MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATIONS
Moving image installations around the town, in several disused spaces and even a travelling horsebox gallery. Including Andrew Kötting’s Above Them the World Beyond, a disturbing insight into the notions of incubation, Guli Siberstein’s System Error, a pixelated and damaged desert from the disputed Israeli-Palestinian region, as Sarah Bliss’s psychogeography of the Borders is reflected in the culture of Scots Covenanters. Pat Law’s installation evokes an eerie arctic surveillance, Ben Skea’s Sleep Vessel lies on a pillow, Karl F. Stewart’s reflections are in a Dusseldorf fountain. Emma Finn reconstitutes people, becoming more or less the same, while Franziska Lauber’s fish intones love, life and mortality, as The Bird and The Monkey fall through a pool into the underworld in Orphine.
Opening hours:
Thursday 12-6pm, Friday 10-6pm,
Saturday 10-6pm, Sunday 10-5pm
Free entry
CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET & VARIOUS LOCATIONS
Full Installations listings below:
ABOVE THEM THE WORLD BEYOND
Andrew Kötting/United Kingdom 2013/Scottish Premiere
The worlds of Franz Kafka and Josef Fritzl collide to produce a disturbing insight into the notions of incubation as heard through the ears of someone under duress. Isolation as the process or fact of isolating or being isolated, including the social lack of contact between persons, groups, or whole societies… (Psychology) The failure of an individual to maintain contact with others or genuine communication where interaction with other species persists… WARNING not recommended for a Claustrophophile.
“There is no joy in this piece, just the omnipresent sense of dread and foreboding. Be warned it is not for the fainthearted” Gladys Morris
Film: Andrew Kötting / Images: Nick Gordon Smith / Voice: Schneider / Super 8: Andrew Kötting / Edit and Sound: Andrew Kötting
Biography/Filmography:
Born then Lumberjack in Scandinavia then scrap metal collector and market trader then 1st Class Degree in Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design with KLIPPERTY KLOPP then MA in Mixed Media at The Slade then Performances and Screenings of film and video work throughout UK and Europe including Tate Modern Tate Britain ICA The Hayward Barbican and The NFT then GALLIVANT (BFI Feature Film) then Senior Lecturer at KIAD in Maidstone Kent then Arts Foundation Script Writing Award then THIS FILTHY EARTH (Film Four Feature Film) then Multi Media Arts collaboration MAPPING PERCEPTION with Dr Mark Lythgoe Eden Kötting Giles Lane and The Welcome Trust then… see his full biography.
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
For Everything to Go Exactly as Planned
Emma Finn/United Kingdom 2013/World premiere
In ‘For Everything to Go Exactly as Planned’, the workers must come to an important decision. Our narrator, the wrecking ball, recounts for us what he saw, heard and understood. Everyone’s true nature is exposed, including the wrecking ball, who ultimately destroys his own story. Primarily working with moving imagery and narrative, Emma Finn draws upon a broad range of visual languages and codes, derived from comics, television and cinema. ‘I like seeing the Marks I make on pages join together. These Marks become people and things that have stories to share. Wrecking balls, postmen and office workers. They might mirror us but they are not us, they are less in power, dimensionally. They are the second to our third dimension.’ The narratives reflectively, if obliquely, address the distance between people. We create our own parallel and private worlds beside one another; ranging from lonesome to satisfying and everything in between. Working with the Marks’ stories, Finn pushes them into a dialogue with the third and fourth dimensions of space and time, using video installation and, at times, incorporating live performance.
Biography/Filmography:
Emma Finn currently lives and works in Edinburgh, UK but was born in Galway, Ireland. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) Intermedia in 2013. Finn also holds a BA (Hons) in Psychological Studies and Classical Civilisation from the National University of Ireland Galway. Emma Finn has exhibited in the UK and Ireland and was recently selected for the Tulca Festival of Visual Arts. Next, she will take part in the “New Scottish Artists” show at the Fleming Collection in London, as part of a select touring version of the RSA’s New Contemporaries 2014. In 2013 she was awarded the RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship to Florence and shortlisted for the Edinburgh Printmakers Short Film Award.
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
Sleep Vessel
Ben Skea/United Kingdom 2013/World premiere
Sleep Vessel (Ben Skea, 2013, animation, 2’43″) attempts to explore and understand the three core processes of memory (encoding, storage and recall) by way of hand-drawn animation. Abstracted constructs, reassembled from ‘automatic drawings’ created before and after sleep, take form as separate parts – evolving from one state to another. Organic line vessels become glowing containers for fluid movement – transformative shapes and cyclic actions reinforcing themes of stored impulses, muscle memory and lucid dreaming. These loops are finally broken when the process of retrieval begins – rapid stop motion drawings are juxtaposed with photography and mixed media collage representing the human form as it wakes from sleep.
Biography/Filmography:
Ben Skea is a visual artist working in a variety of media including digital printmaking, photography, video and experimental animation. His work primarily focuses on his interest in the cyclical, transformative nature of experience, memory and matter. He creates images where reality is suspended and fabrication and illusion are able to co-exist with the tangible. Skea studied Fine Art Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art and Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee. He has received awards worldwide and has exhibited internationally. Since 2010 he has worked as a visual artist in Glasgow, Scotland.
Venue: As an installation in CROWN BUILDINGS and in the DREAMING ROOM, Second Floor, Tower Mill – Heart of Hawick
Tickets: Free or £4 (for the Dreaming Room screenings, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
The Truth About
Franziska Lauber/Switzerland 2011/United Kingdom premiere
A fish-head in the water seems to be alive by the slow movement of the water. The apparent aliveness becomes still more deceitful by the limited view. A female voice from somewhere whispers again and again “I love you”. Can you believe what you see and hear? The boundaries of life and death become blurred. This artistic work is a poetic approach to the great themes of life and mortality.
Biography/Filmography:
Franziska Lauber (1969). Lives and works near Berne / Switzerland. Franziska Lauber works with video and room-installations with diffrent materials and explores the relationship between people, animal, nature and civilization.
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
Images in a Nondescript Fountian
Karl F. Stewart/Germany 2013/World premiere
Some would say water is a reflection of us. And though we walk by sources of water almost everyday, we frequently never notice what we are reflecting back onto its surface. The video of reflected images found in a fountain located outside the museum K 20 in Dusseldorf, Germany. It is also an elaborated version of a previous video entitled K 20. This video is a part of my water period work and a continuation of my Alice in Dusseldorf series. Other videos related to water include Flowing to Blue and Fish Red.
Creation of project finished in September 2013.
Biography/Filmography:
National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Residence photography grant for two years . Taught photographic design at Art Institute of Pittsburgh . Worked as photojournalist / journalist / assistant editor . English Lecturer, University of Turin, Italy, for 24 years . Have been living in France and Italy for 30 years . Was recently photographing out of San Francisco for three years . Presently in Düsseldorf, Germany. Previous screenings include: Directors Lounge 9, Berlin, Germany 2013; Urban Research Program, Berlin, Germany 2013; Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, New Mexico 2013; Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013; Filmmuseum, , Düsseldorf, Germany 2013
http://impressionsofmovement.com
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
SYSTEM ERROR
GULI SILBERSTEIN/United Kingdom 2013/United Kingdom premiere
Pixelated, damaged desert images from the disputed Israeli-Palestinian region and electronic soundscape are integrated with a poem, transmitting an urgent message to stop the continuing violence by all sides in the Middle East. The work highlights the absurdity and pain of repeating human patterns of error, turmoil and destruction, and the difficulties of communication in deaf, chaotic world. The video acts both as an apocalyptic nightmare, and as a dream for peace. The video urges the cease of violence and destruction of land, as the poem says:
“Please do not throw any more stones / You are moving the land / The holy, whole, open land / You are moving it to the sea / And the sea doesn’t want it / The sea says, not in me.”
Biography/Filmography:
An Israeli-born (1969), London-based video art maker and video editor. He received a BA in Film & TV from Tel-Aviv University in 1997, and a MA in Media Studies, with a focus on media art production and theory, from The New School for Social Research, NYC, USA in 2000. His work often deals with political issues, violent conflicts and cognitive processes, involving media critique, found footage appropriation and digital processing. The videos have been extensively presented in museums, galleries and festivals worldwide, including: the National Centre of Contemporary Art Moscow, Transmediale Berlin, EMAF Osnabrueck Germany, Kassel Film and Video Festival, The Nunnery Gallery London, ‘Human Frames’ exhibition Lowave Paris, Museum on the Seam Jerusalem, and Videobrasil Sao-Paulo Brazil. In early 2013 he curated a video art exhibition ‘Freedom of Others’ at Salisbury Arts Centre, UK.
https://vimeo.com/gsilberstein
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
The Fixed and The Volatile
Pat Law & Richard Ashrowan/United Kingdom 2013/European premiere
This work is based on a voyage around Arctic Svalbard undertaken by the artists in October 2012. Pat Law’s work explores both the temporal and otherworldly elements of disused and abandoned structures of Svalbard, the grit that built them and the spirit that ties them together. Richard Ashrowan’s work is a new b/w 16mm film with a soundtrack by Canadian sound artist Nick Kuepfer.
Biography/Filmography:
Pat Law’s work is prompted by observation of the landscape encountered through voyages or travel. She works with paint, photography, sound, video and drawing.
studiolog.heriot-toun.co.uk
Richard Ashrowan is a moving image artist living and working in the Scottish Borders. He works with 16mm film and digital video.
www.ashrowan.com
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
What it is to Want It
Sarah Bliss/United States 2014/World premiere
A two-channel installation that brings voice to the inner wrestlings of 17th century Scots whose worldviews were shaped by the sternly passionate and demanding ideals of the Scottish Reformation, and the rugged, unforgiving land that supported them. What it is to Want It is an episode from Bliss’ larger multimedia project Covenant, which explores the psychogeography of the Borders and the radical shifts in the cultural imaginarium effected there by the Reformation. Working outward from research into the life and writings of Bliss’ ancestor, Reverend John Livingston, who was a leading Covenanting minister in the Borders in the 1600s, Covenant investigates the ways in which Reformers’ ideas about the body, voice, and community were shaped by and are reflected in the land. The fiercely passionate and often agonized struggle for a clear knowing of one’s personal salvation; the far-reaching system of discipline used by the church to control the body and its desires; the valorization of Word/text over sensual sacramentalism; and the apocalyptic theology of the extremist Covenanters are all sites for filmic investigation. The Gown of Repentance, a second episode from Covenant, will be screened in the Main Auditorium on Sunday afternoon.
Biography/Filmography:
Sarah Bliss is an artist and filmmaker who explores the relationships between body, place, language and memory. Her work engages both personal and social history, examining in particular the experience of religious faith and the consequences of both its demands and its absence. Bliss works in multiple media including moving image, photography, sound, and prose, and she is currently curating a project surveying performance, sound, and moving image artists who work with voice as either subject or tool. Bliss received her Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Her work has been recognized by a 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Sculpture/Installation. Recent screenings include the TransArt Film Festival, Berlin; Espaço Cultural ESPM, Porte Alegre, Brazil; Creon Gallery, New York; WORK Gallery, Detroit; Interstitial Theatre, Seattle; and the Fridge Art Fair, Miami.
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
Orphine
The Bird And The Monkey (Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian)/United Kingdom 2014/World premiere
The Bird And The Monkey are entering the Dreamlands with ORPHINE – their follow-up to their 2012 Sung To The Crows Installation. We plan to produce 3 films for projection, alongside unique sculptures, art, music and performance. Orphine looks into a puddle and through nature’s pull and the push of her emotions falls into the Underworld, where she is transformed. In the struggle to return, Orphine must locate and pass through many portals which will eventually lead her somewhere. Enlightening and dark twists and turns befall her in the Subconscious as she discovers characters and relics both familiar and strange.
Biography/Filmography:
Scottish Borders based duo Sarahjane Swan, a BA (Hons) graduate in sculpture from Gray’s School of Art, and indie musician Roger Simian (Dawn Of The Replicants, Crunchy Joseph, The Stark Palace) have been collaborating as The Bird And The Monkey since early 2010 on left-field songs and music videos. Tracks have been aired on Radio 1 in Scotland, BBC 6 Music and BBC2, and promo video, Do You Wanna?, was picked by the BBC Music Video Festival 2011 to be screened at Edinburgh Big Screen for two weeks.The Bird And The Monkey’s debut short film, In The Dark I Sat – a surreal science fictional romance – premiered at Portobello Film Festival 2012 in London and has its Scottish premiere at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in 2012.
http://www.thebirdandthemonkey.com
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
Horsebox: Dark-Time
Pat Law/United Kingdom 2014/World premiere
dark-time: the period on the Svalbard calendar when the sun dips below the horizon in November and doesn’t rise again until late January. Using the virtual imagery of webcams in Svalbard, the film (moving image?) addresses the dream-like state of this mid winter period when the rhythm of life slows down in response to the lack of light, creating a haven for dreams and imaginings.
This installation is held within a travelling Horsebox.
Biography/Filmography:
Pat Law’s work is prompted by observation of the landscape encountered through voyages or travel. She works with paint, photography, sound, video and drawing.
http://studiolog.heriot-toun.co.uk/
Venue: IN A HORSE TRAILER PARKED OUTSIDE HEART OF HAWICK
Tickets: Free
Polar Forces: universe of an iceberg
Ruth Le Gear/Ireland 2013/United Kingdom premiere
Polar Forces: universe of an iceberg in which a remedy from the melt waters of an iceberg was created in the arctic. Le Gear further explores the potentiality of ice in terms of water remedies resulting from fieldwork investigations. The contradiction of a remedy made from water and diluted with itself presents interesting questions around the uses and permutations of a landscape whose energy-fields mediate and co-exist with the human body. When sailing the waters of the arctic last year, Le Gear collected iceberg samples and made remedies from their meltwaters. The remedies initial intention was for the land and other water bodies, to bring an resonance of the meltwaters to other water bodies.
This work reflects on the ephemeral and delicate sense of loss, causing us to contemplate on the contemporary environment we find ourselves in. We are living in world where we only see the tip of the iceberg, big energy in little spaces. Somehow there is a vivid burst of brilliance, like fireworks, a healing light in a hazy apparition, (Puiktartuq, the inuit call it, coming up for air) Within the installtion Le Gear present portal images of ice as microscopic views: inversely exploring what we can otherwise never quite take in, that universe of the iceberg – the submerged, the visible and the invisible – that which has melted.
Biography/Filmography:
Le Gear graduated from Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) with a degree in sculpture in 2007. Her solo exhibition Water that Sleeps was exhibited at Galway Arts Centre in 2009 and recently she showed Polar Forces:universe of an iceberg in LSC. Recent group exhibitions include Crystalline at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown (2012), Ev+a (2008) and Claremorris Open (2008). In 2011 she was awarded a six-month residency in Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. Other residencies include: The Arctic Circle (2012); Culturia, Berlin (2012); SIM, Iceland (2012/09); Cill Rialig, Kerry (2011); Limerick City Gallery of Art (2008) and Tyrone Guthrie (2010). In March of next year she will have a solo exhibition at the Cork Film Centre.
Venue: CROWN BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, HAWICK
Tickets: Free
