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Sissy Doutsiou is an actor and director of the Institute for Experimental Arts in Athens, Greece. I'd met Sissy in 2019 when I attended the Athens International Video Poetry Festival, organised by Sissy and the Institute. There was so much to see in that Festival, but I particularly remember being blown away by the intensity of her live performance that I watched. So it was exciting back in April when Sissy approached me to make a film together. It's been a challenging project - a new way of collaborating, the subject matter, and working with two languages. Take a look at the results ... or some screenshots below.
I was fortunate to be invited to present in Panel 12: Remixing the archive – creative digital reimaging, reworking and reuse. I shared the new project that I’m working on with writer Toby Martinez de las Rivas and sound artist Neda Milenova Mirova that uses, and is inspired by, a photographic archive at the Museum of English Rural Life.
This stream aims to set up a discursive space to explore Warhol’s well-known love of repetition paired with Koestler’s seemingly condemnation of repetition. We will seek to theorise, articulate and demonstrate how radical forms of repetition can be creative, transgressive, disruptive, politicized subversion and acts of liberation within themselves."
In my session 'Repetition and Collaging of the Self' I talked about my filmmaking process - 'Repetition at 25 frames per second', alongside Shirley Chubb - 'Repetition as performance: from commemoration to constancy' and Sinead Kempley - 'Mining the same seam, dredging and composting: mythopoetic art practice and discard studies'. And many more presentations over the 2 day conference.
I first understood Haiku through the character of Ricky in the wonderful film Hunt for the Wilderpeople (a film written and directed by Taika Waikiki), and began to enjoy more of them through Dave Bonta. Haibun combines prose with a haiku.
Dave Bonta and MovingPoems.com have been involved with a competition for Haibun, and along with Dave and James Brush, I was invited to be involved in judging the filmmaking stage of the competition. As Dave explained, in his presentation to Haiku North America 2023 in Cincinnatti, where the Haibun films were screened: "Videopoetry (AKA cinepoetry or filmpoetry) is a hybrid of film and poetry that can work especially well with haibun. Like haibun, it hijacks a narrative medium for lyrical ends in a creative subversion of a typical audience’s expectations." It was the first time I've been on the other side of the festival fence as a judge. While the three of us had some different views on what we thought were the strengths of the films submitted, we had a unanimous decision on the winner - Table for One by Matt Mullins.
For a full report on the competition, or to see other films shown at the event - please head over to Moving Poems.
In recent months I've been collaborating with Toby Martinez de las Rivas and Neda Milenova Mirova on a series of films. A pleasure to be able to attend Toby's talk to the Whichcote Society in Emmanuel College. And the first public screening of one film of the series - Gethsemane.
I've been making preparations today for the event next month with Poetry Film Live. Chatting with Rosie Garland and Helen Dewbery was lovely and we've recorded Rosie performing one of the special poems from the 'Book of the Film' of Because Goddess is Never Enough. It was brilliant - not least because that's the first time I've seen Rosie perform that particular poem. I will have to make it into a film one day. You'll have to join us on Thursday 8th June at 7.30pm to find out which poem, and to watch the reading.
Launching a collaboration with Roma Tearne - an artist's book edition in Venice, in association with Kanz Architetti - alongside an exhibition of paintings by Roma on 12 & 13 May 2023.
Written by Roma Tearne with typographic design and artist's book edition created by me. See more about the book at Peculiarity Press.
Beyond proud that the first of a new mini-series of films has gone up on the Faber & Faber YouTube channel to tie-in with Toby Martinez de las Rivas' new book of poetry 'Floodmeadow' that is published today.
Made in collaboration with Toby and sound artist Neda Milenova Mirova. And created from an original glass plate photograph by Eric Guy Archive at the Museum of English Rural Life.
More from this series to come. Three films are complete with two more in progress.
Very happy to have been invited by curator Julia Zinnbauer to join in (virtually) with this crowd in Düsseldorf. Julia reported on the event: "The epic Gearreels Screening took place as part of the ART ARTIST Exhibition in Düsseldorf (https://artartist.co/). It was a great pleasure to show your work in the context of this beautiful and really overwhelming exhibition and I would like to thank you for your trust and for all your exciting submissions!
It was important for me that as many people as possible had the opportunity to watch your films, therefore I was glad to have two spaces and two projectors (thanks to the Riad!) In this way I could project two reels simultaneously. By the way: the name of our event - Gearreels – relates to the fact that the exhibition took place in the buildings of a former gearwheel factory. Chris, Dora, Daniel and Carsten came all the way from Berlin to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, which made everything even more exciting and beautiful. Thank you so much for coming to Düsseldorf! An additional surprise was the beautiful performance by Natalie Afriat and Soof Nikritin that took place in one of our screening spaces – an incredible mixture of dance, music and projection (https://www.instagram.com/p/CqnCd4zoAeA/?hl=de). At that time Natalie and Soof took part in the ongoing artists exchange betrween Düsseldorf and Ein Hod/Haifa, Düsseldorf's twin city in Israel." Julia selected Because Goddess is Never Enough - to show in the screening room at the Factory instagram.com/p/Cq8KRjgI_lg/ |
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