Category: Video

Go to https://player.vimeo.com/video/277844040 for 3-min preview

The film follows native orchid expert, Alan Stephenson, as he visits sites in the Shoalhaven bush in NSW, Australia over a 12-month period; some 70 different species grow in the wild, ranging from the miniscule to the substantial. There are 142 species that grow in this area of which 17 are threatened or vulnerable to extinction. The 55-minute film shows the settings and explains some of the science, becoming involved in controversies with developers and landowners whose activities threaten the sustainability of the biodiversity necessary for this oldest of flowering plants to survive. Two completed versions of the film are available for screening: A Native Orchid Almanac (55-min) and The Orchid Protector (25-min), in disc formats and online.

https://vimeo.com/105661189 PLEASE VIEW IN FULL SCREEN

The strutting display of a peacock is both spectacular and confronting. in a public nature reserve with a peahen in attendance, the sounds of other animals and human activity has the effect of undercutting the image of authority presented by the animal; it is as if the spectacle – and this could be said of this video – subsumes the purpose.

The screen image is presented following a sequence of procedures initiated by a fragment of a video recording made on Betamax; captured into the computer and processed in a way reminiscent of the ceramicists of the East, the ‘all-seeing eye’ of the ancients stares out of the screen as the viewer’s gaze is distanced by the approximation of the image to that tradition.

The footage was shot in New York City in 1971 as the portrait of a city I was visiting for the first time. I had of course been there many times before – on film – so the form of the document needed to be distinct and reflect the specificity of the medium. The film was shot on a standard 8mm camera and I asked Kodak not to split the film – I had shot the ‘second side’* holding the camera upside down. Projected on a 16mm projector, the four frames are thereby visible right way up.

In the early 1970s I was working intensively with 16mm and the NYC footage was included in screenings and performances, sometimes being slowed down using an analysis projector. In about 2000 I began experimenting with the images as digital video. But it was not until I heard the amazing compositions of the New York musician John Zorn in 2009 that I realised how I wanted to complete the film.

Note: the World Trade Center was in the early stages of construction at the time; the images of its sunken foundations we saw again in 2001.

*Standard 8mm film is a now obsolete guage of film. It was in fact 16mm film with an additional sprocket hole adjacent to each image frame. After the first exposure onto the 25 feet of film, the spool was turned over and fed back through the camera for the second exposure. At the laboratories after processing, the film was split down the middle and joined end to end to produce 50 feet of continuous projection time of about 3 minutes.

Premiered at the Australian International Experimental Film Festival, Melbourne.

A temporal collage traversing the ephemera of past travels.

The art work challenges language in printed, written and spoken form, as the means for recall, or even retelling. A procedural approach to the recorded material establishes four time periods: image representations of time past revealed through; an elapsed performance of the physical excavation of the paper remains, of the day of image capture; the later organisation of the digital data, incorporating voice, pauses, reversals etc; finally, the screening to an audience, making meaning.

As ephemera gathered over many years, my motivation for keeping the collection remained elusive. At first the range of colours, textures, shapes and sizes were stored for later fixing onto card or board, following an aesthetic practiced by artists over many generations. The collection was added to gradually, but never reviewed, simply accumulating under the slope of the desk; once full to spilling, the collecting stopped. The desk meanwhile travelled from place to place, traversing counties, and then countries, and then between cities and neighbourhoods.

The day of reckoning eventually arrived and the recording of the disposal of the collection was made. Another period elapsed. Then it was time to make the collage, as a moving image art work.

“Objects hang before the eyes of the imagination, continuously representing ourselves to ourselves, and telling the stories of our lives in ways which would be impossible otherwise.” S.M.Pearce

Premiered at the Australian International Experimental Film Festival, Melbourne.

A sequence of six video recordings made during an eighteen month period, 1973 -1975. (See downloadable catalogue page.) The title refers to the Contract artists were required to sign prior to work being screened during The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in 1975. Video work from this period has been archived by the Rewind project at the University of Dundee and the Scottish Film and Television Archive.

The project was a collaboration between Leggett and Breakwell and a group of Foundation students at the Somerset College of Art, Taunton. Preparatory work occurred over several weeks prior to two days spent in the close-circuit television studio belonging to the Plymouth College of Art. Pre-rehearsed sequences and prefabricated sets and props were recorded to a videotape of 40 minutes duration. The tape is no longer extent. The attached PDF is a facsimile of the original documentation of the project (extracted from Video, Video+Film)

This work is compilation of the following: ‘Switch on’ of the Portapak including momentary physical manipulation of the tape over the record head, producing breakup in the image. (This image is later photographed from the screen to be used to illustrate the article “Interference”, written for the Studio International Video issue.) Title of the compilation follows, then a sequence walking outside the house into the exterior garden, viewing the Portapak on the artist’s shoulder, before returning to the interior, where the camera is mounted on a tripod and lined up on a radio standing on the table. There follows discrete segments, some with introductions: Radio; Objects; Read statements and improvisation to camera: the artist describes the editing strategy employed in this tape, including the incorporation of an informal improvisation recorded some weeks previously. (This material is later revisited in Image Con Text: Two (1984), in the 8mm film sequence.); Haircut; Intro to Cow; Cat; ‘Switch off’: the Portapak deck is seen as the artistís hand comes in to switch to Off.

Article from Studio International, 1976 – ‘Mike Leggett: Considerations on the subject of Interference’ – with information on the work ‘Porter Pack’.