Commotion Artist's Film Programmes

Series 2

Since January 2002 Arnolfini and Picture This have worked in partnership to present innovative exhibition programmes of artist’s film and video to sizeable audiences within Arnolfini’s auditorium. The Commotion series has established a reputation for bringing audiences together to view and discuss curatorially rigorous programmes of work by international contemporary artists. Each of the carefully researched projects explores a pertinent theoretical issue or creative genre through the presentation of a number of fine art films and talks by artists, curators or academics.

Paint
Cheryl Donegan (USA), Paul McCarthy (USA), Cecilia Parsberg (USA), Steina (NOR), AK Dolven (SWE)
Curated by Michael Prior, Arnolfini, to coincide with the Arnolfini exhibition Shimmering Substance, this programme explores the matter, celebrates the process and exposes the myths of painting. The films show gestural performances in which the artist’s body becomes an art-making tool. Cheryl Donegan refers to the processes of art-making in the context of art history. In Paul McCarthy’s performance tapes from the 1970s, he becomes a human paintbrush as he drags himself across the floor while holding an open can of white paint; a process also adopted by Cecilia Parsberg spitting a fountain of primary-coloured paint.

Light Structures
George Barber (UK), Dryden Goodwin (UK), Lee Hassell (UK), Mark Lewis (CAN), Michael Maziere (FR), Maibritt Rangstrup (SLOV), Michelle Williams (UK)
Dryden Goodwin guest curated a programme of works that create spaces to ignite the viewer’s imagination; sparing and fine in their construction and yet rich in their connotations. Due to the artists deliberate and considered omissions, the structure of each of the films seem unusually active.
Through a range of effective strategies, the programme includes denuded narratives, fragmentation, the cropping of the image, depersonalisation and anonymity. The obscured contexts of each film and the absence of characterisation and conventional narrative draw out in distinctive ways our taboos, fears and desires. The visuals and soundtracks act as pointers that compel the viewer to rush in and fill the contextual vacuum, devising a more intense personal, perceptual framework to experience each work.
Speakers: Dryden Goodwin and Robin Marriner.

You’ll Never Walk Alone
Jananne Al-Ani (UK), Elisabetta Benassi (IT), Annika Larsson (SWE), Mark Leckey (UK), Aernout Mik (NL), Stephen Sutcliffe (UK), Twenteenth Century (UK), El Hombre Trajeado (MEX)
Curated by Lucy Steeds, Arnolfini, this programme explores various urban settings – domestic, professional, recreational – that act as stages for social movement. Human interaction is both collusive and confounding, as fighting becomes dancing, or dancing becomes game-playing or vice versa. Shared elation and loosening constraints are confused with threat and discipline and choreography, rehearsal and ritual give way to free-form, free-style, wild-style.
Speakers: Lucy Steeds, Mark Leckey and Stephen Sutcliffe.

Blick: New Nordic Film and Video 2001
49 works by emerging artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden
BLICK is the result of a co-operation between the Modern Museum in Stockholm and NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art) in Helsinki. The use of video as an artistic medium increased throughout the 1990s and has had a notable presence in the Nordic Countries. BLICK gives a overall perspective in the field of new Nordic film and video development and has previously been shown at NIFCA and at the Modern Museum. Artists include Salla Tykkä who represented Finland at the Venice Biennale 2001 and Pia Rönicke who showed at Manifesta 2002.
Curated by Maria Lind and Cecilia Widenheim, Moderna Museet and Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, NIFCA.

Miranda July
Miranda July, an American artist who makes performances, movies and recordings took part in a screening and commissioning project as part of the Commotion series in collaboration with the University of the West of England and Arnolfini. Miranda July set an assignment for Bristol in advance of her visit as part of her Learning To Love You More project. Film-makers Tom Stubbs and Lucy Bailey worked with The Cube, UWE, Art & Power, Arnolfini Saturday Club and Speedwell school to produce 40 5-second films that depicted the moment after a crime using source material from local newspapers. The event combined a presentation by July on her work with the screening of the groups’ projects.

Exhibition:
Paint - 1 May 2002, Arnolfini
Light Structures - 22 May 2002, Arnolfini
You’ll Never Walk Alone - 25 September 2002, Arnolfini
Blick: New Nordic Film and Video 2001 - 23 October 2002, Arnolfini
Miranda July - 5 March 2003, Arnolfini