Deliquesce at Aspex Gallery:
https://aspex.org.uk/exhibition/vicky-smith-deliquesce/
Jean Dubuffet and monsters
Thoughts on DELIQUESCE
I was invited to make a film by Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, relating to plastic pollution in local waterways. Without long to make this piece, I responded with haste by recognising that swimming in the sea is for me an utterly life affirming, joy giving activity. Currently though, not only plastic, but also sewage is threatening these ecologies. My approach was to reflect these conflicting concerns by depicting the sea to be both nourishing and dangerous.
My current practice is investigating self- portraiture with the Bolex camera and how multiple exposures and altered movements might alter my appearance making me become monstrous and grotesque. I planned to continue this work with performance by simply taking the camera underwater with me and observing how holding my breath and being in the sea distorted my face. The graffiti of Greta Thunberg amidst rising sea levels was in my mind.
In actuality I found that the strong Portsmouth sea currents and also my own buoyancy made it extremely hard to control the planned choreography. I had to modify the process and in so doing acknowledge the sea as a protagonist. The water lent formal elements that were unexpected, such as eddies and foam, and glancing bright light activating the surface and giving it a haptic quality. With the camera at the rate of 8 FPS (fast motion) along with the PF2 b&w film stock, the surface textures had a quality of writing and contrasted with my own stillness.
OTHER 2022 EXHIBITIONS
- Not (a)part in celluloid Now, Chicago https://celluloidnow.org/program/#thursday
- screening of Rash on 15th August, Edinburgh Film Festival: Journeys of the Self: Women of LFMC in the 90s
https://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/2022/journeys-self-women-london-filmmakers-co-op-1990s/08-17_17-00
- screening of Re:exposure at Tranas Fringe, July 3 Processing Heritage
https://www.atthefringe.org/film-program-2022
lightcone 40 YEARS
A print from 33 Frames per Foot in Lightcone 40 years scrapbook exhibition (June 9 to 29, 2022) at Rue Antoine gallery
https://lightcone.org/en/news-760-exposition-scrapbook
Performance of 33 Frames per Foot at 40 years of Light Cone
https://lightcone.org/en/news-757-scratch-expanded-10
Performance of Bicycle Tyre Track at 40 years of Light Cone
talk at Spike Island:
2021
The next few months will be busy in interesting ways for me, with talks, publications and screenings coming up:
December
screening of Re:exposure at MIRE, Nantes:
at https://www.mire-exp.org/evenement/laboratory-aim-density-l-a-d-1-et-2/
October 2021
*Screening of Not(a)part at Roxie Theatre, San Francisco
*Screening of Not(a)part in ‘Inside this Shared Life’, Crossroads Film Festival, San Francisco
*Screening of Re:exposure in ‘No More Carefree Laughter’ , Crossroads Film Festival, San Francisco
James Stickel from REVOIR has requested that I send copies of Grainy Realism, for Revoir distribution. He paid me this compliment: I found your episode of the ‘Into the Mothlight’ podcast quite enlightening. Thanks for sharing your work with the world.
CROSSROADS 2021 Program 7
CROSSROADS 2021 Program 5
while forwarding details of these screenings to a friend in SF, I discovered a photo she had taken of me whilst in SF 5 years ago:
* BEEF respond to artist Ian Breakwell at Arnolfini October 8th/9th
https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/beef-do-breakwell/September 2021:
* screening of new work at The Others, Hackney
*Screening of Not(a)part at BIFF, Braziers International Film Festival
(here are BEEF members at Braziers)
*Screening of Re:exposure in 25FPS Zagreb
https://www.25fps.hr/en/news/competition-program-2021
*Publication of Emmanuelle Waeckerle’s A Direction Out There in which I’ve written an essay
*Publication of Conversations about Cinema in which I discuss practice(s) with Cathy Rogers
August 2021:
Screening of Re:exposure in Riga, Latvia
https://processfest.lv/film-programmes/
July 2021: Noisy Licking Dribbling and Spitting will be screened at Barbican Cinema in ‘Raw Vision’
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/splash-scratch-dunk-raw-vision-u
*Screening of Not(a)part in Obskura, Rennes
Jeudi 1 juillet 20h30
June 2021:
*I’ll be giving a talk on Animation and Biodiversity at Animafest Scanner Symposium for Contemporary Animation: https://www.zippyframes.com/index.php/animafest-scanner-symposium
* chairing a panel on CARE at Aberystwyth University ‘Film and Photochemical Practices conference
* nomination of Tanya Syed’s Delilah for Palace Film Festival, Bristol
* nomination of Savinder Baul for Arts Foundation Award
About Savinder’s work I said: Specific to animation is the imbuing of life to the otherwise inanimate. Savinder Bual’s animation feels very exciting to me, bringing to this field, not merely the illusion of motion, but a deconstruction of the mechanisms that sustain it. She has an impressive range of skills, with hands- on knowledge of physics and construction methods. Her animation machines and installations playfully peel back and exhibit, for all to see, that which is fundamental to cinema. Exposing these ordinarily concealed dimensions of the apparatus is what makes her work so successful as experimental animation. While so much contemporary animation pursues the digital new, Savinder pushes in another direction, investigating the laws of motion, physics and optics that preoccupied Renaissance artists. Yet, working through these ancient fascinations, her practice also engages very contemporary global questions and concerns.
May 31st: My strange old film Rash 1997, will be screened by Cinenova in Bodies and Boundaries. The context is very interesting and truly illuminates for me some of the ideas that were latent at the time of making it in 1997. I’ll also be doing a Q and A. Details soon. Here’s the copy:
Bodies and Boundaries is a two day online screening event in collaboration with feminist film distribution company Cinenova. Six films from the Cinenova archives will be shown, each linked by their investigatory considerations of female bodily autonomy and the lack thereof. The selection spans experimental, documentary, autobiographical, animation & fiction filmmaking styles, each anatomising the ways in which the female body has faced continual frontiers; political and biological, physical and metaphorical. Bodies and Boundaries probes binary categories of innocence and cruelty, purity and contamination, desire and repulsion, life and death. We are delighted to take on the role of caretaker, mindfully moving female artists’ work from private to public territory. The programme aims to uphold the unceasing importance of providing a platform for working/living female artists in a realm that has under-served them throughout history.
2020
*
podcast discussion of experimental film with Daniel Adams
* Exhibition of Re:exposure (2020) in ‘A Picture of Health’, Arnolfini, Bristol
* Screening of Not(a)Part, Athens Film Festival, Ohio
* ‘Cartes de Visites’ – BEEF at Centre of Gravity, Bristol
*Screening of Primal in ‘Optical Sound, Tracked’ programme at Cinemateket, Oslo, Norway
*Screening of Not (a) part at Rotterdam Film Festival
*Screening of Noisy Licking, Dribbling & Spitting in Slippery, Sticky, Wet programme at Holden Gallery, Manchester
*Screening of Noisy Licking, Dribbling & Spitting for Animating Truth(s) programme at Vienna Artweek
*Screening of Not (a) part at Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy
2019
*Screening of Stacking in The Painted Animation, Edge of Frame programme curated by Edwin Rostron for London International Animation Festival
*Screening of Not (a) part in ‘Natures Binary’ programme at Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video and Music Festival, Malaysia
*Screening of Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting at Black Box Life Week, Newcastle
*Screening of Not (a) part at Engauge Experimental Film Festival, Seattle, USA
*Screening of Not (a) part at 25 FPS Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
*Screening of Not (a) part at Under the Radar Film Festival, Vienna
*Screening of Not (a) part at Bideodromo International Experimental Film & Video Festival, Spain
*In conversation at Anthology Film Archives, Jonas Mekas: Reframing the Archive at Watershed, Bristol
2018
*Screening of Small Things Moving in Unison at London International Animation Festival; Abstract Showcase
*Screenings of Small Things Moving in Unison and Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting at Punto y Raya Abstract Film Festival, Wroclaw, Poland in the British Panorama
*Screening of Small Things Moving in Unison at Caraboo Projects; Watching Limbo exhibition, Bristol
*Screening of Small Things Moving in Unison in Vivienne Dick’s But Still, Like Dust, I’ll Rise (after Maya Angelou) at Galway Arts Centre, Ireland
*Screening of Small Things Moving in Unison at Edinburgh International Film Festival
*Live 16mm performance of adapted film Agitations at Whitstable Biennale ‘Resisting Expectations’ programme with Analogue Ensemble
*Inaugural screening of Small Things Moving in Unison, for ‘Voyages Elsewhere’ programme at Close Up Cinema, Shoreditch, London
*Screening of Sobbing, Spitting, Scratching and in-conversation as part of ‘Holy Fluids’ programme at Union Docs Center for Documentary Art, New York, USA
2017
*Screening of Primal at Crossroads Film Festival, San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art
*Screening of Rash at Monstra Animation, Lisbon
*Athens Ohio Film Festival (2017)
2016
* Screening of Rash, and in-conversation at ‘From Reel to Real: Women, Feminism and the London Film-makers’ Co-operative’
*Artist Talk at Edges: Animation Seminar at Whitechapel Gallery, London
*Screening of Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting at Flatpack Festival, Birmingham
*Screening of Stacking at Edge of Frame, London
*Contact Film Festival (2016)
*Edinburgh Film Festival (2016)
*Visions in the Nunnery (2016)
*Tate Modern: From Reel to Real (2016)
2015
*Parts & Labour, Animate Touring (2015)
*London Short Film Festival (2015)
*Cornerhouse Artist Film DVD; ICA, London (2015)
*Alchemy Film Festival (April, 2015)
2014/13
*‘Explorative Sensoriums in Film and Video’, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (2014)
*Bicycle Tyre Track (16mm/performance) in ‘Assembly’ at Tate Britain (2014)
*Exploding Cinema (2013)
Vicky Smith 