Time
With Anthony Kelly and david Stalling, Stephen Rennicks, Taysir Batniji, Julius Ziz, Djamel Kokene and Eamon Doyle
4pm / 30 Nov 2008
Upstair at the Ha'penny Bridge Inn (Dublin)
Time permeates every aspect of making a film, from frame rates, exposure times and synchronisation of the sound and celluloid itself, to the crossfades and dramatic pauses that describe the time within the world of the film. Most filmworks trick the viewer's sense of time in some way, even with the simplest of narrative transitions - perhaps only the Lumiere brothers can be credited with creating an undistorted, uncheated representation of time in their earliest single shot films - or at least one without such an agenda, as the single shot of Warhol's 'Empire' clearly has. But following the thread of time, in both it's philosphical and mechanical presence in film-making, I find leads to a less abstract and more human path than one would expect. I found that in works that challenge the standard manipulation of time in film - single shot films that deny the expected multiple views of intercutting, slide carousel films that deny the viewer's basic persistence of vision, editing in camera which denies retrospective control of time, slow-motion films that remove something else equally expected and taken for granted - I find in viewing such works I start to look for the personal, as a kind of 'hook', on which to balance myself when the familiar vocabulary is removed. I try to find continuity in familiar articles, intimate objects, clothing and faces, and the process of contemplating an artist's film as a time based work of art becomes unexpectedly personal. It becomes also about the discarded, or the unnoticed, in people's environments - and in environments' people. In these films people reveal something of themselves in the perceived vacuum created by the removal of conventional time manipulation. Djamel Kokene makes a slow-motion transition between alternative selves, Taysir Batniji explores identity, disappearance and absence in the dark spaces between airport terminals and the frames of a carousel, Anthony Kelly & David Stalling give the dark spaces numbers, and Stephen Rennicks observes, in camera, a world without people at all. And Julius Ziz cuts between as many perspectives as there are films in the basement of the Archives. TIME is a programme that cross sections a world explored and expressed in the spaces between.
(Still: Julius Ziz's Et Le Cochon Fut Ne, 2000).
(Still: Julius Ziz's Et Le Cochon Fut Ne, 2000).
ANTHONY KELLY & DAVID STALLING'S "GHOST SIGNALS 1 - 7"
(2008, Ireland, DVD, colour, 14 min.)
Anthony Kelly and David Stalling have been collaborating on a series of sound and visual pieces since 2003. They have just participated in the sound art exhibition 'Two Places', in the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, and on the University of Limerick campus in Jan 2008. Recent shows include a screening at Anthology Film Archives, New York, an audiovisual installation at Ginza Art Laboratory, Tokyo and an Artist Residency at Soundworks 2006, Cork. Their work has been released on the sound art label farpointrecordings.com, on the recent 'Bend it like Beckett' CD curated by Danny McCarthy, and a track from their 'Treehouse EP' is available on the Tapper 16 CD with the December 2006 issue of Wire magazine. Future projects include 'Visualising Carlow' in 2009 and an audiovisual installation in the Basement Gallery, Dundalk.
For further info please visit www.farpointrecordings.com
STEPHEN RENNICKS' "NO PEOPLE HERE: Parts 4 + 5"
(2006, Ireland, Hi8, colour, 12 min.)
Stephen Rennicks was conceived in 1972. He currently lives on a small holding in rural Leitrim where he practices, among other things, as a conceptual artist. Notable works to date include the year long 'Junk out of Context' (2004) which explored the audio and video stock of Dublin charity shops; 'Trains for the Blind' (2004), a sound piece released in conjunction with the ESB Dublin Fringe festival; a six month 'secret residency' at Dublin Airport during 2005; 'Imagine Black Lough' installation at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim and his debut solo show 'With & Without Context' at Mantua in 2007. He uses everyday materials not normally associated with art practice in his work; using things like free template websites, one-take films, standard photo lab processed prints etc, as part of an aesthetic that aims to demystify the medium for the viewer. However, the message in the work itself is always paradoxically designed to be multi layered and mystifying beyond its surface meaning.
TAYSIR BATNIJI'S "TRANSIT"
(2004, DVD, colour, 7 min.)
Born in Gaza in 1967, just before the occupation, and a graduate of the Ecole de Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Taysir Batniji has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to his work through painting, assembling of objects, installation, photography, video, and performance art. His artwork offers a distant conceptual observation of the political and historical events that have shaped his country as well as subjectivity in regards to their resulting impact on humanity. Emptiness, absence, disappearance, and uprooting are recurring notions in his work.
JULIUS ZIZ'S "ET LE COCHON FUT NE ( AND THE PIG WAS BORN )" & "SILENCE SEA AND MARCEL DUCHAMP"
(2000, USA/FRA 16mm, colour/b&w, 23 min.)
Music by Auguste Varkalis
"Made for the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exposition VOILA (Summer 2000), from "found" footage taken from hundreds of unfinished films stored in Anthology's basement. A tour-de-force montage film with the spirit of Vigo and Buñuel hovering over it. Made before Godard's Origins of the 21st Century, Ziz's film provokes interesting comparisons. Both deal with images of the 20th century. But while Godard's film could be described as a poster, Ziz's film is a poem. I don't have to tell you which one I prefer... "
Jonas Mekas
"The last century is x-rayed to bring out its most unforgivable errors, its fears and hopes which spill out onto the streets of New York and Paris. The horror / terror of war, the lack of defence of nature, the descent into the abyss of modern cynicism and the ritual misanthropy of the power relations between individuals. The mind of the poet, shattered and disillusioned, keeps watch anyhow over this barbarism which has taken over planet Earth. Julius Ziz concentrates all this at a speed of 24 frames per second, making images which are able to persist in our memory as they are lyrically edited in an emotional symbiosis with Varkalis' music." (Piero Pala)
"SILENCE SEA AND MARCEL DUCHAMP"
(2000, USA/FRA 16mm, colour/b&w, 23 min.)
A film made out of found footage. Marcel Duchamp plays chess by the ocean with his wife, pretending that he is winning, but he is losing.
DJAMEL KOKENE'S "EVENTUAL ISSUE"
(2003, Azerbaijian/France, Video, colour, 14 mins.)
“For me, Eventual issue expresses a situation, still not resolved, from which one can sense the confrontation of imaginaries that intertwine inside the same body. Some nostalgic will see the myth of the beautiful oriental lady, some the treachery and an attack on the decency of a culture, the philosophical myth of the unveiling or the lack of freedom fostered by the news and the consequences of the irreversible globalization”. Djamel Kokene
"Until what point do we expose oneself and what can we expose? Is Eventual issue a taboo of indecency? Out of censorship thanks to the French Ambassador, the work, under the attentive eye of the Muslim Shiite community, has unleashed the local press: "Djamel Kokene makes a striptease". Is this video saying that only fiction has the power to go beyond the antagonism of what is fit to be seen or not? It is perhaps a reflection on the nature of the constraints linked to cultural identity, shaking between the domination of the collective,
that leaves little space to singularity, and domination of the globalized world". Karine Vonnat (director of the Contemporary Art Centre La Villa du Parc in Annemasse, France)
EAMONN DOYLE'S "POINT MONSTER"
(1996, Ireland, 16mm/BETA, b&w, 7 min.)
Eamonn Doyle is a photographer, music-maker and music promoter based in Dublin, Ireland. He is the director of D.E.A.F.: Dublin Electronic Arts Festival' and runs D1 Recordings. 'Point Monster' is a time-lapse silent 16mm film shaped into a music video for a D1 track by Rob Roland. It utilises the technique of repeating and looping shots common to subsequet D1 videos - a device which gradually removes the viewers understanding of the image, like repeating one's name over and over again until it looses meaning and becomes unfamiliar.
Curated by Alan Lambert.
