Au Revoir, Chantal

Article on Chantal Akerman the artist and her exhibition at Ambika P3 curated by the author in the context of her untimely death

CASEBOOKS - Six contemporary artists and an extraordinary medical archive

CASEBOOKS curated by Michael Maziere is a major exhibition investigating one of the largest surviving sets of medical records in history. Internationally renowned contemporary artists Jasmina Cibic, Federico Díaz, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rémy Markowitsch, Lindsay Seers and Tunga present a diverse and radical range of responses to the manuscripts of seventeenth-century English astrologer-physicians Simon Forman and Richard Napier. The 64 leather-bound volumes contain thousands of consultations made over nearly forty years relating to general health, disease and other afflictions of mind and body, as well as questions about sex, romance and marriage, job prospects and political and economic matters. Inspired by ideas of alchemy, astrology, power, prophecy, knowledge and the materiality and content of the archive, CASEBOOKS presents six new works spanning sculpture, video and audio installation, live performance, robotics and artificial intelligence. The artists worked closely with the University of Cambridge’s Casebooks Project, a ten-year long digitisation of the entire archive currently held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford

AFTER CHANTAL: An International Conference

A Conference dedicated to the work of Chantal Akerman. After Chantal: An International Conference marks the anniversary of the filmmaker’s death and also of the UK’s first retrospective exhibition of her installation work at Ambika P3, University of Westminster, which opened in October 2015. Speakers will consider both how Akerman disrupted the polemics of art and cinema and the lasting effects of her work. Papers will address Akerman’s work directly or explore her influence on other cultural forms, examining themes such as Fiction and Non-Fiction, Archetypes, the Nomadic, Sound, Installation, Theory and Legacy

Chantal Akerman NOW

Ambika P3 presented a major exhibition of work by the internationally celebrated filmmaker and artist, Chantal Akerman. Entitled NOW, this was the first large scale exhibition in the English-speaking world of Akerman’s installation work and coincided with the UK premiere of her new film, No Home Movie (2015) at our new Regent Street Cinema. There was seven installation works at Ambika P3: the centrepiece was NOW (2015), a powerful seven channel video installation with surround sound. Chantal Akerman (born 6 June 1950, Brussels, died 5 October 2015, Paris) was one of the most unpredictable, farsighted, indefinable, rigorous and playful film artists of her generation. While showing the troublesome complexity of human existence, Akerman’s works are filled with beautiful imagery, music, magic of chance, yearning and hope, yet she also investigates hot-button themes such as racism in the American South, illegal immigration, and terrorism in the Middle East. Chantal Akerman NOW was jointly curated by CREAM’s Michael Mazière and A Nos Amours (Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts) and presented in association with Marian Goodman Gallery. It was supported by Arts Council England, Marian Goodman Gallery and the University of Westminster

Testing the Curatorial in Artists’ Film and Video Installation

This PhD by published work critically examines ten years of curatorial practice in the field of artists' film and video by the author. The aim of the thesis and publications is to question and challenge the contemporary integration of artists’ film and video installation into the language of the visual arts, the context of the white cube and the privileged definitions of curatorial practice. This PhD also places these questions in a historical context, taking into account the early and often overlooked developments of artists’ film and video exhibition. This research was carried our through individual curatorial projects in the field by scrutinising specific constituent parts of artists’ film and video installation such as the screen, time, space, image, projection, site and audience. The curated exhibitions (the Projects) all took place at Ambika P3, a large postindustrial venue converted into a project space for this purpose in 2007. Each project manipulated these constituent elements and built on them in order to provide new artists’ commissions under the rigour of an experimental and research-led approach. Through this commissioning process, this research developed new collaborative models of curatorial practice, examined and identified key critical areas of curatorial and artistic practice which have been overlooked by critics, writers, curators and the public and proposed new forms of artists’ film and video exhibition. This testing of the boundaries of artist’s film and video installation demonstrated that both the history and context of the practice is engaged with a broad range of paradigms inherited from cinema, sculpture and site specific practice. Furthermore it established that curation is a collective practice engaging numerous participants according to the needs and requirements of each project. The projects revealed that a self reflexive and historically aware approach to curating artists’ film and video can deliver innovative and immersive works outside of the white cube, through an attention to materials, site and form. Through the publications and the commentary it is shown that a critical, collective and process based curatorial practice, attentive to context and its origins expands both the language and the power of the exhibited work

CASEBOOKS

This catalogue examines and presents the exhibition CASEBOOKS which was developed through a series of discussions between the Casebooks Project and Ambika P3. The project was keen to engage a broad audience in their research in ways that reimagined the material’s complexities through alternative vocabularies. In particular the highly developed tradition in the visual arts of reflection on the archive, inscription, accumulation and non-human agency seemed to offer a way of opening the project’s work up to a broader constituency whilst exploring and provoking historical traditions around these themes. Ambika P3’s mission as an art and architecture laboratory in an academic context, above all, made it the ideal collaborator for this genuinely experimental project

Chantal Akerman in London

Chantal Akerman in London This essay tracks the development and production of a series of interconnected projects revolving around the work of Chantal Akerman between 2013 and 2016 in London involving retrospective screenings, in-person presentations, symposiums, a major exhibition, an international conference, and a publication currently in production. This Akerman project, which grew spontaneously, was initiated by A Nos Amours (curators and filmmakers Adam Roberts and Joanna Hogg), who presented an exhaustive retrospective of Akerman's film and video works over a two-year period, Ambika P3 who presented a major exhibition Chantal Akerman: NOW, the conference ‘After Chantal’ presented by the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media at the University of Westminster and the upcoming publication dedicated to Akerman by the Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ). This essay aims to reveal the collaborative nature of the working processes behind this project and the organic manner in which it developed as well as the challenges it posed at a critical time in the artists’ life. In its totality the project and indeed its process, with its multiplicity of outputs and the collaborative dedication of the partners, has become a fitting testament to the strength of the work of Chantal Akerman

AMBIKA P3 CATALOGUES VOLUME 1/2/3/4

These catalogues cover the period 2007 to 2017, documenting the exhibitions and events I curated in that period along with other non research activity. Each catalogue contains an essay I have written about curation, collaboration and artistic practice in this site specific venue

Cinema of the Body

Cinema of the Body This programme is international, historical and thematic drawing from the unique collection of the LFMC and other distributors of experimental films. The body is a rich source of content in film, from Muybridge's studies to body-art, portraiture, sexuality and the erotic, which tests the limits between intimacy and pornography. Charged with signs through look, gaze, gesture, posture, expression, the body becomes the inscription in a physical yet imaginary engagement with the image. Programme Victorian Lady In Her Boudoir’ (Esme Collins, Br, 1896) 4 mins The Indiarubber Head (George Melies, Fr, 1901) 4 mins Geography Of The Body (Marie Menken/William Haas, USA, 1943) 7 mins A Study in Choreography for Camera, (Maya Deren, 1945, USA) 3 mins Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, USA, 1947) 15 mins Window Water Baby Moving (1959, USA) 12mins Asleep (Steve Dwoskin, Br, 1961) 4 mins 16/67: September 20th — Gunther Brus (aka Eating, Drinking, Pissing, Shitting) (Kurt Kren,1967) 6 mins Boobs A Lot (Aggy Read, Br, 1968) 3 mins L’homme Nu (George Rey, Fr, 1969) 3 mins L’homme Qui Tousse (Christian Boltanski, Fr, 1969) 3 mins Kugelkopf - An Ode to IBM (Mara Mattuschka, Austria, 1985), 6 mins Swimmer, (Michael Maziere, Br, 1987) 5 mins Muybridge Revisited (George Snow UK, 1988), 5 minutes Descent of the Seductress (Jean Matthee, Br, 1987) 11 mins Headgear, (David Leister, Br, 1989) 6 min

Segmentation and tracking of video objects for a content-based video indexing context

This paper examines the problem of segmentation and tracking of video objects for content-based information retrieval. Segmentation and tracking of video objects plays an important role in index creation and user request definition steps. The object is initially selected using a semi-automatic approach. For this purpose, a user-based selection is required to define roughly the object to be tracked. In this paper, we propose two different methods to allow an accurate contour definition from the user selection. The first one is based on an active contour model which progressively refines the selection by fitting the natural edges of the object while the second used a binary partition tree with aPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version