The Legart Archive
‘The artist Hollis Frampton describes the experience of using video for the first time in the late 1960s: “I made a piece, a half-hour long, in one continuous take. Then I rewound the notation and saw my work right away … some part of my puritanical filmmaker’s nature remains appalled to this day. The gratification was so intense and immediate that I felt confused. I thought I might be turning into a barbarian; or maybe even a musician.”
The experimental installation made of dexion, board and white scrim followed the precise preportions of the field of view of a film camera. Subjects, people and objects would be confined within the dimensions of the frame at whatever distance they were from the camera which was locked in a fixed position at the apex of the field of view.
Jackie Lansley and Rose English made some dance at the ACME Gallery on the 4th March (1978). The approach to this form of movement was new to me. At the time, contemporary dance was redefining itself in practice, being described in publications such as New Dance and Readings, being developed in studios at Butler’s Wharf and ACME. The article was written at the time and edited in 2016.
A publication list submitted to JCATS UK Video Abstracts c. 1976. (PDF at left)
Perspectives on English Avant-Garde film was a survey series of films screened at the Tate Gallery in London and followed by an international tour in the USA and Australia.
I first encountered the films of the Scottish filmmaker Margaret Tait in 1971 at the Ricky Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh; together with Ian Breakwell I was showing film work as part of the Edinburgh Festival. The Gallery were screening a program of her films which, in a word, entranced, one of which had a voice singing in phrasing that complemented in an unsettling way, the images. Later, I learnt the composition was a particualr adaptation of a pibroch piece for bagpipes. Ricky gave me her address which, as it was in the far north of the country, prevented an immediate visit. In 1975 I was to meet Margeret and visit her in Orkney with my good friend and fellow filmmaker, Annabel Nicolson.
A visit in 1977 to Mexico, an intensely visual culture, includes an audio landscape that was unanticipated. I spent most of the three weeks in Mexico City where the sense of immersion was at its richest. The article (PDF at left) documents five encounters with soundscapes, created in the meeting of people and their machines, buildings, musical instruments and pea whistles, used with a blend of intention and outrageous fortune.