Month: December 2012

British Avant Garde Film

in Millenium Film Journal #13 (1983-84), an interesting reference to the film Friday Fried (1981), in which the respected theorist and filmmaker Peter Gidal, gives free reign to a surprisingly subjective and interpretive response to the film. Perhaps this is a pointer to ‘problematising’ the experience, through the addition of “a young girl” and “an image which in England conjures up a domestic lower-middle class ‘scene'”, none of which are seen, but clearly present in the mind of the writer. In context, the comments were made in relation to a screening of a program of British films at the Collective for Living Cinema (NYC) in April 1983, the article commences: “Avant garde film is predominately European”.

1984
Peter Gidal

Resisting Definition

” Integral to the new language was what was rapidly becoming performance art: a mix of theatre, happening, and in the case of Ian Breakwell and Mike Leggett’s collaborations recalled in Leggett’s chapter, a kind of structural economics exemplified by the destruction of unsold sculptures. That challenge to ‘the monopolist position of broadcast television’, as Leggett refers to it, involved ‘a highly rational and calculated approach’ to destruction. It is this mocking, ironic application of a system comprising both methodical precision and sheer mess that has allowed, as Leggett notes with considerable originality, the documentation to take on a new role today. The ontological question of liveness – where precisely is the point when the ephemeral actually and terminally vanishes? – has its corollary in the question of what and how we recall.”
pp 6-7 in REWIND: British Artists’ Video in the 1970s & 1980s (2012), John Libbey, UK, ed. Sean Cubitt and Stephen Partridge.

NB. Jackie died, sadly just as the project was taking off following many years of planning and lobbying. Her Introduction to the publication remains both fresh and forthright.

2012
Jackie Hatfield

A Kick in the Eye: Video and Expanded Cinema in Britain

“Early television works in the 1960s in Britain (television that is, as opposed to video) were grounded in the apparatus and explorations of its use. The various Arts Lab experiments and events by John Hopkins, Malcolm Le Grice and Mike Leggett were more or less semi-private affairs for the cognoscenti. It was not until 1972….”
pp 137 in Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film, (2011) Tate Publishing, London, ed A.L. Rees, Duncan White, Steven Ball, David Curtis.

This is sloppy research in my opinion. The option to record video (tapes, as artefacts is what Steve means), was restricted to but a few, one of whom was Hoppy (John Hopkins). However, he would endeavour to make CATS limited range of equipment available to artists planning to incorporate either CCTV or video recording into performances. Such was the case with Ian Breakwell and myself in Unsculpt (1970) and One (1971) described on this site and also in the REWIND publication. The videotape made of the Unsculpt event was played back to the audience at the end of the event but as tape was very expensive at this point no plans were made to keep it. The film and photographic record became the permanent recording, now in digital form (like all the later ‘videos’ made by later artists). As for ‘semi-private affairs for the cognoscenti’, at the Unsculpt performance, the place was packed. I guess Steve’s cognoscenti didn’t hear about it!

2011
Stephen Partridge