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EP.25 Transit Arts

9/7/2020

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PictureTransit Arts Logo

Transit Arts have been organising the exhibition of artists moving image since 2015, through public screening programmes and experimental publishing. It is run by the Glasgow based curator and writer Marcus Jack, who is also currently researching histories of artists’ moving image in Scotland.

His first exhibition of artists moving image came from the back of a transit van and a series of popup screenings across Glasgow. He has curated numerous screenings since then in Scotland and the North of England, he is also on the submissions panel of the Glasgow Short Film Festival.

His written work includes an essay entitled Seizing The Mean of Projection where Marcus considers thirty years of artists’ moving image exhibition in Glasgow.

The latest project from Transit Arts is DOWSER which Marcus describes as “a series of newly commissioned essays, interview transcripts and archival materials which makes available, for the first time, a collated set of resources from which we might begin to plot a history of artists’ moving image in Scotland.”

In the interview Marcus mentions numerous artists, moving image works, exhibitions, spaces, groups and screening events. I have listed some of them here, with links where possible.


​Elizabeth Price - User Group Disco (2009)
The Otolith Group  - Hydra Decapita (2010)  
Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF) - 
Mount Florida Screenings -  Glasgow (2016-2018)
Deborah Stratman - Chicago-based artist and filmmaker
Amie Siegel - film, photography, performance and installation artist
Jorge Jácome - Flores (2017)  
David Hall - TV Interruptions (1971-2006) 
Tamara Krikorian - pioneering video artist and curator 
Video: Towards defining an aesthetic - a Scottish Arts Council exhibition held at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow 1976 
Richard Demarco - Artist and promoter of the visual and performing arts. 
Transmission Gallery - artists run space in Glasgow 
Variant Magazine
Flourish Nights - film screenings (2001-2003) 
Stephen Partridge  - Dundee artist and academic researcher 
Enrico Cocozza - Amateur film-maker and academic 
The Glasgow Miracle: Materials for Alternative Histories - archive sources relating to the Third Eye Centre (1975-1991) and CCA (1992-the present)
Common Culture - Book Launch (2007) 
Malcolm Dickson - Now Director at Street Level Photoworks
The Open Eye Club - Glasgow (2005 - 2008) 
into the mothlight podcast · EP.25 - Transit Arts
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EP.24 - Mark Jenkin

7/12/2020

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PicturePhoto by Callum Mitchell.
The filmmaker Mark Jenkin is best known for the film Bait from 2019, which earned him a BAFTA. However as you will hear in this episode of Into the Mothlight Podcast, the journey that led to him creating this outstanding film is a long and interesting one. We look at this journey from his early days making a Derek Jarman inspired music video, to his time in the production houses of Soho in London, to his return to his native Cornwall and his debut feature, "Golden Burn" which won The Frank Copplestone First Time Director's Award at the Celtic Film and Television Awards in 2002.

In the week that Mark should have been wrapping on his latest feature ‘Enys Men’, a folk horror inspired tale set on a fictional island off the coast of Cornwall,  we met online and also talked about shooting on and hand processing analogue film, his filmmaking manifesto, his experimentation within the form in cinema, and his work as Associate Lecturer in Film and Moving Image at Falmouth University.

But we start , as mentioned, at the beginning of this journey and his first experiences with a super 8 camera. 



Some of the items of interested Mark mentions in the interview: 
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‘London’ from The Smiths, B-side to ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’ from 1987
‘The Garden’ film by Derek Jarman (1990)
‘The Queen is Dead’ music video from Derek Jarman - read more on the FLAMIN / Film Film London site
The UK filmmaker / Director Jonathan Glazer
‘The Surfer’, the iconic TV advert for Guiness from 1999. 
EPK’s - Electronic Press Kits
‘Projections - A Forum for Film Makers’ published by Faber
‘The Story of Film: An Odyssey’ by Mark Cousins. 
Cinematographer Peter Smithson
‘The Lighthouse’ by Robert Eggers (2019)
Kodak TRI-X Reversal Film - a high-speed, panchromatic, black-and- white film suitable for general interior photography with artificial light.


'Bait' is available from the BFI Player's Subscription service, and on DVD and Blue-Ray from the BFI shop here. 

into the mothlight podcast · EP 24 Mark Jenkin
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EP.23 - Karel Doing

5/27/2020

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Karel Doing is an independent artist, filmmaker and researcher, his films, performances and installations have been shown widely. In 2017, he received his PhD from the University of the Arts London in Animation, Interactive, Film & Sound. In his thesis he proposed “new forms of humility, doubt and listening to be advanced in today’s over-confident and exploitative human culture.”

In recent years his work has revolved around experimenting with a new organic process he calls Phytography - a technique that uses the internal chemistry of plants for the creation of images on photographic emulsion. He has delivered numerous workshops on this, sharing the technique and supporting people to use the process. He has developed a website dedicated to this work and has just released online workshops that people can access during the lockdown. 

His website in rich with information, research, stills, recipes with instructions and some photographs and videos showing work produced during the various workshops Karel has delivered to share the technique.

The works we focussed on during our chat are available on Vimeo and include The Mulch Spider’s Dream (2018), Liquidator (2010) and Meni (1994)

We also discuss his 2019 project 'Bog Myrtle and Flamethrowers', created during an artists residency with Alchemy Film and Arts. You can see images from his workshop and read more about the exhibition on the Alchemy website here. During the interview Karel also makes reference to:


Derek Jarman’s film Angelic Conversation (1985) 
AVE Festival (Audio Visueel Experimenteel) 
The film director, editor and producer Jürgen Reble 
The expanded cinema group Metamkine
Film director Joost Rekveld
EMAF - the long established German based European Media Festival
The Sound Artist Michal Osowski



into the mothlight podcast · EP.23 - Karel Doing
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EP.22 - Mark Lyken & Emma Dove

4/22/2020

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Artist filmmakers Mark Lyken (films, video installations and sound works) and Emma Dove (film, installation and photography) live and work together in rural Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Together they combine their experience as individual artists to produce immersive films and moving image installations.

In the interview we discuss the work they made during residencies on The Black Isle and The Cromarty Firth where they explore the relationships between nature, industry and rural life.
Mirror Lands (2014) and The Terrestrial Sea (2015) have both been screened internationally, with Mirror Lands winning the Award for Creativity at Document.Art International Film Festival in Bucharest. 

“..a deeply moving, absorbing and haunting film and sound study.” - The Quietus
“Genuinely breathtaking” - Aesthetica Magazine
“A surrealistic meditation on the way that different environments encroach on each other" - Financial Times

​Their latest collaboration 1300 shots (2020) is A single-take portrait film that returns two ex-patrons of Dundee cinema 'The Steps' to their favourite seats, 20 years after the cinema was decommissioned.  A still camera observes those ex-patrons - the artist LAW and the musician VEX - watching one last film.
 
We talk about this new work and the companion piece LAW, VEX & THE STEPS (2020) - a short film that profiles those two characters and Dundee’s forgotten arthouse cinema.

You can hear music from Mirror Lands and The Terrestrial Sea plus more from Mark on Spotify and Apple Music. 


into the mothlight podcast · EP. 22 - Mark Lyken & Emma Dove
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EP.21 - Demelza Kooij

12/29/2019

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Demelza Kooij is an artist, filmmaker, and lecturer. Her work is presented at film festivals, museums, art exhibitions, and conferences. She has previously taught at Edinburgh College of Art and worked at the Scottish Documentary Institute. Her latest film 'Wolves From Above' won the Jury Prize at the 57th Ann Arbor Film Festival.

I first met Demelza in the winter of 2014, when attending a workshop she was running on making experimental film. During the sessions she deconstructed her film Graminoids (2014) as a way to demonstrate the way she worked. This was fascinating as it was the first time I was able to talk to an artist in detail about their creative and technical processes. It was also the first time I was able to see what Final Cut Pro was capable of doing. At that point I was using Windows Movie Maker for basic editing and Audacity for sound design. So seeing the possibilities that this software could offer, in terms of working with images and audio, was a game changer.  

​I talked to Demelza about a few of her films, including Wolves from Above. We discussed her approach to presenting the work as a single channel installation at Alchemy Film and Arts, projected on the ceiling and viewed from the ground - the photo on the left was taken the morning after the public preview. 

Demelza makes reference to various films and filmmakers in the interview: 

Darwin's Nightmare (2004, Hubert Sauper) 
Tarnation (2003, Jonathan Caouette)
Forever (2006, Heddy Honigmann)
Vivan Las Antipodas (2011, Viktor Kossakovsky)

As someone very much at the early stages of their artistic journey I find it satisfying to talk to people like Demelza about their work. It is fascinating to hear how ideas develop, meander and change before forming into shape, how she works within a place, with people, and the elements she has to have within a project to spark the creative process.  

You can see film excerpts and trailers and read more about Demelza on her website.  
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EP.20 - Emma Penaz Eisner

9/18/2019

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In her film ‘Beth’s Three O’Clock with Dr. Harlow’ Emma Penaz Eisner references psychologist Harry Harlow's 1950's monkey experiments, the clinical interview with psychopathic child patient Beth in the documentary ‘Child of Rage’ from 1990, Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,’ and Ingmar Bergman's explorations of sadistic deity in ‘Through a Glass Darkly’.  

She describes the works as a “vivid study of casual brutality and failed empathy,” and beautifully presents all of this in two minutes of stop motion animation with live action sequences. ‘Beth’s Three O’Clock with Dr. Harlow’ is just one of the films I discussed with San Francisco filmmaker and visual artist Emma Penaz Eisner, and one that you can view online here. 

​In the interview Emma also discusses her love for the work of Jan Švankmajer, the importance of meeting with like minded people, her passion for sharing and discussing her work and how she represents dream scapes and dream logic through animation. 

Stills from I Am He Who Created Himself, There's More Than One Way to Skin a Man, Beth's three o'clock with Dr. Harlow and Will I Scatter Away?
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EP.19 - Exploding Cinema

8/26/2019

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This time we have been in London to talk to members of the Exploding Cinema, a volunteer collective of filmmakers and film lovers who run an open access film show where anyone can show any film under 20 minutes. The history of Exploding Cinema is fascinating and well documented on their website. They run regular screenings across London for filmmakers who want an audience and to showcase work that may not be shown otherwise. 

"Exploding Cinema was founded in 1991 in a bunker at the back of a squat – a disused sun tan oil factory in Brixton. At that time it was a gathering of media misfits rejected by the ‘Independent’ film/video establishment who decided that rather than griping about the fucked up state of the industry they would stage their own screenings in cafes, pubs and disused buildings and would set about fusing together the isolated and disenchanted fragments of the underground media. The Low/No Budget film is the source of so much talent and creativity, but they need a place to be shown. Not a sterile, unfriendly “arthouse” but a relaxed, open environment where the audience can watch, chat, discuss the film and meet film/video makers."

I met with veteran members of the collective Adam Hodgkins and Ben Slotover along with their newest member Becca Payne.  

Ben has been involved with Exploding Cinema for about 20 years now, and in between shows make shorts, teaches filmmaking workshops and runs a YouTube channel devoted to filmmaking tips with an emphasis on super 8.   


Becca Pyne recently joined the group after have a positive experience screening her new film ‘Everything’ at a recent Exploding Cinema event.  “I turned up by myself to show my film and had agreed to do a Q&A afterwards.” She told us. “I was terrified. But I was so impressed with the inclusive attitude, the visual display, the way everyone was really kind” She left the stage feeling supported and appreciated for sharing her work and having the courage to talk about it.   “To have my film seen in an environment where people are supportive, it’s non judgemental, it’s encouraging, you are doing something really empowering, and to be able to give that experience to other people and to share in their work is pretty profound.”  You can see her film on her Vimeo site here. 

 We discuss the early days of exploding cinema, they events they run in London, and how they programme the screening given their non-rejection policy and the huge number of submission they receive.

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EP.18 - Madison Brookshire

8/4/2019

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Madison Brookshire is an artist and filmmaker whose work crosses experimental film, music, painting, and performance. His work has shown at REDCAT, MOCA, the Toronto International Film Festival, DokuFest, Union Docs, the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Bradford International Film Festival, Migrating Forms, Exploratorium, Los Angeles Filmforum, Echo Park Film Center, the Hammer Museum, and Artists Television Access. He has had solo exhibitions at Parker Jones, Culver City; and Presents Gallery, Brooklyn; and has been in group shows at the Torrance Art Museum; Gallery 400, Chicago; and Heliopolis, Brooklyn. He frequently collaborates with musicians and composers, such as Tashi Wada, Mark So, and Laura Steenberge.

We talked to Madison when he attended the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in Scotland in May 2019. During the festival he presented a talk entitled 'Time And The Untimely' and performed his expanded cinema work 'Fountain', both of which we cover in this episode. 

"I believe that a philosophy of time is necessary for political action, and therefore that studying it is necessarily a political act. In my work, I study how combinations of images, sounds, and silences can produce lived experiences of time." 

In the interview Madison makes reference to a number of other artists and works including 
Robert Rauschenberg, Stan Brakhage, Agnes Martin, Hollis Frampton (Zorns Lemma) and Tony Conrad (Yellow Movies.)

Madison performing 'Fountain' at Alchemy Film and Media Festival, photograph by Oliver Benton


work in progress
these words
at the filmmakers symposium
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EP.17 - Esther Urlus

6/29/2019

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We met Rotterdam based artist Esther Urlus when she was in Scotland attending the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in 2019.  Esther was here to present a talk at the filmmakers symposium entitled ‘Accidental Results’ in the context of the overarching festival theme of ‘embrace the strange’. 

“New discoveries often arise from accidental results, thus my artistic film path features a walk from exploiting the one accident that lead to new accidents. Luckily, photochemical film gives the opportunity to make many mistakes and therefore dive deeply into accidental results. Although for me personally, the real fun only starts when making them in a controlled and staged way.”


As part of her presentation Esther talked about her work ‘Konrad & Kurfurst’, and her experiments in producing the home brew gelatine emulsion she used in this project.  You can hear more on this in our interview as well as her work in the Rotterdam artists-run workspace Filmwerkplaats, the importance of sharing within a filmmakers community and her DIY and pioneering approach to analogue filmmaking.   In the interview reference is made to the Artist-run film lab makers manual REMI - Re-Engineering the Moving Image, you can find more information on this publication here. 

Images below - The Oxberry Optical Printer donated by a special effects company in London, still from 'Study for Battle' premiered at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Esther presenting her talk at the Filmmakers Symposium, and our well-thumbed copy of the artist-run film lab makers manual. 

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EP.16 - Bristol Experimental Expanded Film.

6/1/2019

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BEEF Ident from BEEF Bristol on Vimeo.

It was so good to travel to Bristol and chat to some of the members of BEEF earlier this year.  Established in 2015 they describe themselves as "a film and sound collective with an analogue heart" and offer a whole range of services and opportunities to artists within the area.  This includes screenings, performances, exhibitions, residencies, and film & sound workshops.  Their recent Low Light 16mm Film Contact Printing Workshop offered participants the chance to explore the 'creative potential of darkness as a material for making art' and was run by BEEF (and former London Film-Makers' Co-op) member Vicky Smith who you will hear from in this episode.  

​We also hear from Beef member Sam Francis on how the collective was formed and the importance of having an 'art' family and member Laura Phillips on collaborating within the collective and their expanded cinema and screenings at the Supernormal Festival.      
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    Experimental film and installation artist Jason Moyes lives and works in rural Scotland and has been exploring the moving image since 2007. His work has been shown in the UK, North America, Europe and Asia. He is a founding member of the Moving Image Makers Collective.
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