Zone Oxjam photos & video

Zone Oxjam Programme for 20th July

Vanitas - Veronique Maria, HDV, 5'32", UK, 2013

Veronique Maria has been making sculpture and paintings since the 1970s . Occasionally she has used video to explore the performative aspects of her practice. In December 2012 she received an Arts Council Grants for the Arts Award which enabled her to learn editing on FCPX. Vanita is her first self filmed and self edited video. It is both a technical exercise, and an exploration into what she is calling 'moving paintings.'  VANITA means Woman in Hindu, and VANITAS is the still life painting style which was intended to remind the viewer of the brevity of life.


The Last Flight - Aisa Boaa, Live performance, 25 mins.

What is hidden in the depths is what leads to the manifestation... making
it visible.

Studying Dramatic Art at Murcia ́s School I gained many useful experiences.
However, it wasn ́t until performing in the streets that I started to gain a full
picture about my interest in the authenticity of expression, the way of the naked
truth. After 12 years of performing Live Art, Aerial Theatre and Butoh, I finally
achieved the authenticity I had searched for. This helped me to uncover
the experiences leading to the works ́ creation and to better
understand the poetics of words, sounds, images, materials and actions that come
from my respected subconscious. In the beginning I approached my work with a
certain abandon, not always knowing what it was about. Sometimes the
result was totally different to the original idea. And so I came to realise that I
prefer to avoid closed meanings within my work and to allow for open and unique
interpretation. By doing this, the work gives the freedom to express latent
meanings as well as increasing the potential for transformation and the evolution
of ideas. Chaos? Or in the opposite way... Putting the chaos in order??
http://aisaboaa.wix.com/this-way

Solid Birds Flying - Live music accompaniment to two films by Simon Mclennan.
Solid Birds Flying are a rock/jazz trio from Brighton and will be playing two tracks to film. The first a black and white Super 8mm film shot in London in 2001, with Danijela Bogdanovic and Scott Biagi. The film has been specially re-edited for a live performed soundtrack.

The second film is mainly shot on iPhone by the driver while driving on the M25, South Easterly stretch, in 2013. (The iPhone can be seen as the modern day equivalent of the cheaper Super 8 and Standard 8 cameras of the mid to late 20th C).

Adrift In Shallow Waters - Carolina Diaz, HD video, 4'43", UK, 2013.
A re - visitation of R.D. Laing, and a talking cure with not much talking  ...or who does the talking?

Palestine Film - Aharon, smartphone video,  Palestine, 2014.

 The Clip*** is of a search from place to place in Palestinian Isra-zionist
controlled areas, very near the Dead Sea and within an area that used to
be Jordanian army barracks - to incorporate digital material into the
land.
The search in the clip is both about questioning how to operate between
such time and rhythmical ranges while on a skateboard that in itself, is a
surfing "animal" over and between ranges of surfaces - and slowly, as the
clip progresses, the encounters with the control and bordering of rhythmic
ranges becomes an element in an unfolding drama.
The drama is at an area I visited a few days earlier and named Palestine
Moon.

Aharon - A short bio:

Graduated from Brighton University’s visual & performing arts, Aharon
continued to question & practice performance in digital and network
environments. Through time Aharon’s work moved from performative acts, to
projects and through to development of imagination and search
technologies.

Since late 80's, Aharon has:

Presentated in conferences, & galleries.

(eg Conciousness-Reframed, Performance-Philosophy, PhiladelphiaICA,
Brighton Phoenix, Mediterranean Biennale)

Created and co-developed events & participation contexts.

(eg, art&chat monthly, art as political uselessness symposium, future of
production conference)

Co-created narcissus (searchnarcissus.net) an award winning search engine
algorithm for dark data.

Developed events and projects with TV (eg tv-tv), cultural websites,
collaborative organisations, and educational organisations.
(eg, Digihub, Lighthouse and Basekamp)

Newhaven Plastic - Peter Pick, DV, 11'1", UK.

Common sense dictates that first there is an object and then there is a range of associations and resemblances, but this is not how the observer experiences the world - on the contrary we make a judgement or assumption about what a thing is 'like' and then classify it accordingly. What i think this video asks is whether a thing is more like what it resembles or more like what it is. The object pictured is a piece of plastic, but its activity is a representation of the movement of the medium it is within, in this case the relationship between two opposing flows of water. The observation of natural processes is problematic in the 'real world' and in 'real time', there is always something to distract us. I hope that through this isolation of a particular fragment from surrounding distractions we are able to focus our attention however briefly on this phenomenon. I believe the most powerful impression will not be of what the object is but of what it resembles: a dance, a creature, a living thing. Is it in such a way that all things are animated?

One Dress Many Costumes - Anastasia Vlachaki, HDV,  4'24", UK, 2014.

Anastasia Vlachaki is balancing between reality and fairy-tales
and she is dealing with personal and universal issues - she is dressed up.

I grew up in busy Athens of Greece but I was born in 1976 in Leivadia, a beautiful small town near Great Delphi.
In 1996 I started my studies in Graphic Arts at “PLAKA”. In 1998 I continued my studies at T.E.I. of Athens in the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts, and I had a great opportunity to go to Spain for six months as part of the Erasmus studies on Video Art.

Since 2003 I have been working as a freelancer photographer and the last 2 years I have been studying Inclusive Arts Practice in Brighton and I've created art workshops for people with learning disabilities and unemployed people.

Queen's Park - Vv Victoria, smartphone, 5'57", UK, 2014.

Event at Blank, 20th July

Next Zone 20th July, at Blank Gallery, Portslade.

Photos from Butoh Brighton event

Performance and film 19th March

LIVE PERFORMANCE :

- SENSITIVE MATTER | MATERIA SENSIBLE. Carolina Diaz - dance, Bela Emerson - cello.

"How do we define life? We define life as sensitive matter, as matter that senses and responds..." Lynn Margulis. 

A butoh dance performance by Carolina Diaz. Featuring Bela Emerson improvising on cello.

- TIDAL SURGE - Vv/Al Strachan. Vv: dance. Al Strachan: trumpet, small instruments and electronics.

Vv and Alistair Strachan perform an improvised piece. 

SHORT FILMS :

- BODY ELECTRIC #2. Mim King/Davide Pepe. Italy 2005. DV.
Originally made for installation in Mim's live work 'Specimim', Body Electric #2 is a close up exploration of the body as landscape.
It was made a couple of years before I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, yet I now realise is a study of all the difficult places where there is pain or discomfort or subluxion....at the time it was about all my difficult places that hurt....(yet I didn't know why).....

- LIFE ...STILL. Carolina Diaz. UK 2013 - HDV.
page grows
words are fertile
fusion
transmutation
page and body
nature and nurture
book and organism
sacred is the trace of life
a relic on the page
the dirt and moist
like gold in an illuminated manuscript ...

This film was part of The Living Books project, where book objects were made and intervened with living plants, seeds and organic material, as a means for understading 'life' through the process of art making.

- TIMELAPSE PREGNANCY. Tamsin Williams/Nick Sayers. UK 2007. DV.
Pregnancy is extremely swift comparably to a person's life. As soon as I knew I was pregnant I wanted it documented. I couldn't let it pass unseen. It is a time where so much change is happening to the body it is hard to keep up. Here with my partner we took a photo a day, and had no idea our room changed so frequently. The short video is a whirligig of nesting, where life is forming and growing with our surroundings reflecting this too. Look out for my partner and brother who also flash by in the sequence.

- GLASS FLESH KISS. Simon Mclennan. UK 2012. Super 8mm film.
Super 8 mm animation with charcoal and paper, piano, guitar and found sound.
"semiotic is closely related to the infantile pre-Oedipal referred to in the works of Freud, Otto Rank, Melanie Klein, British Object Relation psychoanalysis, and the Lacanian (pre-mirror stage). It is an emotional field, tied to the instincts, which dwells in the fissures and prosody of language rather than in the denotative meanings of words. In this sense, the semiotic opposes the symbolic, which correlates words with meaning in a stricter, mathematical sense. (Augustine Perumalil on Kristeva)

- FORMOSA SERIES 1C. Robert Ross. UK 2013. HDV.
In the centre of the contemporary metropolis, the furnace is banished into the middle of the night, its produce driven over the next day. This real-time observation of a passing tarmac gang shows how the furnace implies a rhythm on its operation and operators; from the choreographed team movement to the precise co-ordination between vehicles.

BUTOH NIGHT #02 - Dance Experience

An evening of experimental dance film and live performance

Wednesday 19th March 2014     7.30 pm     £5

Blank Studios & Gallery. 108 North St. Portslade - Brighton BN41 1DG

FILMS
... full programme coming soon!


LIVE PERFORMANCE
with special guest Bela Emerson.

... full programme coming soon!



in collaboration with BUTOH BRIGHTON

contact
butohbrighton@gmail.com

Zone at Hundred Years Gallery 11th January

A selection of short films from The Zone in collaboration with Kate Halsall and the Galvanize Ensemble - live music and film:

"Galvanize ensemble first worked together as part of Hack the Barbican, presenting a series of installations, cross disciplinary performances and exhibitions, between 19th-23rd August  held at the Barbican Centre, curated by School of Music and Fine Art lecturers Kate Halsall and Duncan MacLeod.
They are working together again, creating music for films relating to themes of landscape and change, also using text sources from Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes (Letter XII from The Borough) and Opus 11 On This Island as well as Graham Greene, D H Lawrence (“living in the chinks”, The Rainbow) John Fowles and Cumbrian poet Meg Peacock.

Joel Bell guitar, Phil Maguire guitar/electronics, Kate Halsall keyboards, Sarah Dacey voice, Paul Fretwell electronics, Serge Vuille percussion."

Film makers include Sean Reynard, Vv Victoria, Simon Mclennan, Veronique Maria, Robert Ross, Robert Robertson, Andrew Greaves, Mark Atkinson, Olivia Buckley, Ryan Kwok, Nadia Perrotta.

Zone film programme-

321-(2.6.78) Sean Reynard - 14'45",UK, 2013.

In Sean Reynard's latest video '321-(2.6.78)' we are exposed to one of the many 'hidden away' (and for good reason) VT Recordings filmed from the bowels of Yorkshire Television's notorious Studio 13 or "The Cesspit" as it was better known.
The footage shows the completely inept production team attempting to film the man responsible for the overly complex background track which accompanies the 1st round quiz of the TV Game show 3-2-1.

Pygmalion Vv Victoria - 2', DV, UK, 2014.
One day in the life of Mark Whyfor. This brief film is on the pain of confirming the confines of existence and in so doing so humbly shows a life in a day of a relationship's conversation. It is demonstrative between matters of fabricating conditions as a means to an end of making fictitious realities in the light of day virtually or  even eventually bringing us closer, towards a threshold.

Shark Taste Robert Ross - 3', HDV, UK, 2014.
Shark taste is an inquiry into the viewer's appreciation of art and the art of the artist.

Doors of the Spirits Robert Robertson - 4'

A procession of ancient and weathered doors from the oldest district in Havana
is counterpointed by the pathos of an old revolutionary song by Carlos Puebla.

Octabeast Andrew Greaves - 16', Live solo keyboard performance with film.


The music -

The piece channels intense improvisation into a strict compositional form. 8 bars are improvised on a set scale, followed by 8 bars on a scale pitched a 5th above. This sequence is repeated, adding a further 8 bars (again pitched a 5th above). The piece repeats and grows by 8 bars; each additional 8 bars pitched a 5th above the previous section. The piece builds to a final section of 8 x 8 bars, with the final 8 bars back to the original scale (but pitched 1 octave higher). The musicians in the audience will probably recognise a "Cycle of 5ths" being completed. By shifting between the mostly related scales/keys/modes, there is an opportunity for the changes to be either subtle or dramatic.


The visuals -

 I have used a collection of found holiday slides from the 1950's & '60's. The images are intended to replicate the process of memory, whereby experiences are remembered and retold; each time becoming simpler and more fitting to a narrative, a narrative informed by subsequent experience. The images repeat and evolve into graphic details and symbols based on how the original experience is later perceived.