Image Con Text

The Image Con Text project commenced in 1978 and was about interaction of the analogue kind, between the artist and an audience gathered for a screening of artists' film. During the event interpretive information, or contextualising material as it was called then, provided to ‘new’ audiences a way into the artworks, whilst giving access to the conditions and processes involved in giving the films and tapes the form and content observed.
"Leggett's early experiment was with film, though his exploration of video started in the '70s with CCTV and performance ... and re-contextualising the video image as film, to questioning the electronic technology and its 'ambiguities'. Leggett has moved fluidly between shifting moving-image technologies, film, video and digital, and engages the audience directly with the associated and variable discourses." - J.Hatfield*
The Image Con Text project comprised three parts. The first, described some of the conditions that had been involved in determining the artworks, from two distinct approaches - from the artists’ viewpoint, (Image Con Text: One); then later in 1981 from the audience viewpoint, (Image Con Text: Two). The second part of the project was on-going research, with regular live presentations to audiences, the feedback from which would inform subsequent presentations. Thirdly, a videotape version made in 1983 archived both presentation performances thus extending their meanings to later audiences. Interactive study utilising the dynamic linking of the digital format continued the process, with analogue to digital transfer by the Rewind project (University of Dundee 2005) and distribution via DVD and the Web.
*The PDF is the MS version of a chapter about the project in Experimental Film and Video (2006), John Libbey, London (ed. Dr Jackie Hatfield).