LUX holds a collection of over 5000 films and videos by artists, dating from the 1920s to the present. Some of these works are well-known and regularly exhibited, but others have been little seen since they were first made. Often it is only these more visible, regularly screened works that remain in circulation and continue to gain currency from their exposure.
The Undistributed Middle is an attempt to showcase a selection of works from the collection which have been overlooked to some extent, in many cases perhaps because they are not easily categorisable. Some flew in the face of the prevailing artistic fashions of their time, whilst others were acclaimed when they were first shown but then largely forgotten; most of the programme dates from the 1980s, which perhaps reflects the fact that this decade has not yet been the subject of the kind of research and retrospectives which have focused new attention on works of the 1960s and 1970s.
The programme presents an unashamedly eclectic selection of rarities from the collection, ranging from playful structuralism to agitprop collage and pop video pastiche. It features a number of films newly transferred to High Definition, as well as digital restorations of older video works, and includes works by Tim Bruce, Steve Hawley, Judith Goddard, Jenny Okun, Richard Philpott, Sharon Sandusky and Terry Flaxton (Triple Vision) – full details below.
Curated by Mike Sperlinger & Gil Leung.
Venues
12 January 2012 – firstsite, Colchester
Information for venues
The programme runs to 69 mins total. It is in High Definition and is available either as a Quicktime file (h.264 or Apple Pro Res codec) or Blu-Ray disc for single screenings. The screening fee is £150 (+VAT) for UK venues, £200 (+VAT) for overseas venues (excluding shipping and handling). Preview DVDs for preview and press are available on request. The curators and/or artists may be available to introduce the programme if costs can be covered, please contact LUX for further details.
Programme
Celestial Light & Monstrous Races
Judith Goddard
UK 1985, video, 5 mins, Colour, Sound
“In Goddard’s Celestial Light and Monstrous Races … the sound of bells edits the flow of images. She has quoted the line ‘like sweet bells jangled and out of time and harsh’ from Hamlet, describing it as a “metaphor for the deranged mind”. Goddard’s piece is in harmony thematically and emotionally, with her earlier work … in which she explored a tension between “whole” objects and their fragmentation, decomposition and essential fragility, often with witty nuances. […] Partly celebratory, Celestial Light and Monstrous Races yet has a sense of distance, not only of emotional impulse, but also through some memory of the past. […] The work … explores the cusp of nature and culture, finding the most exposed nerve, the fine crack in human experience where emotion finds an objective and cultural form through the intervention of the imagination.” — Mike O’Pray
Waves
Jenny Okun
UK 1978, 16mm transferred to video, 3 mins, B&W, Silent
This film was hand wound though the camera backwards and forwards as the waves on a beach built up and broke on the shore. As a result, the film builds up a series of in-camera superimpositions, the structure of which is determined by the motion of the waves themselves.
Prisoners
Terry Flaxton (Triple Vision)
UK 1983-1984, video, 16 mins, Colour, Sound
’25 years ago I was asked by Chiatt Day Advertising in Los Angeles to cover the making of ‘1984’ for Apple Computers. This commercial was to be directed by Ridley Scott to introduce the Macintosh to the world. Costing around $1.5 million dollars, ‘1984’ was to make advertising history by being shown only once in the middle of that years Superbowl – a highly prestigious slot – never before had an advert been only shown once. […] Prisoners as a work derived from the footage shot during the making of the commercial deals with the problem of ideology, the potential manipulation of meaning […] I called this work Prisoners because I was interested in the problem of having a fixed ideology, of having a fixed set of ideas in relation to the world. To use a metaphor: it seemed to me that having sun glasses was useful whilst in the sun, but useless in the middle of the night. So therefore those people depicted in my work, the capitalists, the neo-Nazis, Thatcherites, communists, corporatists and us the anarchists video crew, were all held Prisoner by our own set of beliefs.’ – Terry Flaxton
The Messiah in the Shadow of Death
Richard Philpott
UK, 1985, 10 mins, 16mm transferred to video, B&W, sound
Mrs Thatcher and the Tories rise to infernal domination
Miners and industrial workers strike, confronting the state
The poor, the immigrants, the blacks, the youth, the unemployed and the oppressed of Britain rise-up and fight back
The growth of fascism and the police state gives birth to violence.
The unions march. The police charge. The state must burn!
A dramatic inventory of the logic of growing violence in contemporary Britain. A frame-by-frame rostrum animation film using only photographs and the music of Handel. – R.P.
‘The Messiah transforms anonymous news pictures into a powerfully moving photomontage about the nation’s state.’ — National Film Theatre.
The Undistributed Middle And Other Fallacies In The Home
Steve Hawley
UK 1981, Video, 5 mins, Colour, Sound
In this work a serious Steve Hawley speaks directly to a camera apparently positioned in his flat. His statements expose inconsistencies in potentially rational lines of thought.
Wake Up
Sharon Sandusky
USA 1987, 16mm transferred to video, 4 mins, Colour, Sound
In this short work allusive images recur amidst snatches of song and spoken narration. The narrator ostensibly raises questions about the beginnings of life and the reach of thought. The images, shot in striking colour, comprise of simple, sensual sequences of the elements. Water is a recurring motif, in sea waves and poured or contained in glass where hands reach in, whilst elsewhere wind whips through a field of long grasses.
Beverley Hills Flop
Richard Philpott
UK, 1985, 10 mins, 16mm transferred to video, colour, sound
A kind of outtakes reel, from Philpott’s Road Movie of the previous year.
‘A pop video send-up, in which nothing gets started or finished and nothing makes sense – a typical clip narrative, in fact! – made up of slates, mistakes and out-takes mapped onto the driving rhythm of ‘Axel F’ by Harold Faltermeyer (the theme of ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ – hence the title). – R.P.’
‘The most vacuous promo yet made – a triumph’ – Julien Temple.
Lyrical Doubt
Judith Goddard
UK 1984, video, 16 mins, Colour, Sound
