I couldn’t see the petals moving, Burnlaw Centre
Margaret Tait - Happy Bees, 1955, 17m, colour, sound
Larry Gottheim - Fog Line, 1970, 12m, colour, silent
Chris Welsby - Colour Separation 1974-6, 2m 30s, colour, silent
Tree, 1974, 4m, colour, silent
John Smith - Celestial Navigation, 1980, 10m, colour, mag stripe
Daina Krumins - Babobilicons, 1982, 15m, colour, optical sound
Chick strand - Artificial Paradise, 1986, 12m, colour, sound
Rose Lowder - Quiproquo, 1992, 13m, colour, sound or Bouquets 21-30, 2001-5, 14m, silent
Ian Breakwell - The News, 1980, 12 minutes, Colour, mono (DVD / Digibeta tape / SD Digital file)
Ian Breakwell - In the Home, 1980, 10 minutes, Colour, mono (DVD / Digibeta tape / SD Digital file)
I have a programme to propose. I have given it a provisional name 'I didn't see the petals moving' which is a line from a Margaret Tait poem, 'Now' - http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/now
Among other things, I feel that poem is about the poignant recognition of a separation from nature inherent in the human's experience, perhaps something the camera emphasises or is a tool to try to overcome. Behind the poem is an expression of desire to close the gap between human and nature, which feels relevant in light of current people like Donna Harraway who are talking about posthuman ideas of interconnectedness.
I haven't read Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human by Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway, but that looks like it covers similar stuff - have you read it? Maybe it would be interesting to have a copy of the book there?
I wanted to also select films which show different technical/stylistic/ mode of address approaches which might spark conversation. These films are all from Lux, and that was the basis of my research. It works as a chronology of experimental film from the 50's to the 90's too... in a slightly reductive way!
Anyway, let me know what you think. I am imagining it will be quite expensive, and also there is a film with mag sound - will there be a projector there which has mag sound? I could possibly ask if they can let us have the digital file too and it could be synced that way.
Poem
I used to lie in wait to see the clover open
Or close,
But never saw it.
I was too impatient,
Or the movement is too subtle,
Imperceptible
And more than momentary.
My five-year-old self would tire of waiting
And when I looked again
– All closed for the night!
I missed it
Once more.
Cinematographically
I have registered the opening of escholtzia
On an early summer morning.
It gave me a sharp awareness of time passing,
Of exact qualities and values in the light,
But I didn’t see the movement
As movement.
I didn’t with my own direct perception see the petals
moving.
Later, on the film, they seemed to open swiftly,
But, at the time,
Although I stared
And felt time not so much moving as being moved in
And felt
A unity of time and place with other times and places
Yet
I didn’t see the petals moving.
I didn’t see them opening.
They were closed,
And later they were open,
And in between I noted many phases,
But I didn’t see them moving open.
My timing and my rhythm could not observe the
rhythm of their opening.
The thing about poetry is you have to keep doing it.
People have to keep making it.
The old stuff is no use
Once it’s old.
It comes out of the instant
And lasts for an instant.
Take it now
Quickly
Without water.
There!
Tomorrow they’ll be something else.
Margaret Tait
Losing the Plot and Allerdale Film Farm welcome you to a FREE screening of historical artists films projected on 16mm film, at Burnlaw Centre.
Under the auspices of the Ignorant Curator, I recently selected some films I haven't yet seen for a 16mm artist film lab in West Cumbria, and the screening has been scheduled to happen at Burnlaw, Whitfield this coming Thursday, 7.30pm. (NE478HF).
The films are all part of the Lux collection of artist films, many aquired when Lux was still the London Filmmaker's Co-op. They are all made within the discourses of contemporary artist moving image work from the 1950's to early 2000's, so generally non-narrative/ optical experimentation/ poetic sensibilities.
The program is loosely based on a recurring theme for me of the tangle of nulture and cature, to fit into the conceptual framework of the artist film lab at Hayton Castle in Allerdale, West Cumbria, where a group of artists set up a temporary 16mm artist film lab over 10 days to produce work in response and in relation to the surrounding landscape and community.
I will also be presenting my new collective 16mm projection device, 'Vessel for Holding a Flame'.
