Plague Time Television, 5 eps. (2020)

“An online public service television styled project temporarily set up by Brighton, UK based sound and visual artists Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance, as a way of replacing their annual Colour Out Of Space festival during the current pandemic.”

Interview with creators: Edwin Pouncey (The Wire, 2020).

Creators

Episode One
Neil Campbell & Sticker Foster & Richard Youngs + DDAA + Rick Potts + Moniek Darge + Charlie Drahiem + Natalia Beylis + Teignmouth Electron + Usurper + Sophie Cooper & Jake Blanchard + Glands of External Secretion + Ian Murphy + Plastic Hooligans + Lief Elggren + Fritz Welch + Tom & Milly Roberts + More.
Video (123 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Two
Bruce Russell, Ludo Mich, Kuupuu, BBBlood, Renato Grieco, Floris van Hoof, The Dan, Rakel & Klara Fröberg Experience, Jonnie Prey, Hannah Ellul, Luke Poot, Jérôme Noetinger & Liz Racz, Wol, Core of the Coalman/Kneeling Coats, DJ Foreign Extra featuring Adam Bohman, All Ords, Dylan Nyoukis, Food People & Adam Butcher, Fielding Hope & Silja Strøm, Manny Pads, Chie Mukai, {AN} EeL, Ash Reid, Nicolas Nicholas Langley, Lucian Tielens, Blue Spectrum, Marja-leena Sillanpää and Maths Balance Volumes.
Video (147 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Three
Forrest Friends, Ezio Piermattei & Chiara Fiori, Embla Quickbeam, Liz Albee, The Piss Superstition, Yoni SIlver, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Dog Lady, Shane Mcdonell, I’D M Theftable, Bob Desaulniers, The Nevari Butchers, Sami Pekkola, Posset, F.Ampism, Bren’t Lewiis ensemble, Anla Courtis, The Bohman Brothers, Andie Brown, Slohhh Listener, Roy Claire Potter & Kieron Piercy, Reijo Pami and Porest.
Video (155 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Four
Amon Dude, Evil Moisture, Doreen Kutzke, Cloth, Aqua Dentata, Chick White, Lala Lu & Skull Mask, Witcyst, Ute Wassermann, Steve Beresford & Blanca Regina. Peter Fengler, Gussett Giblett, Feghoots, Alex Drool. Stewart Greenwood, This is Yvonne Lovejoy, Gen Ken Montgomery, Muyasser Kurdi, Mitchell Brown, Papal Bull, Sharkiface, Licker, Michael Zuclicki. Alice Kemp, Brandstifter, Herb Diamante.
Video (138 min, June 2020, YouTube)

Episode Five
Beyt Al Tapes, Hearty White, LDSN, Elaine Mitchener, Mutant Beatnicks, Blood Stereo, Ecka Mordecai, Dora Doll, Iain Paxon & Ida, Grohs, Sippy Cup, Willie Stewart, Vlubä, The Bim Prongs, Plastic Containers of Nothing, Olivia Furey, Barry Esson, Odie Ji Ghast, Ed Shipsey, Modern Medicine, Khnaisser/Khnaisser/Robertson/Robertson/Sturm, Loner Club, Christian Butler-Zanetti, Michael Kemp, Sandy Milroy, Scott-Buccleuch/Sigmarsson/Sharpley, Chlorine, Dave Miko, Bleep Shapes, The Teleporters, Allanah Stewart, Zven Baslev, Cody Brant & Frances Young.
Video (190 min, July 2020, YouTube)

Steina: Machine Vision (1978–)

An electro-opto-mechanical environment by Steina, with instrumentation by Josef Krames, Woody Vasulka, and Bruce Hamilton. First shown at the Vasulkas exhibition at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, 1978.

“When a human being operates the camera, the assumption is that the camera is an extension of the eye. You move the camera the way you move the head and the body. In video, unlike photography or film, the viewfinder is not necessarily an integral part of the camera apparatus. … In the late 1970s, I began a series of environments titled Machine Vision and Allvision, with a mirrored sphere. Another variation has a motorized moving mirror in front of the camera so that depending on the horizontal or vertical positioning of the mirror, the video monitor displays a continuous pan or tilt either back/forth or up/down. A third variation is a continuous rotation through a turning prism, while still another has a zoom lens in continuing motion, in/out. These automatic motions simulate all possible camera movements freeing the human eye from being the central point of the universe.” (Steina)

Recorded at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1994/1995

Artist statement and documentation (artist’s website archive with restored videos)

WEBM (42 MB)

John Akomfrah & Black Audio Fillm Collective: Handsworth Songs (1986)

“Handsworth Songs was released in 1986 as a cultural response to social unrest in Birmingham and London in October 1985, looking at the way events unfolded, the two deaths (that of black woman Cynthia Jarrett and white policeman Keith Blakelock), and the subsequent media reaction.

Subsequently selected by Okwui Enwezor for inclusion in the 2002 Documenta XI in Kassel and acquired by Tate, this early work by the Black Audio Film Collective has become not only an influential touchstone for an entire genre of essayistic filmmaking, but an important document on the state of race relations in Britain since the landing of the Empire Windrush in 1948.”

“Through an impressionistic mélange of newsreel footage, photographs, and interviews, Handsworth Songs arrives at a powerful, allusive, and deeply personal statement about the black British experience.” (Ashley Clark)

Directed by John Akomfrah/Black Audio Film Collective, 1986
Produced by Lina Gopal
Commissioned by Channel 4 for their series Britain: The Lie of the Land
61 min

Interview with Collective: Paul Gilroy and Jim Pines (Framework, 1988).
Online discussion (18 June 2020)

Commentary: Salman Rushdie, Stuart Hall, Darcus Howe (The Guardian, 1987), Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer (Screen, 1988), Stuart Hall (ICA Documents, 1989, PDF), Kobena Mercer (The Independent, 1989), Mark Fisher (Sight & Sound, 2011), Dara Waldron (Open Library of Humanities, 2017), Ann Ogidi (BFI, n.d.).

Review: John Sutherland (American Historical Review, 1989).

Wikipedia

WEBM (427 MB)
Transcript, PDF (added on 2023-7-3)