Vicky Langan & Open Night Cinema @ Triskel Project Space, Thursday May 5th

Luminous Void:
Performance by Vicky Langan /
Screening of Stone Boat Exhausted by Open Night Cinema
8pm, Thursday May 5th
Triskel Project Space, Cork
http://triskelartscentre.ie/

The second of three screening/performance events that punctuate the Experimental Film Society exhibition Luminous Void at Triskel Project Space will take place this Thursday, May 5th.

Cork-based artist Vicky Langan's emotionally charged performances envelop audiences in an often troublingly intense aura of dark intimacy. In opening herself emotionally, she creates private rituals that at once embrace the viewers and remain resolutely private. Her practice operates across several fields, chiefly performance, sound, and film. This live performance kicks off a week of her film collaborations with Maximilian Le Cain being screened on loop as part of the exhibition. This phase of Luminous Void runs concurrently with Triskel's Deep Focus: Women in Film Festival.  

"There are some musicians who entertain us, fine; some who stimulate us, better; and then some who immerse us in something so powerful that, almost, primal emotions surface instantly; making us ultra-defensive, or, finally open to illumination. One of the latter is Vicky Langan... You may love her, hate her, be astonished, be repelled-but you will not be unmoved. Promise. In a world of bland s**te we need to treasure artists like this -even if they burn... ”

— Bernard Clarke, NOVA, RTÉ Lyric Fm

Stone Boat Exhausted arises from the Open Night Cinema project by filmmaker Michael Higgins and performer Cillian Roche. This feature film documents an entirely improvised cinematic experience by members and friends of Open Night Cinema (ONC).

“Essentially, to talk about dimensions of Ireland is to talk about modes and moods of seeing. Seek for Fódhla not on horseback riding northwards, nor in a boat sailing westwards. Seek her in seeing.” – John Moriarty

A totemic walkabout through a single cycle of John Moriarty’s Dreamtime, Stone Boat Exhausted is a waking nightmare spawned from the id of Dublin City’s decaying industrial zones. The textures and patterns, light and shadows and the very material of sound and image construct an experience that re-realises our cultural past, present and future in one metamorphic breath.

Stone Boat Exhausted incorporates the use of analogue film projection, live improvised soundscapes and intense vocal and physical performances. It is the result of six months of ongoing collaborative performances. Devised and produced by Michael Higgins and Cillian Roche in collaboration with members and friends of ONC, Guerilla Aerial and Unbend Legout, and with kind permission from Lilliput Press.

The Last of Deductive Frames @ Triskel Project Space

The collaborative Experimental Film Society project The Last Of Deductive Frames is currently playing on loop as part of the Luminous Void exhibition at Triskel Project Space in Cork. Structured like a sort of cinematic exquisite corpse, this film gives a good overview of the concerns and techniques of EFS as well as the synergy between the various members' work. Each contributor created a ten-minute section of the film. The contributors can be named: Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh, Michael Higgins, Maximilian Le Cain, Jason Marsh and friend of EFS Florian Maricourt. But none of the sections are signed, giving the work a truly collective identity. It will be running from 10-5 each day from now until May 5th, except Sunday and Monday when the gallery's closed.

BRINE TWICE DAILY @ IFI EFS Screening

AEMI Projections: Collectivism Part 3 @ IFI

The third of aemi's screening series on collectivism in cinema is devoted to the work of Experimental Film Society. From their website:

For the final part of this programme, aemi is proud to present a selection of works by artists and filmmakers from the Experimental Film Society. The programme develops out of a series of conversations with core members of EFS addressing the role of the collective in constructing a productive understanding of what cinema can say and do. There is no single unifying factor connecting the work of individuals associated with the collective but Rouzbeh Rashidi does direct us toward the active possibility of catastrophe and the unknowable. Drawing upon the speculative logic of science fiction, a regular presence in many of the works screening here, cinema is re-articulated as a more heterogeneous space which “can contain all galaxies and forms of life, even ones we can sense but can’t fully comprehend.”

Homo Sapiens Project (161-170), Rouzbeh Rashidi, Ireland, 8 min, 2013
Funnel Web Family, Michael Higgins, Ireland, 14 min, 2013
Controle No 6, Jann Clavadetscher, Ireland, 13min, 2015
Friends with Johnny Kline, Dean Kavanagh, Ireland, 17 min, 2015
Brine Twice Daily, Max Le Cain and Vicky Langan, Ireland, 20 min, 2015
Clandestine, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Estonia-Ireland, 15 min, 2015

Irish Film Institute, Dublin
May 4th, 6.30pm
Screening details and ticket booking here.

Jann Clavadetscher @ Triskel Project Space

A programme of short films by Jann Clavadetscher is currently playing on loop as part of the Luminous Void exhibition at Triskel Project Space in Cork. Clavadetscher's visually dazzling work unites disconcerting experimental techniques with a sensibility informed by Buster Keaton in the creation of a distinctive and intriguing personal universe. His films Sumpf (2015), [Lift] (2015) , Controle No 6 (2015) and Corridor (2016) will be running from 10-5 each day from now until the 28th, except Sunday and Monday when the gallery's closed. Get lost in the secret passages and lofty mountains of Clavadetscher's idiosyncratic comedy nightmares. 

Late Hours of the Night @ Triskel Project Space

Dean Kavanagh's Late Hours of the Night is currently playing on loop as part of the Luminous Void exhibition at Triskel Project Space in Cork. All five installments of this visually exquisite, hypnotic drift through nocturnal semi-hallucination will be running from 10-5 each day from now until the 20th, except Sunday and Monday when the gallery's closed. Immerse yourselves!

Indecent Materials EFS Screening @ Filmbase, April 24th

This upcoming programme, conceived and curated by Dean Kavanagh, contains brand new pieces of smut from Anja Mahler, Michael Higgins, Jann Clavadetscher, Jason Marsh and myself... 

EFS @ Filmbase presents
Indecent Materials

Over the past decade Experimental Film Society have been creating a landscape of deeply personal and radically experimental cinema in Ireland. The presence of eroticism is apparent across a spectrum of EFS output and the fetishism of Cinema as an apparatus is a common proclivity.

An invitation was issued to members and associated artists of EFS to create new work responding to the heading “Indecent Materials”. The resulting programme is a configuration of that material. Taking the form of six shorts and one medium length film, this material gives full attention to each filmmaker’s approach in detailing, what could be called, erotic or perverse themes. “Indecent Materials” is a combination of new and previously unscreened work that will rot the eyes, ears, teeth and loins in a display that is perhaps otherwise un-programmable.

“Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are occasions of sin; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage, affection for the family … [the] destruction and ruin of souls”

- His Holiness Pope Pius XI, “Use and Misuse of Films”, published by the Catholic Truth Society, July 1936.

A hole in your soul.

Indecent Materials
1_Overture (6min)
2_Melone [meˈloːnə] (Anja Mahler, 4 min, 2016)
3_FEED ME (Maximilian Le Cain, 3 min, 2016)
4_Heaven’s Hole (Michael Higgins, 6 min, 2016)
5_HSP 187 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh, 5 min, 2014)
6_Blue Orgasm (Jann Clavadetscher, 4 min, 2016)
7_HSP 185 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh, 14 min, 2014)
8_Given That Nasty is an Egg (Jason Marsh, 42 min, 2016)

Programme duration: 84 min
Curated by Dean Kavanagh

April 24th, 3PM, Tickets: 7 Euro
Age restricted screening
FilmBase, 2 Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

http://www.experimentalfilmsociety.com
https://www.facebook.com/experimentalfilmsociety

Esperanza Collado on Tony Conrad

"Dear Tony,

Thank you for dematerializing art, and particularly for dematerializing film.
Thank you for reminding us that cinema is much more (and, in fact, much less) than a series of images.
Thank you for giving us a film that can be watched with closed eyes.
Thank you for bathing our bodies with light in the dark theatre.
Thank you for demonstrating that the body is not necessarily an obstacle for cinema to reach thought.
Thank you for tickling our nervous system.
Thank you for revealing the architectures of projection and perception, and for opening up for us new possibilities of exploration in that direction.
Thank you for showing us that conceptual art can be full of healthy absurdity.
Thank you for making us see colours where there were only black and white frames.
Thank you for giving us the longest movie in the history of film, with a duration of 3 years: “The Yellow Movies”.
Thank you for showing us that cinema can take multiple forms outside of its standard apparatus.
Thank you for your great sense of humour and for cooking, baking, electrocuting, etc film live.
Thanks for sharing your work and illuminating our lives.
You can never die because you are in all of us."

- Esperanza Collado

Tony Conrad (1940 - 2016)

A great artist. Rest in Peace...

CCI Residency 2017

Vicky Langan and I are excited to announce that we will be doing a residency in Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in 2017. A full list of residency recipients can be read here.

Homo Sapiens Project (157) @ Triskel Project Space

Rouzbeh Rashdi's Homo Sapiens Project (157) is currently playing on loop as part of the Luminous Void exhibition at Triskel Project Space in Cork. This extremely intense, nightmarishly bizarre and visually gorgeous fever dream will be running from 10-5 on Saturday 9th, Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th (the gallery is closed Sunday and Monday). Not to be missed!