someshortbursts

I’ve been working on a series of new films – above, some short bursts….  Onto screens -The Roundup – good if you like your gangster films with a lot (a lot) of violent machete action, straight after series 1 deep into series 2 of The Capture - deepfake at its most chilling, will you ever believe anything again?

movingmachines

initial moving images from the Nano project - some of the films created within the Google sketchbook software and others developed by a more circuitous route via screen shots, Photoshop into gifs

gamesandfilmagain

I’ve been playing another couple of beautiful games on the PS3 – the unfinished swan and Hohokum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unfinished_Swan is quite stunning dynamically – the way you create and navigate the world you exist within by ‘painting’ the seemingly blank white space with paint, water, light  and vines which you ‘grow’. The idea itself is just so beautifully clever and it also works well enabling great fluidity of engagement with the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokum has majestic game play which is also incredibly intuitive – a feeling of knowing what to do. This combined with some funky aquatic biomorphic graphic shapes just makes you smile.

Meanwhile this is a link to the film made for the Parallel Practices project by the Crafts Council – my element of the project kicks in at 2.40 http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/parallel-practices

iterativefoldingfilms

off to New York with Textiles students from NUA at the end of the week – planning the itinerary on the internet and  playing with Google Earth makes it feel real....!!!!!......looking forward to some most excellent highlights including – The new Whitney down by the highline, Serra at David zwiner’s, Bjork and Yoko Ono at MOMA - and then there’s the American Folk Art Museum which I’ve never been to. Meanwhile working on the folding iterative films about folding within and about folding.

optionsarebeinginvestigated

I love the idea of - options are being investigated. sign found in Colchester - and another boarded up space from the Yarmouth visit.

A long weekend with a chance to catch up with some films – Star Trek into darkness in 3D was loud and fast but/and I found the 3D a distraction with hyper focused elements sandwiched between the blurred and the out of focus. I'm beginning to sound like the wonderful Mark Kermode. I spent most of the time looking at the representation of material within the film - some excellent fabrics and the protective suit Spock wears is marvellous, Sightseers was disturbing and wonderfully odd. The lack of empathy and random violence within places I have visited added to the general unsettling tone. Gojoe - a Samurai film which explores the idea of pacifism and Buddhism with a supernatural flavour, and finally managed to catch up with Woman in Black but felt it was dull, obvious and generally made up of horror/supernatural clichés.

A day at Camberwell - mid-year part-time - discussing work within a group whilst the maker observes the rest of the group - a sobering experience and not for the faint hearted as your work is discussed often within a context or framework that you had not considered. The afternoon was a 'finishedness' whole group workshop - attempting to create an equation/diagram for a finished piece of work - impossible yet the point is the conversations that lead you to a conclusion. http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/finishedness-2013

The exhibition at Smiths Row in Bury St Edmunds - the Suffolk Showcase has a range of interesting work - worth the time to drop in when you are in the area. http://www.smithsrow.org/index.php/exhibitions/archive_details/suffolk_showcase/
Working at Colchester Institute with post-grad Design and the Book students running a workshop around creating artist's texts. Being in the Minories was fabulous – an old school experience of art education – as a visiting lecturer I had no responsibility or paperwork just art, ideas, thinking and talking. http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/colchester-presentation-2013-22132222 The show downstairs in the exhibition space is most excellent – Keith Albarn – a dizzying experience of pattern, system and structure eventually leading to philosophy – inspirational. http://www.colchester.ac.uk/art/minories/event/pattern-and-belief

recomendationoftheseeminglyimpossible

A recommendation – in the mood for love – a hauntingly seductive film of things unsaid and possibilities curtailed by the seemingly impossible.  The clothes worn by the lead actress - Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) are truly wondrous and feel like they are from another place. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118694/ and while I am thinking about clothes! Just re visited Blow up this has to be watched for the outfits as much as the narratives http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060176/.

unabletosleepexcitedandlost

Its Wednesday but just getting round to this - a weekend of films – both with a focus in the middle east – Argo a Hollywood romp that sets you on a thrilling ride with final scenes that take your breathing away.  Ben Affleck does a wonderful directing job and acts a beard well, don’t leave the cinema as the credits add another layer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/ Incendies blows up in your face – less easy to find but worthwhile as it has provided a restless night and the inability to sleep past 6.00 (hence writing this). A staggering journey of what it is to encounter the past, the film beautifully, brutally unfolds leaving a kind of open scar as it undoes itself. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1255953/

Looking forward to a week of work in Norwich both at nuca and then at the Costume and Textile study centre and also a day at MEAL. 

Starting the third stage of the rethink around the structure of year 3 on the textile course at nuca. Stage one was an open phase of finding your practice, then after a presentation there was a period of focused study – today I introduce the first of two group collaborative projects – its only a week but working together will be an interesting test and good practice for the future. http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/005-briefing-for-unit-8 have started the countdown to the moment they leave in seconds - it makes it seem longer.

Next week - gets a little hardcore in terms of time left. Time to get on - http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/briefing-10th-dec

Continuing to work in stitch and the pleat – slightly obsessed – I don’t think that it will pass.

assessingexhibitionsandwatching

after watching the truly original film this must be the place with Shaun Penn i decided to get all the films out by Paolo Sorrentino http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0815204 first off was consequences of love which is a mafia movie without the usual tropes, meticulous and lingering in its detail - he really has a wonderful visual eye and the films display an exceptional use of the camera. He writes and directs with a singular vision, looking forward to il divo and family friend and then it'll be onto his short films and documentaries.

the 'book as response' for the library of lost books project in birmingham is finished and about to be packaged up to be send off. The work in the end became a mass of specific responses to the individual lectures and sermons which in some way are linked, all housed in a structure with many parts but still with a 'sort of' linear narrative.

two days in London assessing student work for the MA book art at Camberwell. There are some really innovative pieces that explore new ways of looking at and working with the book form - http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/event/camberwell-ma-show-2012/

went to see the Welcome trust's latest show - Superhuman - it has some extraordinary objects, specifically for me the artificial legs and arms created for thalidomide children and also a challenging artists films that explores body enhancement via a gameshow! - http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/superhuman.aspx

late getting to it but also recommending Patrick Keiller at the Tate - a really fascinating show where the work of others is used to create a connective, curatorial voice - http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/patrick-keiller-robinson-institute

film of the month survive style 5+ whats not to like about five interconnected stories, one of which is the story of a man who lives as a bird because the hypnotist who made him think that is killed in the middle of his act - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430651/