LUX Salon: alovestorysomewherearound2046 – the agency

alovestorysomewherearound2046: the agency stages a public conversation between artist Edgar Schmitz, curator Pieternel Vermoortel and agent Kate Kotcheff on the infrastructures of the cinematic industry. How does the production of an exhibition correlate to the production of feature film? What are the demands, the games and the flirtations that play out in formulating a career?
the agency shadows the ongoing production of alovestorysomewherearound2046, a collaborative film treatment by Edgar Schmitz and Pieternel Vermoortel that turns their past exhibitions into raw material for a love story set in the near future. One exhibition normally provides material for one scene in the treatment, which becomes its distorted and slightly delayed mirror in the suspended state of a sci-fi film always yet to be made.
After surplus local, cameo casting, decor construct, and siting production, the agency focuses on the structural forms that come into play when producing a feature film. It is also the final installment of this initial series of events at LUX. alovestorysomewherearound2046 will continue as work on the treatment format in the autumn.
Born in London, Kate Kotcheff originally studied architecture and since then has also completed a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art Photography. Kotcheff worked as a freelance producer in the UK film and television industry for about 12 years before becoming an agent, mostly working on music video, some documentary and commercials. She has worked as senior agent running Wizzo Features, the feature film and television drama department of Wizzo & Co for 10 years to date. The company represents Directors of Photography and Production Designers.
Edgar Schmitz is an artist who has often borrowed cinematic motifs, atmospheres and modes of attention to orchestrate his practice. Recent exhibitions include British Art Show 7/ In the Days of the Comet (Hayward Touring 2010/11) and Surplus Cameo Decor (Cooper Gallery, Dundee and Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012-14).
Pieternel Vermoortel’s curatorial practice operates as a reflexive manner of production within given institutional frameworks. Her most recent programme as FormContent has functioned as a performative script, a production and dissemination mode that uses scripting conventions as form through which to produce (and reflect upon the production of) the exhibition as specific cultural object.
Schmitz and Vermoortel have worked together since 2006 in various distributions as artist and curator, often swapping and/or overlapping their roles in the process. The film treatment accompanies both practices as work in development under the externalised mirror perspective of production and dissemination.
alovestorysomewherearound2046 is generously supported by Goldsmiths Research Support Awards.