TATE BRITAIN - Turner Prize Exhibition : Facs of Life
Wednesday 8 December 2010, 14.00-17.50
For the last in the series of the IMAGE IN QUESTION at the Tate Britain The Otolith Group have invited Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson to explore their effort to realize a cinema that would both be an encounter with Deleuze's thought, as well as an encounter with the traces left of a collective process which were the courses taught by Deleuze at Vincennes. The session will include the first UK screening of the film Facs of Life (2009) which they have made with some of the former students from Vincennes, as well as another screening of Through the Letterbox (2010), where a close reading of the footage from the lectures allows for an exploration of an expanded version of their cinematic research/work.
Screenings and excerpts followed by a roundtable discussion with The Otolith Group - Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar, Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson.
Facs of Life (2009) 116mins, attempts to map the trajectories of life and thought through a series of encounters: with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze; with video footage of Deleuze’s courses at Vincennes (1975-76); with several of the students that attended the seminar and who appear in these images; with the woods of Vincennes where the university buildings, pulled down in 1980, once stood; with students of the new university at St Denis and with the phantoms of revolution, both cinematic and political, that continue to haunt our desires.
Through the Letterbox (2010) presents a selection of rarely seen archive footage from Deleuze’s seminar at Vincennes refilmed from a TV screen and reframed in 16/9 letterbox format. Images destined for small-screen viewing are shown as though they were ‘cinema’ by the simple means of letterbox framing in a move that interrogates the implications of posting such images ‘through the letterbox’. Different postings of varying duration and composition are addressed to specific correspondents.
Artists and filmmakers Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson are co-founders of Terminal Beach, a cross-media arts platform to investigate new configurations of image, sound, text and spectatorship. Facs of Life, their first feature film, premiered at FID Marseille (2009) and has been shown at numerous festivals and art spaces including BAFICI Independent Film Festival, Jihlava Documentary Festival, Il Vento del Cinema, Ludwig Museum, Lucca Film Festival, Fundacao Clovis Salgado and 16beaver.
The duo are currently working on a new film, Girl from the Nouvelle Vague.
Link:
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/talks/22851.htm
After completing a PhD on Nomadism, Silvia Maglioni was lucky to get out alive from the fast-crumbling halls of academe and now all she wants to do is to rollerblade along Venice Beach while listening to Nico’s "The Marble Index" and reading Adorno’s "Minima Moralia".
However, since founding with Graeme Thomson TERMINAL BEACH - a shifting zone of indeterminacy, a state of mind, a constructivist space for critical and creative reflection and production, exploring possible new configurations of image, sound, text, politics and spectatorship (2005) - they have made together films and photo-essays, art-radio shows, sound and videoinstallations, eventworks, exhibitions, performances, workshops and editorial projects across both institutional and autonomous contexts, and occasionally worked in alliance with other collectives - recently AND AND AND (dOCUMENTA (13)), 16beaver (New York), The Otolith Group (London), Collectif Jeune Cinéma (Paris).
"Facs of Life", their first feature film, draws on encounters with a number of former students of Gilles Deleuze, navigating between the terrains of documentary, fiction, essay and video art to explore aspects of Deleuze's philosophical legacy. The film received its world premiere at FID-Marseille 2009, and has since been shown at numerous international festivals and art spaces including BAFICI, JIHLAVA, Il Vento del Cinema, Lucca Film Festival, Ludwig Museum, TATE Britain-Turner Prize Exhibition/The Image in Question, Fundação Clovis Salgado, SERRALVES, Anthology Film Archives.
Redeploying elements of Facs of Life and its research archive, the duo have also created a series of solo shows exploring the idea of 'exploded' cinema: "Inarchivé", a dispersion of the film's components around the city of Marseille (Les Instants Vidéo in association with FID, La Compagnie Gallery and Histoire de l'Oeil Art Space), "blown up ! à la recherche des élèves de Gilles Deleuze", an eventwork combining multimedia installation, dance, sound art, performance, lectures, screenings and discussions in a live spatial montage (Mains d’Oeuvres Interdisciplinary Art Centre, Paris) and "twice torn from time", a four-screen installation of the film (UCSB Gallery, Santa Barbara).
Together with "Through the Letterbox", a high-definition refilming and reediting of the original video archive of Deleuze's seminar at Vincennes from 75-76, and "Wolkengestalt", considering September 11 and its aftermath through the prism of Goethe's meteorological diaries, their other films include "Ghosts of Chance", "The balade of Dèsastronaute #1", "Statues", a video-portrait of the American poet John Giorno, "Wound in the Eyes" and, most recently, the tube-tracts "Feeding Force" and "Trans Euro Express", drawing upon situationist strategies of détournement and the artisanal methodology of the ciné-tracts to hypothesize a deconstructivist use for contemporary viral media.
The duo are currently preparing a new feature film, "Girl from the Nouvelle Vague".
They are also working on a multi-form project, "UIQ film QUI manque", that takes as its starting point Félix Guattari's unmade science-fiction film "Un amour d'UIQ" (1980-1987), around whose script and archives Silvia maglioni & Graeme THomson have conceived a book, published by Editions Amsterdam (2012). "UIQ film QUI manque" is a project that turns around the central problematic of Guattari’s Infra-quark Universe – that of the “individuation” of a bodiless entity, seemingly without spatial or temporal limits. Applying this issue to the unmade film itself, the project envisages parrallel ways of “manifesting”, “producing” and “distributing” Un amour d’UIQ. As well as the publication, the project includes a series of performances (notably "UIQ: A SPACE ODDITY", Paris/ Los Angeles/ Zurich) and installations (recently DE3, collective exhibition "Plus ou moins Sorcières", Paris), a number of talks and seminars, a ghost radio trailer for Guattari's film (ARTE Radio) and an essay film, "In Search of UIQ".
Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson are also working on the collective project KAFKAMACHINE (2011-2013). A collaboration between Presque Ruines (Paris), UEINZZ Theatre Company (San Paolo) and Mollecular Organization (Helsinki), KAFKAMACHINE has been taking different forms and directions: a theatre play, a series of workshops and publications as well as several installations, sound works, performances and films (in progress).
contact
pinkpantherevolt@gmail.com
website
http://cargocollective.com/terminal-beach
marc garrett