SCREEN DIARY: THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE
FEATURED ATTRACTION: Close-Up Film Centre is hosting a season of artists’ film – THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE – to celebrate 10 years of DVD label Filmarmalade – until 26 OCT.
THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE is an ongoing celebration of artists’ film DVD label Filmarmalade (until 26 OCT). The programme at Close-Up Film Centre provides engaging, theme-free evenings of short works curated by Gordon Shrigley. We went along to PROGRAMME III.
CLOSE-UP FILM CENTRE
If you haven’t been before, Close-Up features in our TOP 10 LONDON CINEMAS and is a moving picture lover’s delight. There’s a cafe/bar, halls lined with shelf upon shelf of DVDs and printed pages and a delightful screening room out back. The Shoreditch venue is like an über tasteful MTV Cribs home cinema, divorced from any gaudy mansion and white-privilege offspring. Most importantly, the screening room isn’t some selotaped-to-the-wall affair: it’s got real chops.
We admire the cine-serious, wide-ranging programme which consistently features in our weekly guides and daily Instagram picks. Seasons and one-off events are all worth your ticket money, as are the various members offerings. Close-Up is a great place to take a leap into the unknown or revisit old masters. We (always) hope to get back there soon: they are good people.
THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE
As to THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE, things got off to the usual “we’re showing artists’ films so won’t worry too much about punctuality” pace¹. However, after the arrival of a masked MC² and curator Gordon Shrigley’s brief intro, the evening was all about the excellent films.
OUR RELATIONSHIPS WILL BECOME RADIANT
James Lowne | 2011 | 9 min
Lowne’s torn and tattered animated CGI nightmare has the blighted feel of latter-day Lynch, as if the maestro had made a GUESS advert complete with shirtless men in jeans and cocktail-sipping women. Ruptured bird flesh, black vomit, mouths that move without sound, gestures without response, swirling noise and oozing foodstuffs – Lowne’s film creates a dark and sinister void of a world without (obvious) meaning.
VERSUS
Aukje Dekker | 2006 | 10 min
A single-shot film where intrigue becomes exhaustion for both audience and artist as Dekker kisses then head butts a boxing ball for 10 minutes. The repeated blows spin the ball beyond sight, tiring the performer (“Oh fuck…!”) who allows the ball to nestle against her face before beginning the onslaught anew. The incessant violence and love-hate intimacy speak of domestic horrors but the absurdity suggests something yet more universal.
ONTOLOGICALLY ANXIOUS ORGANISM, EPISODE 1, 2 & 3
Let Me Feel Your Finger First | 2010-12 | 8 min
A sentient stone offers up psychological insights into the nature of existence. As if the computer from THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY was struggling to make sense of creator and character dynamics from within a PEANUTS cartoon, this is funny stuff.
GRESE, WEST, ATKINS, HINDLEY, RUDA & ENGLAND
Patricia Shrigley | 2007 | 7 min
Shrigley offers herself up as a series of parody video portraits of women who have killed, tortured and maimed. Silently, they pimp and preen before the camera only to have their horrors brutally exposed by a series of chilling statements in the end credits.
INTERVAL
A MARVELLOUS NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
Beth Fox | 2012 | 9 min
Is this what meta means? In Beth Fox’s film we have an artwork talking about art critics talking about an artwork. It’s a funny reversal as we watch the polarnecked folk from within the work they’re commenting on. No cliché of artspeak is left unskewered and, for once, the art babble in the programme notes has a fitness for purpose. Talking to Fox during the interval, this is the first time she will have seen her film since the untimely death of her onscreen collaborator, adding yet more meaning.
“There’s no sense of sense, in one sense.” Beth Fox.
MUSIC FOR A MISSING FILM
Luciano Zubillaga | 2009 | 29 min
The final film of the evening offered overlaying memory and moving images, both lost and (re)found. This was the most cinematic of tonight’s bunch: a beautifully shot and edited séance for a lost film (EL HUERCO, Venezuela, 1964). Competing voiceovers offer historic, contemporary and scripted drama whilst the original score blends together newly filmed footage and fragments of original images. Coincidentally, the film’s sense of loss and collective remembrance beautifully echoed Fox’s own happy/sadness from the previous screening.
THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE screens every Thursday at Close-Up until 26 OCT 2017
From Gordon Shrigley’s shoutouts, it’s clear that artists and their friends made up half of the small audience, which is a shame. More people should see such fine work and Close-Up is a great place to see it. Back their ambition and get yourself plugged into THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE (details below).
HUNGRY FOR MORE?
- THE INCREDIBLE SIMULTANEITY CONSOLE PROGRAMMES IV to VIII continue at Close-Up every Thursday until 26 OCT 2017.
- Find out more about Filmarmalade and how to get your hands on their titles at gordon-shrigley.com.
- Feel the flavour of some of the artists’ work on Vimeo: OUR RELATIONSHIPS WILL BECOME RADIANT (James Lowne); VERSUS (Aukje Dekker); ONTOLOGICALLY ANXIOUS ORGANISM, EPISODE 1, 2 & 3 (Let Me Feel Your Finger First); A MARVELLOUS NEGATIVE CAPABILITY (Beth Fox); MUSIC FOR A MISSING FILM – extract (Luciano Zubillaga).
- Beth Fox is helping promote FEMALE TROUBLE, a large-scale exhibition of three London-based sculpture and installation artists by The Bomb Factory Art Foundation. Part of the 2017 Art Licks Weekend, the programme includes a FREE screening of the John Waters’ classic of the same name (SUN 01 OCT 18:00 – booking advisable).
Featured image: OUR RELATIONSHIPS WILL BECOME RADIANT (James Lowne).
¹ Why artists and galleries don’t focus more on showmanship evades us…
² This isn’t quite what we meant…