Two Rivers and a Desert In Between

Two Rivers and a Desert in Between is an elaborate narrative and cinematic meditation on the “West” as an imaginary geography, more idea (or ideal) than place. The project involves the creation of a regional epic narrative set in a specific section of the American Southwest—between the Rio Grande and the Rio Pecos, between southern New Mexico and western Texas. Extending the cultural, economic and imperial histories of the region, the narrative is organised as a fictional story-cycle. Provincialising the “West” by placing the region into a much larger series of contexts, the project materially and imaginatively traverses multiple narrative and artistic genres, from the conventions of the Western and science fiction, from sculpture and performance art to cinema. The project aims to foreground the “problems” of the West and its role in shaping the American consciousness, and aims to address the role cultural production plays in the construction of historical periodisation, identity, imperial knowledge and scientific truth. An initial research and production phase of the project was undertaken in November 2012 as part of Fieldwork: Marfa, an awarded research residency initiated by three European universities (ESBA in Nantes, HEAD in Geneva and the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam), which supports emerging artist/researchers whose projects require immersion within the specific environment of the American Southwest. The project has since been exhibited as part of the group show ‘Electric Fields’ (with Donald Judd, Larry Bell, Mai-Thu Perret) at the HEAD, Geneva and has featured in the culture magazine TAR (Apr 2013). A research residency at Art Center Pasadena, in which Toran organised a symposium and worked with students to produce the project’s next iteration occurred in September 2013. The resulting work was exhibited at the Galerie des Galeries, Paris, in the show ‘The Tyranny of Objects’ (October 2013)

Apres-Coup

Après-Coup proposes an examination of the cinematic vocabulary of the psychological thriller and horror genres from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. Films such as Marnie, The Bird with the Crystal Plummage, Eyes without a Face, Nightmare on Elm Street, Dead Ringer, Twins of Evil, The Girl who Knew Too Much, The Dark Mirror, The Brood, Sisters, Repulsion and Hellraiser are disassembled and reconfigured in order to isolate their codes and conventions. The result is a narrative constructed through a sequence of cinematic instances (images, sounds and objects) that deliberately mis-remember the films themselves. Stock characters, cinematographic techniques, sound effects, scenographies, props and other conventions therefore appear in isolation: the woman in peril, the monster inside, the subconscious and the psychiatrist, mental traumas transmogrified into physical form, twins or doubling, flashbacks, masked and disingenuous identities, telephones, scissors, hair, blood and mirrors. These elements are mixed and made into new combinations in order to produce what is at once a derivative and yet original way of viewing cinema. Presented in the gallery through models, film sequences, soundtracks and props, “cinema” becomes frozen, broken down into its parts, and turned into clues for the visitor to construct a narrative founded from a collective, cultural memory of film watching

Noam Toran - Things Uncommon

Toran’s practice-based research leads to objects and films at the intersection between design, technology, cinema and psychology, critiquing contemporary culture. His work appears internationally and is included in the New York MoMA and Paris FRAC collections. ‘Things Uncommon’ was a solo show of four works presenting Toran’s recontextualising of cinematic formulas within the gallery space. The research examined the potential of objects and spaces as protagonists within cinematic narratives. It aimed to enhance understanding of the critical yet under-acknowledged relationship between the film and design disciplines: how cinematic narratives can expand the value and function of ‘things’, and how designed objects and spaces can play key roles within filmic narratives and as symbols of meaning. The affective aspects of designed objects and spaces are foregrounded, as is the way cinema is able to challenge preconceived notions of functionality and value. Toran’s process begins in classifying components such as built spaces and designed objects under thematic categories, then critically understanding the relations that develop within those spaces or around (and because of) those objects. This complicates their accepted status as settings and props. Instead, elements in film treated as marginal or peripheral (such as living rooms or swimming pools, masks or briefcases) are given a completely different mode of attention and take on a new force. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue (2010) in English and French versions, with essays written by Alexandra Midal, Nav Haq and Toran. An artist’s talk to the public took place on the opening day of the exhibition. The exhibition was reviewed extensively in the French press, notably a full-page review in Libération (2010) and in numerous online magazines and periodicals. Three of the films exhibited were recently acquired by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, for its permanent collection

Desire Management

Desire Management is a film comprising five sequences in which objects are used as vehicles for dissident behaviour. In the film, the domestic space is defined as the last private frontier, a place where bespoke appliances provide unorthodox experiences for alienated people: An airline hostess with a unique relationship to turbulence, the owner of a mysterious box which men ritually visit to look inside, an elderly man who enjoys being vacuumed, a couple who engage in baseball driven fantasies, a man who is forced by his partner to cry into a strange device. Based on real testimonials and news reports, the objects specifically created for the film attempt to reveal the inherent need for expression and identity formation in the face of conformity. The project was originally shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Summer 2004 as an installation of three objects, Baseball Bed, Vacuum Scanner, and Turbulent Air Trolley. The film premiered at the 2005 Raindance Film Festival. Commissioned by the CNAC Pompidou. Sponsored by Arriflex Ltd, The Royal College of Art, The National Film and Television School, and Fuji Film

Things Uncommon

Publication accompanying the solo exhibition "Things Uncommon", with essays by Alexandra Midal, Nav Haq, Keith R. Jones and Noam Toran

Two Rivers and a Desert in Between

Two Rivers and a Desert in Between is an elaborate narrative and cinematic meditation on the “West” as an imaginary geography, more idea (or ideal) than place. The project involves the creation of a regional epic narrative set in a specific section of the American Southwest—between the Rio Grande and the Rio Pecos, between southern New Mexico and western Texas. Extending the cultural, economic and imperial histories of the region, the narrative is organised as a fictional story- cycle. Provincialising the “West” by placing the region into a much larger series of contexts, the project materially and imaginatively traverses multiple narrative and artistic genres, from the conventions of the Western and science fiction, from sculpture and performance art to cinema. The project is a long term one, to be worked on for many years, and in which ‘chapters’ of the narrative will be exhibited separately or in tandem. The project is in collaboration with the writer Keith R. Jones. The first ‘chapter’ depicts the travels of a Hollywood cinematographer named Orville ‘Bud’ Wanzer who spent the 60’s and 70’s in the region scouting natural and man-made locations for the western and sci-fi films of the era, working with such directors as John Ford, Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and John Huston. The result, Bud Wanzer’s Location Scouting Films and Photos for “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”1971 (2012), were exhibited as part of the show Electric Fields, curated by Mai-Thu Perret, at the HEAD, Geneva in 2013. The second chapter was commissioned by the Galerie des Galeries, Paris, for the exhibition "La Tyrannie des Objets" (2013). The Melendez Family (2013) examines a portion of shared US-Mexico history from the middle 19th century, in which the Mexican government, being tired of the Apache raids which would decimate their crops and kill their citizens, issued a bounty of 100 pesos for each Indian scalp. As a result, a stream of “scalphunters” – bands of US soldiers and criminals – descended into the Chihuahua region and initiated a series of massacres, often indiscriminately killing and scalping Indians and Mexicans alike. The Mexican government was often unable to distinguish its own citizen’s scalps from those of native Indians, and resigned themselves to paying the scalphunters either way. The scalp is a problematic, ambivalent object, becoming paradoxically many 'things': Once part of a human body, then a form of currency (being bought and traded), later to be hanging from belts and shoulders of the scalphunters - a perverse fashion accessory - and finally, to be displayed as a historical and ethnographic artifact in museums across the United States. The scalps were fabricated by the Agatha Haines. "La Tyrannie des Objets" was curated by Alexandra Fau

I Cling to Virtue - Publication

Catalogue accompanying the show I Cling to Virtue at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London 2010

I Cling to Virtue

Kular’s work centres on design as a means of engaging with social and cultural issues. Commissioned and exhibited by the V&A Museum, this was a mixed-media collection revealing the trajectories of the Lövy-Singh clan, a fictional East London family of mixed descent. It comprised 26 sculptures and two video pieces, developing the previous explorations of the MacGuffin in narrative (Kular REF Output 2). A catalogue with 28 fictional reminiscences, a genealogy and time line positioned the family’s experiences in geographical locations and historical events. Novel use of rapid-prototyping co-opted an industry process to confuse the experience of artefact and artifice. The design explored the historical, literary and cinematic traditions of the family saga and its relationship to memory and artefact. It presented an archive of objects derived from the flawed, biased memory of the (fictional) curator. A coherent story is replaced by one that is multiple and fragmentary. Kular and Toran (RCA) ‘produced’ the family by mixing their own genealogies with those of renowned 20th-century families, both real and fictional, such as the Magnificent Ambersons and the Rothschilds, positioning family members in everyday situations or key historical moments represented by an object and a ‘memory’ triggered by the object. Concept development was undertaken jointly by Kular and Toran. Kular’s archive research emphasised commonwealth immigrant histories and British 20th-century political events. His production contribution was in 3D modelling, rapid prototyping and display, leading production of the two films and development and editing of the narrative texts. The work was accompanied by a catalogue (2011), was reviewed in ICON Magazine (2010), discussed in an article by Hayward, Jones, Toran and Kular in Design and Culture (2013), and featured in The White Review (No. 2). It was re-exhibited in the group show ‘Politique Fiction’ at la Cité du design, Saint-Étienne, France (2013)

Beats Working

For designers Noam Toran and Marloes ten Bhomer, a craft is not limited to a set of technical skills – craft also involves social, political and personal aspects, and these feature in pre-industrial work songs. Work songs are incredible, complex artefacts, in that they provide not only a historical ‘measure’ of the work being done –the human pace, the force, the duration of the task at hand– but also, through lyrics, convey the worker’s social and political condition. Work songs also speak of what workers desire: what they covet –freedom, the love of a good woman, material goods, etc.– and what they would rather be doing –dancing, drinking, and ‘drifting’ (traveling aimlessly). Most importantly, they provide a critical and personal voice to an often marginalised or misrepresented section of society. Traditionally, museological representations of craftspeople and labourers tend to be one-dimensional, in that they are habitually depicted as being only knowledgeable about the work or craft itself and not about the greater socio-political circumstances within which they function. Based on discussions with various artisans and museum staff, Noam Toran and Marloes ten Bhomer have created a contemporary labourers' song for the Zuiderzee Museum

The MacGuffin Library

Commissioned by Somerset House in London in 2008, ‘The MacGuffin Library’ proposes a cinematic library of MacGuffins, a collection of 18 objects and accompanying film synopses. Kular and Toran (RCA) focused on the ‘Macguffin’, a cinematic plot device, usually an object, that motivates a cinematic story. Their research examined the MacGuffin as a unique object typology, existing solely within the constraints of cinema, and defined in shape and function to achieve the singular purpose of driving a filmic narrative. The research proposed the foundations for a library of future MacGuffins. Kular and Toran first wrote a series of fictional film plots. These were inspired by a range of research interests, including Borges and Raymond Carver short stories, historical re-enactments, art forgeries, urban myths, the defining of high- and low-brow cinema, and counter-factual histories. The fictional film plots were then used to generate the MacGuffin object. The objects were drawn as 3D computer-aided models, which were then used to rapid-prototype the final MacGuffins. The research highlighted and exemplified the conventional format of cinematic genres, as well as the varying ways cinematic genres are used as instruments of social critique. The project was reviewed and exhibited extensively. Exhibitions included the Museum of Bat Yam, Israel; Saint-Étienne Design Biennale, France; Art Center, Los Angeles, USA; and Arnolfini, Bristol, UK. It was nominated for UK Designs of the Year at the Design Museum London, where it was shown in 2009. The work was also featured in Gareth Williams, 21 Twenty One, 21 Designers for Twenty-first Century Britain (V&A Publishing, 2012)