Dates:
5 Mar 2022
People:
Kirtis Clarke, Emily Downe, David Lisbon, Hongrui Liu, Elijah Maja, Roxanne Simone, Steloolive
Location:
London
Project:
Lyrics Full of Culture was an event facilitated by Diaspora Pavilion 2: London artist Andrew Pierre Hart for the exhibition’s public programme.
The event featured a selection of films by young artists and filmmakers who share, experience and respond through the medium of film and video. Hart has selected these works because they offer insight into a generation whose film philosophies are shaped by a centre and speak in different ways to a wider idea of Brixton, London or city living.
Programme
David Lisbon (US) – produce & labor (2021)
Steloolive (Ghana) – NiKANiKA Robotics (2020)
Emily Downe (UK) – Spinning Record (2017)
Hongrui Liu (Hong Kong) – Dialogue with Aeolus (2021)
Kirtis Clarke (Netherlands) – Lifetimes Lived Apart (2021)
Elijah Maja (UK) – Cold Calling (2020)
Roxanne Simone (UK) – 109 (2022)
FILMS
Roxanne Simone (UK) – 109, 5 mins (2022)
This auto-ethnographic short studio film explores the process of displacement, using Hydroforming as a symbolic link, expanding and patinating a Copper vessel to show the disruption and repair over time.
From the artist: “I am devoting my research within Metalwork towards a critical new direction by focusing on an intersectional African diasporic journey, firmly questioning the position of craft objects in Contemporary Art while challenging ideas around race, class, gender and the effects of oppressive actions. Reflecting on the displacement and disjointed notions of belonging, ultimately exploring the’ other’ by projecting objects and processes into the film via Hydroforming, a technique primarily based on engineering. At this turning point within the contemporary craft, I navigate imperfect objects formed by water and pressure, drawing parallels to my body and experience. Throughout this film I am making a Copper object to highlight the absence of belonging and examine my identity as a Lambeth born Black woman, maker, and artist.”
Steloolive (Ghana) – NiKANiKA Robotics, 3 mins 50 sec (2020)
NiKANiKA Robotics appropriates the design of the multifunctional milling machine for pulverising grains such as corn, rice, etc. and reimagines it as an experimental ‘listening booth’ with aural and acoustic implications for spectatorship. Steloolive attempts to simplify the digital sound and music creation that often requires technological materials and skills. This installation becomes a minimal sculpture into which the viewer can access field recordings documenting narratives and sounds from various communities in Ghana.
Emily Downe (UK) – Spinning Record, 2 mins 20 sec (2017)
Whilst a human figure walks a linear path, the rest of existence continues turning on an endless loop. Diagrams and sounds from NASA’s Golden Record communicate information about life on Earth; seeing everything that exists from an outside perspective.
Hongrui Liu (Hong Kong) – Dialogue with Aeolus, 7 mins 25 sec (2021)
In an attempt to capture the everyday and as an ode to cinema, verite spawns this free film. Jonas Mekas once said: In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colours and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.
From the artist: “Instead of thinking of cinema as a mausoleum, perhaps it’s better to consider it as a cryonic chamber. Somewhere special where memories and experiences live and await to be activated. This film is about passage. It’s about existing somewhere along the edges. It’s about light and shadow. Directions and misdirections. Our life consists of the human, the machine and nature. I wanted to celebrate this unique relation that we all share and situate in something we are all entitled to as human beings. Hence the film is a song for the very land around us, the material of life, something that we take for granted at times. I included poems that I made that celebrate life. Despite the hopelessness we sometimes inevitably feel, there is beauty in the world still. The wind carries on and the sea keeps unravelling.”
Elijah Maja (UK) – Cold Calling, 6 mins 40 sec (2020)
Cold Calling is a short moving image work shot in London, the work centres around a stillness, presenting interlocking experiences of siblings and young people growing up in the inner city.
Kirtis Clarke (Netherlands) – Lifetimes Lived Apart, 11 min 45 sec (2021)
A visual essay exploring ideas surrounding the black encounter; where gesture, in close proximity to others, plays an important role in community solidification, functioning to unify (Black) diaspora communities irrespective of time or place. Lifetimes Lived Apart begins with research into where the artist was able to identify blackness in the relational gestures, verbal and non verbal communications present in his every day. From the nod to calling aunty, aunty – this vocabulary of utterances, codes and gestures are performative identifiers of a global and ever-present black vernacular. Existing alongside a large-scale sculptural triptych under the same project title, this moving image piece has been featured at Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven and HOME x Saint Ogun 1 Year Anniversary Exhibition, London.
David Lisbon (US) – produce & labor, 2 mins 34 sec (2021)
This work is a part of a new body of tomato-related works whose research started in 2021. The tomato acts as an entry point for conversations that Lisbon hopes to have about the hyperobject that is labor inequity. Objects like televisions, luxury cars, and even mattresses could be other interesting entry points. However, there is something specifically important about the literal consumption of produce. The tomato is an ‘essential worker’ in many dishes and households across the world, making it the perfect companion for thinking through these issues.
In produce & labor Lisbon ‘samples’ an excerpt from ‘Maurice Bishop Speaks to U.S. Working People’ delivered on June 5th 1983 at Hunter College in New York City. This message about the widening gap of inequity as a result of capitalism fits well against the backdrop of constant industrial tomato production footage from Florida in 2014. Lisbon’s composition aims to be a prophetic warning akin to contemporary works like An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Supersize Me (2004), or even Orwell’s 1984.
People:
Kirtis Clarke, Emily Downe, David Lisbon, Hongrui Liu, Elijah Maja, Roxanne Simone, Steloolive
Project:
Lyrics Full of Culture was an event facilitated by Diaspora Pavilion 2: London artist Andrew Pierre Hart for the exhibition’s public programme.
The event featured a selection of films by young artists and filmmakers who share, experience and respond through the medium of film and video. Hart has selected these works because they offer insight into a generation whose film philosophies are shaped by a centre and speak in different ways to a wider idea of Brixton, London or city living.
Programme
David Lisbon (US) – produce & labor (2021)
Steloolive (Ghana) – NiKANiKA Robotics (2020)
Emily Downe (UK) – Spinning Record (2017)
Hongrui Liu (Hong Kong) – Dialogue with Aeolus (2021)
Kirtis Clarke (Netherlands) – Lifetimes Lived Apart (2021)
Elijah Maja (UK) – Cold Calling (2020)
Roxanne Simone (UK) – 109 (2022)
FILMS
Roxanne Simone (UK) – 109, 5 mins (2022)
This auto-ethnographic short studio film explores the process of displacement, using Hydroforming as a symbolic link, expanding and patinating a Copper vessel to show the disruption and repair over time.
From the artist: “I am devoting my research within Metalwork towards a critical new direction by focusing on an intersectional African diasporic journey, firmly questioning the position of craft objects in Contemporary Art while challenging ideas around race, class, gender and the effects of oppressive actions. Reflecting on the displacement and disjointed notions of belonging, ultimately exploring the’ other’ by projecting objects and processes into the film via Hydroforming, a technique primarily based on engineering. At this turning point within the contemporary craft, I navigate imperfect objects formed by water and pressure, drawing parallels to my body and experience. Throughout this film I am making a Copper object to highlight the absence of belonging and examine my identity as a Lambeth born Black woman, maker, and artist.”
Steloolive (Ghana) – NiKANiKA Robotics, 3 mins 50 sec (2020)
NiKANiKA Robotics appropriates the design of the multifunctional milling machine for pulverising grains such as corn, rice, etc. and reimagines it as an experimental ‘listening booth’ with aural and acoustic implications for spectatorship. Steloolive attempts to simplify the digital sound and music creation that often requires technological materials and skills. This installation becomes a minimal sculpture into which the viewer can access field recordings documenting narratives and sounds from various communities in Ghana.
Emily Downe (UK) – Spinning Record, 2 mins 20 sec (2017)
Whilst a human figure walks a linear path, the rest of existence continues turning on an endless loop. Diagrams and sounds from NASA’s Golden Record communicate information about life on Earth; seeing everything that exists from an outside perspective.
Hongrui Liu (Hong Kong) – Dialogue with Aeolus, 7 mins 25 sec (2021)
In an attempt to capture the everyday and as an ode to cinema, verite spawns this free film. Jonas Mekas once said: In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colours and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.
From the artist: “Instead of thinking of cinema as a mausoleum, perhaps it’s better to consider it as a cryonic chamber. Somewhere special where memories and experiences live and await to be activated. This film is about passage. It’s about existing somewhere along the edges. It’s about light and shadow. Directions and misdirections. Our life consists of the human, the machine and nature. I wanted to celebrate this unique relation that we all share and situate in something we are all entitled to as human beings. Hence the film is a song for the very land around us, the material of life, something that we take for granted at times. I included poems that I made that celebrate life. Despite the hopelessness we sometimes inevitably feel, there is beauty in the world still. The wind carries on and the sea keeps unravelling.”
Elijah Maja (UK) – Cold Calling, 6 mins 40 sec (2020)
Cold Calling is a short moving image work shot in London, the work centres around a stillness, presenting interlocking experiences of siblings and young people growing up in the inner city.
Kirtis Clarke (Netherlands) – Lifetimes Lived Apart, 11 min 45 sec (2021)
A visual essay exploring ideas surrounding the black encounter; where gesture, in close proximity to others, plays an important role in community solidification, functioning to unify (Black) diaspora communities irrespective of time or place. Lifetimes Lived Apart begins with research into where the artist was able to identify blackness in the relational gestures, verbal and non verbal communications present in his every day. From the nod to calling aunty, aunty – this vocabulary of utterances, codes and gestures are performative identifiers of a global and ever-present black vernacular. Existing alongside a large-scale sculptural triptych under the same project title, this moving image piece has been featured at Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven and HOME x Saint Ogun 1 Year Anniversary Exhibition, London.
David Lisbon (US) – produce & labor, 2 mins 34 sec (2021)
This work is a part of a new body of tomato-related works whose research started in 2021. The tomato acts as an entry point for conversations that Lisbon hopes to have about the hyperobject that is labor inequity. Objects like televisions, luxury cars, and even mattresses could be other interesting entry points. However, there is something specifically important about the literal consumption of produce. The tomato is an ‘essential worker’ in many dishes and households across the world, making it the perfect companion for thinking through these issues.
In produce & labor Lisbon ‘samples’ an excerpt from ‘Maurice Bishop Speaks to U.S. Working People’ delivered on June 5th 1983 at Hunter College in New York City. This message about the widening gap of inequity as a result of capitalism fits well against the backdrop of constant industrial tomato production footage from Florida in 2014. Lisbon’s composition aims to be a prophetic warning akin to contemporary works like An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Supersize Me (2004), or even Orwell’s 1984.
Dates:
5 Mar 2022
Location:
London
