Through an unusual filmic exploration of the use of framing, lighting, blurring, superimposing and stop motion, the short films in this session try out paths of perceptual experimentation in which specific elements and places - traces of lights, circular or geological shapes - create the more distant cosmic topographies and sinuousness of other planets and unexpected figurations. This programme, with films by Sophie Michael, Manuela de Laborde, Gautam Valluri, Brigid McCaffrey and Jodie Mack, is designed as a parallel activity to the exhibition "Mars. The Red Mirror".
The lights in a shop at 99 Clerkenwell Road become coloured spheres resembling the stars of a solar system seen through a telescope. The stones observed as sculptural objects in As Without so Within take on, under incident light, the aura of asteroids whose chiaroscuro gives rise to eclipses and interplanetary flashes. With Circles we explore the surface of Mars and descend to the Earth. Bad Mama, Who Cares shows us the activity of a retired geologist in her desert home, sheltered by a phosphorescent luminosity of an unnatural force, and we see her hands placing electrodes on a piece of black rock... And, finally, a collection of minerals comes to life in the manual process of displaying an archive in Hoarders Without Borders 1.0.
99 Clerkenwell Road, Sophie Michael, 2010, 16 mm, 8 min; As Without so Within, Manuela de Laborde , 2016, 16 mm, 25 min; Circles, Gautam Valluri, 2015, 16 mm, 4 min; Bad Mama, Who Cares, Brigid McCaffrey, 2016, 35 mm, 12 min; Hoarders Without Borders 1.0, Jodie Mack, 2018, 16 mm, 5 min.
Digital screening. Films courtesy of the artists.
