Climate Crisis]]> Technology]]> Performance]]> Nature]]> 21 Sep 2018, Fri - 6 Nov 2018, Tue 12:00 PM - 07:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Videos will be shown on a continuous loop during opening hours over the course of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II. 

21 – 30 September 2018
Mariana Silva, Digital Specimens: Pointcloudfallout, 2015, 10 min 35 sec

In Digital Specimens: Pointcloudfallout an offscreen dialogue, set in the near future, unfolds on the politics of scanning artefacts and monuments into 3-D. Amidst the consequences of climate change and war, the two characters discuss how digital copies unsettle repatriation claims and colonial tensions under the pretext of digital conservation.

2 – 7 October 2018
Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, Deep Alamat, 2014, 4 min

Deep Alamat is a compelling narrative concerning two mythic figures, “OO” and “Beige Cantrell,” drawn from the artists’ collective imaginations. Shoulder’s OO is from his series of Fantastic Creaturesthat feature sculptural costumes and are animated in live performance, video, and photographic works. OO’s patterns are a form of Aposematism (warning colouration). OO performs a gestural dance drawing from animal signals and carnivalesque spectacle. Initially inspired by a one-hit-wonder pop star, Beige Cantrell derives from Ra’s obsession with digital failure, internet hype, software intelligence, and the online secondary experience. Ra’s understanding of movement, body control, and precision allows for his character to physically represent ideas of recognition software as he scans, detects, and aligns his body accordingly.

9 – 14 October 2018
Anton Ginzburg, Ultraviolet,  2015, 25 min

Ultraviolet explores the issues of perception and phenomenology at the intersection of nature and technology. The film is divided into three parts that correspond to the musical structure and composition. The film was conceived as an ongoing dialogue with its soundtrack composed by Michael Pisaro. The relationship between the cinematic image and the live sound is an experiment in a tradition of expanded cinema. It starts with very high frequencies in the first part, later working its way down into the guitar range. The film addresses the aura of representation through the video footage of various landscapes such as waterfalls, trees, and mountains, both in high- and low-res.

16 – 21 October 2018
Vladimir Erofeev, Pamir: Krysha mira (Pamir: Roof of the World), 1927, 49 min (original: 71 min)
Version with music by Carlos Casas

23 – 28 October 2018
Phill Niblock, The Magic Sun, 1966, 60 min

Shot in 1966, while the Sun Ra Arkestra was still based in New York City (before relocating to Philadelphia in 1968), the composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock’s The Magic Sun is an obscure artefact of profound beauty. It features frenetic black-and-white footage of the band playing, and an incredible soundtrack. Its existence displays an often understated relationship between two contemporary iterations of the New York avant-garde. Considering the neglect that free jazz usually suffers in the face of its peer, the film could be considered important for that alone, being also a wonderful journey through sight and sound.

30 October – 6 November 2018
Luke Fowler, Country Grammar (with Sue Tompkins), 2017, 18 min 29 sec

The film begins with Tompkins performing at Chem19 Recording Studio. The camera films from a multitude of perspectives, employing rhythmic pans, tilts, and opaque or reflective screens. These distorted views, combined with non-synchronised images of the performer, depart from a 70s “direct cinema” approach to filming musicians. After the ritualistic opening section, the film widens its view to locations outside of the studio. The repetition of actions (picking books from a shelf, re-arranging the contents of a fridge) suggest a searching for a threshold between the filmed image and Tompkins’ own spoken word acts. Taking cues from the performers’ hypnotic yet concrete play with words, the film creates a metaphoric, symbiotic language, where an open-ended approach to montage transcends both reductive imagery and straight documentation.

A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.

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Mariana Silva]]> Justin Shoulder]]> Bhenji Ra]]> Anton Ginzburg]]> Vladimir Erofeev]]> Phill Niblock]]> Luke Fowler]]> Europe]]> North America]]> Oceania]]>
Body]]> Performance]]> Identity]]> Institutional Critique]]> Anton Ginzburg]]> Europe]]> North America]]>