Exhibitions

Venue: Whitechapel Project Space, London

Dates: 22nd June 2006

Notes: Curated by Sinisa Mitrovic

In the all-pervasive media culture of today video is becoming an increasingly flexible hybrid. Utilising a variety of strategies, the examples from this selection freely combine elements of animation, reportage, pop music, TV adverts, film, history and institutional critique to propose adventurous investigations of the form while retaining a firm conceptual grounding. The videos explore the intimate relationship between the subject and the viewer, the unpredictable intersections of image and sound, and the idea of making work in the vacillating space between the public and the private.

All my dreams have come true, Annika Strom, 2004 1 min. 30 sec. Courtesy Galleria Sonia Rosso, Torino

The louder you scream, the faster we go, Phil Collins, 2005, 9 min. 50 sec. Courtesy the artist & Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

East Of The River Nile, Seamus Harahan, 2003, 2 min, 36 sec. Courtesy the artist.

Misshapen Pearl, Torsten Lauschmann, 2003, 8 min. Courtesy the artist and Mary Mary, Glasgow.

Meeting Pop, Craig Mulholland, 2005, 3 mins, 22 sec. Courtesy Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow

Suspiria, Seamus Harahan, 2003, 2 min, 36 sec. Courtesy the artist.

Yet, Adam Chodzko, 2005, 9 min. 10 sec. Courtesy the artist.

I am in Love, Annika Strom, 2004, 2 min. 50 sec. Courtesy Galleria Sonia Rosso, Torino

TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 42 min. 43 sec.

Adam Chodzko (1965, based in Whitstable) Yet, 2005, 12 min.

In his practice Chodzko explores possibilities of that which could but won’t happen or hasn’t happened yet. He sometimes works with archives of various public institutions infecting them with the absurd logic of a vintage science-fiction novel. In Yet, produced for an exhibition at apexart gallery in New York, he gives loose narrative coordinates for an enigmatic story, taking place in an imaginary future. An unidentified group finds the apexart gallery archive in a landfill site and transfers it to a ramshackle hut in a cabbage field for sorting. The elusive meaning of these actions, as well as disjointed images and sounds, comprising voiceover in different languages, disturb the authority of archive as a body of empirical knowledge, authenticity and objectivity. Instead, Chodzuko constructs the archive as a site of personal association, misunderstanding and inconsistency. In that, he offers a ‘soft’ and distinctly delicate version of what historically has been defined as ‘institutional critique’.

Phil Collins (1970), based in Glasgow) The louder you scream, the faster we go, 2005, 9 min. 50 sec.

The louder you scream, the faster we go was produced as a public art project in Bristol. There Collins established a temporary video company and sent out a call to local unsigned acts to submit their demos. He then selected three bands and made promo videos to accompany their music. Bands were denied any input into the creative process; instead they received a final copy to use as they see fit. Filmed at a summer music festival, a ballet class for the over-50s, and an adult-films production company, the promos are Collin’s personal homage to the heroic era of early pop video. Adhering to firm formal rigour of popular music as a deep-set indicative marker of both belonging and difference, they are imbued with his trademark combination of uneasy affection and subtle exploitation.

Seamus Harahan (1968, based in Belfast) East of the River Nile, 2002, 5 min. 25 sec. Suspiria, 2003, 2 min. 36 sec.

Seamus Harahan’s pseudo-documentary vignettes defy all attempts at establishing one stable meaning. Capturing raw fragments of street life in Belfast, they refuse a narrative closure, which is further reinforced by an insistently offhand methodology of filming. An additional layer of estrangement is added by the careful juxtaposition of sound and image. Overlaying scenes of habitual depravity with the Augustus Pablo dib reggae classic, East of the River Nile injects the familiar glimpses of a city with something strangely exotic. Caught in the camera’s telephoto and plagued by the title theme from Dario Argento’s 1977 slasher movie, an unexceptional roadside scene in Suspiria gains ominous overtones.

Torsten Lauschmann (1970, based in Glasgow) Misshapen Pearl, 2003, 8 min.

Based on the writings of Vilem Flusser, a Czech philosopher of communications and media, Torsten Lauschmann’s Misshapen Pearl is a visual essay into ‘the function of the streetlamp in our consumerist society’. Incorporating his experiences as a DJ, Lauschmann employs a strategy of sampling to bring together disparate visual materials, from the flaneur-like observations of the cityscape to unedited excerpts from TV ads. In his work, the city is both a psycho-social proposition and a physical frame, oscillating between darkness and light. Lauschmann traces one such cycle over the course of a night. Undertaking a phenomenological investigation into the way we relate to environment, he creates an elaborate and intoxicating video-collage.

Craig Mulholland (1969, based in Glasgow) Meeting Pop, 2005, 3 min, 22 sec.

Working in a variety of media, Craig Mulholland considers his short animated films a form of ‘extended painting’. He utilises sophisticated computer technology to create an idiosyncratic psychological space, resonating with references ranging from economic theory to gambling; from William Burroughs and Hans Richter to Walter Benjamin and Honore Daumier. Meticulously assembling imagery pulled in from a number of source, and locked in the hypnotic visual cadences, his films take on an unsettling, oneiric quality. Meeting Pop is a reconstruction of Peeping Tom, Michael Powell’s fascinating 1960 study of voyeurism. Focusing on the dramatic finale of the original film, now submitted to the relentless rhythm of the secondary montage, Mulholland points out once again to the fundamental and fatal correlation between the pleasure and horror of looking.

Annika Strom (1964, based in Hove) All my dreams have come true, 2004, 1 min. 30 sec. I am in Love, 2004, 2 min. 50 sec.

Annika Strom’s works are structured around the poetic transfiguration of the ordinary. Drawing upon details of everyday life and seemingly insignificant experiences, usually accompanied by low-fi synth-pop soundtracks composed and performed by the artist herself, these bittersweet video-diaries are characterised by both sharp self-reflexivity and disarming vulnerability. Strom often works with members of her family to create emotive and intimate situations. All my dreams have come true and I am in Love exemplify the incomparable gentleness of her approach.