. It explores a possible genealogy for contemporary art practice and its institutions, by re-imagining the role of artists, museums, galleries, markets, manufactories and academies.

The project was commissioned by Moderna Museet Stockholm, Sweden, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Sequelism

As part of Sequelism; Possible, probable or preferable futures at the Arnolfini I will screen Museum Futures: Distributed, a machinima record of the centenary interview with Moderna Museet’s executive Ayan Lindquist in June 2058. It explores a possible genealogy for contemporary art practice and its institutions, by re-imagining the role of artists, museums, galleries, markets, manufactories and academies.

The screening will be followed with a discussion led by Max and Mariana of Latitudes curators of Sequelism.

Sequelism is a cultural investigation into how representations of the future affect the present.

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

Critical Forum

Collecting Moving Images
the Nunnery, Bow, London

I participated in a Forum discussion curated by Cinzia Cremona, around the theme of Collecting Moving Images as part of a survey exhibition of recent work.

The Forum was chaired by Cinzia and included
3 pm Collecting: Myriam Blundell collector and curator, and Lucy Bayley from the Contemporary Art Society
4 pm Coffee and Pampero rum break
4.30 pm Circulating: Peter Lewis, Chris Meigh-Andrews and myself

I screened Screen Tests, and talked about working with public media archives and the possibilities offered by copyleft licenses.

We had an interesting discussion (on-line here) on collecting - storage, exhibition the museum and the archive; circulation - gallery or private exhibition, and the 'free' circulation of material via archive.org or copyleft distribution; economics - the differences in a consumer model, or fee based commissions; and more generally the dynamics of private collections, educational archives and databases; and the impact of changing technologies.

Enthusiasm

After extensive research amongst the remnants of amateur film clubs in Poland under socialism, I co-developed the Enthusiasts: archive. A critical archive of beautiful amateur films found, restored and made available for you.

Presented as a collaborative artwork the Enthusiasts: archive enables you to explore how the generosity of the enthusiast reveals a range of interests and experiences generally invisible amongst the breathless flow of the State sponsored, or professionally mediated.

My intention with Enthusiasts: archive is to stimulate interest and discussion into the nature of creative exchange, the function of public archives and the future of the public domain. In many ways, the project informs Procesos de archivo/ Archivalprocess

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

Afterall & Showroom

Seminar with Neil Cummings
Saturday, 28 March 2009, 3-6pm