Serpentine Cinema: CINACT
Duncan Marquiss and Rivane Neuenschwander
Sunday 12 September

2pm
The Gate, Notting Hill, London, W11

Serpentine Cinema: CINACT is a series of monthly artists’ film screenings and events at The Gate Cinema in Notting Hill. CINACT takes its name from American artist Henry Flynt’s 2007 cinema manifesto.

In association with sketch and Picturehouse Cinemas

Rivane Neuenschwander

Love Lettering 2002
6.32 mins, DVD
Sound Produced by Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte

In Love Lettering, goldfish swim back and forth in bright blue water with flags delicately attached to their tails. By attaching fragments of a love letter to the fish, unpredictable messages of love, desire and loss swim in and out of the frame, charting the uncertainty and chance inherent in human relationships and exploring the complex intersections of language and emotion. The soundtrack by the Brazilian band, O Grivo, is composed from fragments of mechanical and organic sounds such as popping soda bottles, insect movements, raindrops, and acoustic string instruments.

Quarta-Feira de Cinzas / Epilogue 2006
Made in collaboration with Cao Guimaraes
5.44 mins, HD Digital Film Projection

Quarta-feira de cinzas (Ash Wednesday) is the last day of Carnival in Brazil, an epilogue for the four days of party and celebration. The coloured paper disks carried by the ants allude to the Brazilian use of confetti during Carnival and the sound track utilises elements of samba in its rhythm structure and melody. Composed digitally it mixes the ambient sounds captured during the shoot with the sound of matchsticks dropping on the floor in reference to the popular use of matchboxes as an improvised rhythm instrument in Samba.

The Tenant 2010
Made in collaboration with Cao Guimaraes
10.34 mins loop, HD Digital Film Projection

The Tenant follows the journey of a solitary bubble as it floats around a deserted house. Shot at the artist’s studio in Belo Horizonte prior to its renovation, the bubble offers unique glimpses into the minutiae of a derelict structure. A sound track accompanies the film choreographed by Brazilian musicians O Grivo. Residual sounds from the filming process are enhanced and combined with short melodic interludes.

Sunday 2010
Made in collaboration with Sergio Neuenschwander
Duration TBC, HD Digital Film Projection

Sunday is the artist’s most recent film, made in collaboration with her brother, Sergio Neuenschwander. Like previous films made by the artist that have featured wildlife, the film explores the limits of language and communication. Shot in a domestic environment, a parrot is studied as he sits on a perch. The background noise reveals a sports commentary on the radio while the camera observes the parrot pecking at seeds in his cage. The seeds are printed with punctuation marks and as the parrot eats from the tray the commentator appears to lose his own punctuation -- his commentary unravels into a cacophonic jumble of spoken words.

Biography

Rivane Neuenschwander (b. 1967, Brazil) has participated in numerous exhibitions and screenings internationally. Recent shows include ArtUnlimited, ArtBasel, Basel; South London Gallery, London; 'Life on Mars’, 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; New Museum, New York; St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, MO, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN and Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2001). Her work is included in the collections of Tate Modern, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

All films and images courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo

Duncan Marquiss

For this screening Duncan Marquiss will present two films: Late Cinema, 2009, and a new work entitled Search Film. Both pieces are attempts to create, or translate, particular types of vision on film, they are also both portraits of individuals close to the artist.

Late Cinema, 2009
5 mins, 16mm transferred to DVD

Late Cinema observes a moving figure from two different perspectives simultaneously, in an attempt to see both sides of a situation at once. Traditionally cinema exploits the persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement but in this work rapid cuts between camera angles create a crude superimposition effect. The resulting film depicts a flickering translucent figure continuously advancing and retreating in uncertain space.

Search Film, 2010
13mins, 16mm transferred to DVD

Search Film follows the biologist Mick Marquiss (the artist’s father) as he tracks goshawks in rural Aberdeenshire. The film tries to document the biologist’s patterns of behaviour and his searching strategy, characterised by a continuous toggling between visual scales, as he looks for signs of a bird’s presence within the landscape. In its efforts to portray the biologist’s search the film becomes a search in itself for a filmic language that can keep pace with its subject. This work is the first in a series of proposed films comparing human searching skills in different activities, such as clothes shopping or browsing the Internet, in the hope of identifying universal foraging behaviour across contexts.

Search Film was funded by The Elephant Trust. Thanks to Mick Marquiss, Kimberley O'Neill, Luke Fowler, Oliver Mezger, and Len Thornton.

Biography

Duncan Marquiss (b. 1979, Scotland) works with video, drawing and collage. Often using appropriated material he draws links between disparate cultural reference points, re-imagining them in new narratives and contexts. In the video works Roggenwolf and The Clay Wall Marquiss explores his interest in horror films, the biological origins of folk myths, and the threshold between self-awareness and reverie. He lives and work in London. Recent exhibitions and screenings include S1 Salon, S1 Artspace, Sheffield; Peter Klichmann Gallery, Zurich; Visible Cinema, Glasgow Film Festival; The Clay Wall, Dicksmith Gallery, London; Strange Weather, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and The Metal Bridge, Socha Dallas, Glasgow. Awards and residencies include 2008 LUX Associate Artists Programme; Scottish Arts Council residency, Cove Park, Scotland; ISIDEM Programme, Sicli, Sicily and Film and Video Award, Scottish Arts Council 2006.

All films and images courtesy the artist

The Gate
87 Notting Hill Gate
London W11 3JZ
gate@picturehouses.co.uk

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