The Legart Archive
These resources "introduce and examine experimental film and videoʼs aesthetic concerns, their political opposition to the values of commercial cinema and the alternative practices which they have developed throughout the 20th century."
The 1960s and 1970s were a defining period for artists’ film and video, and the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative (LFMC) was one of the major international centres. Shoot Shoot Shoot documents the first decade of an artist-led organisation that pioneered the moving image as an art form in the UK, tracing its development from within London’s counterculture towards establishing its own identity within premises that uniquely incorporated a distribution office, cinema space and film workshop. Illustrated throughout in full colour, this book brings together a wide variety of texts, images and archival documents, and includes newly commissioned essays by Mark Webber, Kathryn Siegel and Federico Windhausen.
"A comprehensive, informative and readable survey of the creative innovations of experimental filmmakers working in Britain in the 1970s which places their work in key historical, political and socio-cultural contexts."
“This rich collection of writings by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history* and network infused language art.”
* This includes a reference to my work at the London Filmmakers Co-op.
"This book is about broadcast television in Britain in 1973."
Following the award of a prize in an art competition sponsored by a local commercial television station, I campaigned with other film and video prize-winners, (including Beau Geste Press, who printed an A3 poster/flyer), to have our work transmitted on the Westward TV channel. Prize-winners in other art categories had their work exhibited publicly: the best the station was prepared to offer was the screening of some extracts from the moving image work. The television station finally offered a discussion about their refusal to screen complete works in a monthly magazine arts program. The 15-minute broadcast item became a performance and discussion intended to raise questions about the ownership and access to Britain's three television channels*. Documentation of the whole event was completed with the book Wayward Action! published by Beau Geste Press in 1974.
(* Britain at the time had three television channels in any one geographical area, two run by the BBC and one by commercial franchises. The book was submitted in evidence to the Annan Committee on the future of broadcasting, a national enquiry whose report (1977) led eventually in 1981 to Britain licensing another television channel, Channel Four, with a remit to provide access to a wider range of program makers, including artists. Television by its very centralised nature defines for the many the tastes of the few, a situation much changed in the era of the internet).
A substantial body of published PhD research into international artists use of close-circuit television (CCTV) in video installations in the 1960s and 1970s. Available in the left column is a downloadable PDF from the 1000 pages of the sections describing work made in Britain and Australia.
Original in German: Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen : Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst mit Bausteinen eines Künstlerlexikons. Logos Verlag, Berlin, ISBN: 3-8325-0600-4
© 2004-2005 bei dem Autor und Verlag. Slavko Kacunko, Düsseldorf http://www.slavkokacunko.de Logos Verlag, Berlin http://www.logos-verlag.de
Dear Peter, Finally catching up with the book. Somehow I missed it when it was published last year, but it IS good to catch up with all that happened, after I’d stopped attending LFMC meetings following the cursory dismissal of the Working Party proposals (which you so assiduously detail, thank you).
The latter stages of the book are of particular interest as the passages are a clear record of what happens when ‘instrumentalities’ get above themselves and try and run things from the high ground – it leads to inevitable collapse. In many ways these sections are a case study of state capitalism and how it can go so badly wrong. …….. It’s good to see such a huge number of people and documents were consulted and synthesised into something so readable – a very successful postdoc for you Peter. All that’s needed now is for P. Mudie’s contribution to be published too. ….. I don’t think the Pommie MI artists realise how lucky they are to have their efforts recorded so fulsomely by two Aussies, able to stand back and study the whole glorious shermozzle, the epitome of the Bulldog Breed approach to doing things! Ken Wark described everything about the Australian contemporary art scene, administrators and funders included, all adds up to one huge artwork. The Poms did it first!”
Dear Peter, Finally catching up with the book. Somehow I missed it when it was published last year, but it IS good to catch up with all that happened, after I’d stopped attending LFMC meetings following the cursory dismissal of the Working Party proposals (which you so assiduously detail, thank you).
The latter stages of the book are of particular interest as the passages are a clear record of what happens when ‘instrumentalities’ get above themselves and try and run things from the high ground – it leads to inevitable collapse. In many ways these sections are a case study of state capitalism and how it can go so badly wrong. …….. It’s good to see such a huge number of people and documents were consulted and synthesised into something so readable – a very successful postdoc for you Peter. All that’s needed now is for P. Mudie’s contribution to be published too. ….. I don’t think the Pommie MI artists realise how lucky they are to have their efforts recorded so fulsomely by two Aussies, able to stand back and study the whole glorious shermozzle, the epitome of the Bulldog Breed approach to doing things! Ken Wark described everything about the Australian contemporary art scene, administrators and funders included, all adds up to one huge artwork. The Poms did it first!”
A handbook from the South West Arts Film and Television Panel in support of its interventional activities throughout the SW region of Britain during the late 1970s. Mike Leggett served on the Panel 1974 – 1981 and also contributed to the publication. (ISBN 0 9506991 0 1)
The Beau Geste Press was established by Martha Hellion and Felipe Ehrenberg, who together with several others in 1972 rented a large farmhouse at Clyst Hydon near Cullompton in central Devon. Not long after I bumped into Martha in Exeter, the County city, with her young children. I had met them all in London on several occasions but had not realised they had relocated to the south-west of England. I had a part-time lecturing position in film and video at the college of art in Exeter and soon became a regular visitor to BGP. There were many visitors at the house, most who were invited to come and work with the collective to make a publication – a book, a pamphlet, a construction, or contribute to the on-going Fluxus West project of exhibitions and performances.
Felipe suggested over a meal that I should make a book, and so I set to think about how an experimental time-based artist would approach this proposal. From my archive I recovered a collection of small photographs and two hand-written poems, hand-written in a form of Greek dialect used in Alexandria, Egypt. These I had found after a great aunt had passed away a few years before; most of the images were taken on the Continent during the 1920s and ’30s.
The real narrative linking the pictures was unknown, but I created a narrative using a method of selection based on chance to link the poem and the pictures. Initially, the two poems were translated into English by Peter Foster-Marr, even though he had no knowledge of the language the writer had employed. The English nouns and verbs he used were cut from the manuscript of his translation, all chosen at random, and then each word would be placed next to one of the photos, also chosen at random from the pile. The juxtaposition of the word and the image prompted me to write several paragraphs before I moved on to the second randomly selected set; links between each set were sometimes evident but most were not, the ‘narrative’ thereby being dispersed in time and space.
The two sequences of words and images were then prepared for the BGP’s offset litho printer: the words were typeset using a golfball Olivetti and photographed, then transferred onto anodised aluminium printing plates. A dummy version of the book indicated which page needed to be printed verso to another; this was important as the material deriving from the two sequences was to be printed from each end of the book; the book could be started from either cover, which bore the image of each poem.
When the time came to print the pages containing the words, we discovered that the plates had partly oxidised, the images of the words becoming faint and broken. Master printer Felipe took on the challenge and suggested we apply various household chemicals to the plates to see if we could improve the visibility of the page; otherwise, we would re-make the plates.
After we worked on the plates, inked them up and saw how the images looked, the results were intriguing, moving the ‘weight’ of words into a relationship with the photographs that was more equal, less authoritative, a joining of images linked by the procedure of printing, of reading.
We printed enough pages for 200 copies, the book’s collation involving a communal process where all the residents of Langford Court South walked around a table on which each of the pages were laid out. Shortly after that, I made a film version of the book, likewise read (and heard) by being projected from either end of the 16mm film, the soundtracks and pictures being superimposed on one another, one going forward, the other in reverse.
I now have my own free downloadable digital copy of The Fluxus Reader in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in 2012. I was associated with Beau Geste Press for a while and so am listed as a book artist. BG were my neighbours in Devon, UK and I had many friends on the London Fluxus scene; but I was busy with the London Filmmakers Co-op so was not able to be more active with them all. Now I have the opportunity to catch up with what they were busy with…..
“Ken has long wanted to make a free digital edition available, but the small typeface has made it difficult to get a clean copy. Then Rebecca Parker, manager of the Research Bank at the Swinburne University library, went to a service to have them prepare, digitize, and proof a digital edition of The Fluxus Reader. So now, I’m pleased to report, the free digital copy is available for download at from Swinburne University”