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5 Curators. 5 Exhibitions of moving image.

Five by Five: Unloud 

Curator: Professor Duncan Higgins, Nottingham Trent University

Northern Russia has been described as being shrouded in a rare serene stillness and beauty undermined by the decaying presence of evil. Unloud looked at this idea: a place of limits, a frontier or an extreme situation incorporating the extremes of climate, geography and nature, faith, brutality, beauty and fantasy.

Five by Five: Presenting Absence: Moving Images of Palestine

Curator: Dr Anna Ball, Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University

A lost homeland, a dispossessed population, a missing film archive: images of absence haunt Palestinian national consciousness. Bringing together works by leading film-makers and video artists, this exhibition explored the dynamic relationship between presence and absence in moving images from or about Palestine.

Five by Five: Chromista 

Curators: Geoff Litherland and Jim Boxall, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University

Chromista are water organisms that photosynthesise, taking advantage of any light that breaks through the surface. Likewise the films that were selected for Chromista exploit the physical surface of the projected image; light and imagery is abstracted to create works whose process of creation dictates the final image.

Five by Five: Alumni Filmmakers

A showcase of work from the narrative to the abstract, each day focussed on a different artist. A group of Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design alumni film-makers were invited to screen one of their own works and two further short films which have either influenced or compliments their chosen piece.

Five by Five: Water, love runs down

Curator: Jenny Chamarette, Department of Film Studies, Queen Mary, University of London

Water has the capacity to distort and magnify light and sound: it bends and reshapes these elemental parts of the moving image to create something altogether different from what we might usually experience. In this programme drawn from moving image artists, filmmakers and public information broadcasts, water is both an inspiration and a distraction, for viewers and filmmakers alike.

The Formations programme is led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.

The first segment of our 2021-22 Formations programme pays attention to the concept of indigeneity, and to indigenous people, communities, landscapes, artists, writers, and groups. Often considered controversial and closely associated with activism and protest related to rights and land access, indigenous artists and writers are creating some of the most innovative work and asking important questions about sustainability of all forms in New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Islands, Northern Europe, and North and South America. This segment brings together creative work by indigenous writers and artists from separate locations, to forge conversations about the ways in which indigenous scholarship, activism, and creativity is central to global questions of inequality.

Formations events in this segment include a special online screening of In My Blood it Runs, an award-winning collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Two special events are inspired by this film: a conversation between three researchers undertaking work on indigeneity and indigenous art, writing, and film worldwide: Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), Valentina De Riso (NTU) and Dani-Louise Olver (NTU), and a Creative Writing workshop led by novelist Eve Makis.

Eve Makis also leads two connected events with award-winning writer and poet André Naffis-Sahely, who is in conversation and reading from his work with Eve Makis and Rory Waterman, and then leads a Creative Writing workshop with Eve Makis.

Finally, in this segment Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled ‘Land of Hope and Toil’, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.

Critically acclaimed poet Andre Naffis-Sahely in Conversation with Eve Makis and Rory Waterman

Tuesday 30 November 2021, 6 – 7 pm. Followed by a bookable workshop.

While half the world swept west,
we trickled eastward, one by one,
single-file, like fugitives. Next stop:
Abu Dhabi, where my father had a job,

and money, for the first time in years . . .

Andre Naffis-Sahely

Raised in Abu Dhabi, by an Iranian father and Italian mother, André’s work is informed by his travels and his cultural inheritance. His work described as clear-eyed, emotionally charged and infused with an acute sense of justice. The Los Angeles-based poet will be talking to us about his life, travels, world view and writing practice. He will be in conversation with the poet, Rory Waterman, and the writer, Eve Makis.

Click here to watch via our Youtube

The talk will be followed by an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance. Information and booking link below.

Cultural recipe poems: Creative Writing Workshop with André Naffis-Sahely and Eve Makis

Following the conversation event this evening, you are invited to participate in an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance.

Places on the workshop will be limited so please book early.

All levels welcome.

Conference: Land of Hope and Toil

Wednesday 1 December 2021

Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled Land of Hope and Toil, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.

A full programme can be found here.

Click here to watch via our Youtube

Online Screening: In My Blood It Runs (2019), directed by Maya Newell.

Monday 22 November – Friday 31 December

Formations invites you to watch In My Blood it Runs and to take part in the related Conversation event and Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film.

Ten-year-old Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages. As he shares his wisdom of history and the complex world around him we see his spark and intelligence. Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education lest he becomes another statistic. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future self.

For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com

Read a review of the film written by Rebecca Rees, BA (Hons) Creative Writing (year 1), Nottingham Trent University here.

Conversation: Critical Responses to Award Winning Documentary Film In My Blood It Runs(2019), directed by Maya Newell with Dani Louise Olver (NTU), Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), and Valentina de Riso (NTU).

Thursday 9 December 7-8pm

In My Blood It Runs is a collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Dujuan’s wisdom is cherished by his family and tribe, but he struggles in school and faces increasing surveillance from the child welfare and the police. Doctoral researchers Dani Louise Olver (Nottingham Trent University), Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), and Valentina de Riso (Nottingham Trent University) discuss the film in the broader context of Indigenous studies with attention paid to topics of education, justice, history, memory, language, and Indigenous resistance.

For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com

Click here to watch via our YouTube

Conversation and Reading with YA writer Candy Gourlay. Hosted by Eve Makis.

Thursday 16 December 6 – 7 pm

Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight.

This reading and conversation event is followed by a creative writing workshop with Candy Gourlay and Eve Makis, limited to 20 participants.

Click here to watch via our YouTube

Creative Writing Workshop: Candy Gourlay and Eve Makis Inspired by In My Blood it Runs (2019), directed by Maya Newell.

Thursday 16 December 7:15 – 8:15 pm

Eve Makis invites you to join Candy Gourlay and take part in a Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film that we are screening as part of the Formations segment which pays attention to indigeneity and to Indigenous artists and writers worldwide.

Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight. Using some research Candy is doing on her current novel, participants will write a short scene under time pressure, share, and discuss.

For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com

Join us in person or online for a free screening of The British Guide to Showing Off, a film documenting iconic artist Andrew Logan’s spectacular pageant The Alternative Miss World.

British artist and living legend Andrew Logan, loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, takes us under his glittering wing and inside his outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant: The Alternative Miss World. As the Show’s master of ceremonies and ringmaster, Logan is the high priest of an esteemed congregation. He describes the Show as his most important artwork; a fabulous living sculpture that spans forty years of arts and culture.

Combining observational footage, extensive archive material and exuberant animation, Jes Benstock’s fittingly outrageous documentary charts the mounting of the 2009 Show, interwoven with its history, the rise, fall and rediscovery, of both the event and the artist at its centre.

This free event accompanies the exhibition Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture, which runs until 11 December 2021.


The fifth segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in May under the thematic banner – Formation: Milk.

In this segment, we consider the representations and meanings of breastfeeding and the breastfeeding body, to consider how this highly emotive topic is encountered in writing and art, and in public spaces. Join us for conversations and workshops about global representations of breastfeeding in art, literature, and research, from personal stories to public encounters with art.

Conversation: Creative, Academic, and Personal Responses to Breastfeeding Research

Thursday 6 May, 7 pm – 8 pm

Breastfeeding is central to the human experience. It is also a highly emotive topic, debated in public and researched from clinical perspectives, yet in art and literature the topic remains under-emphasised, particularly as a symbolic or representational image. This conversation asks whether artists and writers tell different or similar stories about breastfeeding; engage different or similar audiences; and whether their works might have different or similar impacts on individuals, families, communities, scholarly debates, and frameworks. It will engage with breastfeeding in creative, academic, and personal ways through a discussion with writer and academic Dionne Irving Bremyer (University of West Georgia, ‘My Black Breast Friend’, 2017); academic Ann Marie Short (Saint Mary’s College, Illinois, Breastfeeding and Culture, 2018), and visual artist Lynn Lu (Adagio 2013; On Mother’s Milk And Kisses Fed 2013). Anyone is welcome to attend.

Click here to watch via our Youtube

Creative Writing Workshop: Writing the Breastfeeding Body

Monday 17 May, 6.30 pm – 8 pm

Breastfeeding is traditionally associated with the female body and the body of the mother. Breastfeeding provides nourishment and protection. In addition, feminists have explored how the act of breastfeeding stimulates pleasure, pain and desire but little is known of breastfeeding as an act of resistance, both within and beyond biology. We want to hear about your breastfeeding experiences: the joys, struggles and feelings of ambivalence, your family stories, experiences unique to your gender identity, your culture, heritage or personal circumstances. Come and share your stories and hear others’ that might surprise you, about breastfeeding as resistant practice and breastfeeding beyond the conventional. We welcome all stories, across diverse communities, marginalised experiences and across different generations. We hope you can join us.

The workshop will be co-hosted by NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis and Maud Lannen. All levels welcome.

All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.

Conversation: Representations of Breastfeeding and the Gallery

Thursday 3 June, 7 – 8pm

In this conversation event, Rebecca Randle, Learning and Engagement Coordinator, and Helen Cobby, Assistant Curator, both from The Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham, talk to Jenni Ramone about gallery text, the labels or other information which accompanies exhibited artwork, and about how galleries use gallery text and other methods to enhance public engagement with art, to support the generating of ideas, and to elicit emotion. The event will include discussion of contemporary and historical works of art which represent breastfeeding. Following the event, participants will be invited to write their own ‘gallery text’ for one of the works of art discussed, and selected texts will be published on Bonington Gallery’s Formations website. Anyone is welcome to attend.

Click here to watch via our YouTube

Film screening and Interview – Su Ansell’s Breast’work (2016)

Friday 25 June, 5.00 pm- 6.30 pm

Lecturer in Media Production at Nottingham Trent University, Su Ansell, made the film Breast’work as a single screen video(wall) installation Moving Image Artist and Senior. This work, made in collaboration with women from the East Midlands, aims to challenge the depiction of the female body in art and media.

In this event, the artist and filmmaker talks to Jenni Ramone about the film, the making process, and the public response to the film’s first installations at galleries and conferences across Europe and the US. Ticketed attendees will also receive a link and password to watch the film which will be available until Monday 28 June.

Click here to watch via our YouTube

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.

DISCLAIMER

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK FIVE SCREENINGS

Monday 14 May

A selection of film works by Andrew Munks.

Tuesday 15 May

Ashley HolmesEverybody’s Hustling, 2017
Looped all day.

6.30 pm – 8.30 pm:
The Definition of Grime (To Me),
Lecture by Elijah.

Preceded by a single screening of Ashley Holmes’ Everybody Hustling, 2017. Followed by Q+A hosted by Jonathan P. Watts, visiting Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography.

Wednesday 16 May

A selection of film works by Sophie Michael.

Thursday 17 May

Richard Paul, All that is Solid, 2018, (13 mins), shown in 3D.
Looped all day.

A 13-minute video by Richard Paul in which a narrator describes an unspecified city, the materials constituting its construction, and the myths connected to these material elements. Close-up images of crystals, stone and metals float gently in space before the viewer, captured using stereographic photography, rendering them in three dimensions, almost touchable. Meanwhile, a dulcet voice describes wheels rolling over iron pyrite streets, how quartz governs a subterranean electronics systems and how concrete is constructed into towers and geometric barriers. The title of the work is taken from The Communist Manifesto, where Marx and Engels proffer all that is solid, melts into air. As a substance is ingested to induce a hallucination or dream state, the cityscape warps, as does the consciousness of the narrator, who dreams of further, more fantastic materials.

Friday 18 May

A selection of film works by Dick Jewell.

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.

DISCLAIMER

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK FOUR SCREENINGS

Tuesday 8 May

Emily Richardson, Beach House, 2015 (17 mins).
Looped all day.

Beach House, Shingle St, Suffolk Beach House is a film about a unique example of rural modernism, built on the UK coast of Suffolk by architect John Penn. Penn was an architect, painter, musician and poet whose nine houses in East Suffolk are all built with uncompromising symmetry adhering to the points of the compass in their positioning in the landscape they use a limited language of materials and form that were influenced by his time spent working in California with Richard Neutra. They are Californian modernist pavilions in the Suffolk landscape. Beach House is John Penn’s most uncompromising design in terms of idea as form. The film combines an archive film made by Penn himself on completion of the house with experimental sound recordings made during the same period and material recently filmed in the house to explore a convergence of filmic and architectural language and allow the viewer to piece together Beach House in its past and present forms.

Wednesday 9 May

John Maybury, Read Only Memory, 1998, (92 mins). Courtesy of Lux, London.
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 15.15 pm

Maybury’s significant contribution to experimental film and video becomes apparent through a complex reworking of his own archive footage.

“The film’s attempt to re-create an acid trip is showcased in this creature’s dance: whenever she moves, a rainbow of colors and shapes appear, as if her appendages are the artist’s brushes”.

Gary Morris

Thursday 10 May (late opening)

Reactor, The Gold Ones, 2018, (10 hours).
This special edit of The Gold Ones will run in it’s entirety, 10 am – 8 pm

The project is an evolving narrative, that uses video, performance and installation to explore an imagined future inhabited by characters collectively known as the Gold Ones. When Max Gold’s video transmission first came through in 2014, he named himself ‘one of the Gold Ones’. After tracking Max for a period, filming began in the space known as the Cosmic Care Home (CCH). Initially remaining in what could be described as the outer or back spaces of the CCH, looking through the walls that are at times transparent, or listening in on voices from the other side. This is where the Gold Ones live, and despite their existence on a higher spiritual plane, beyond the limitations of time – the place they inhabit resembles what would be described as a ‘total institution’. They appear to be predominantly cut off from a wider community, and lead an enclosed and bureaucratically controlled existence. What has been seen to date is some semblance of the outer perimeter, or the first entry point into the body of the CCH. It is intended that you will further get to know the Gold Ones through the documentary that is being made here now, and in the future, about who they were and how they exist.

Friday 11 May

A new film work from Friends. More information coming soon.

Saturday 12 May

Various, Nottingham Archive Films, courtesy of Mace Archive.
Looped all day.

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.

DISCLAIMER

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK THREE SCREENINGS

Monday 30 April

Simon MartinCarlton, 2006, (9 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Looped all day.

The nine minutes of Simon Martin’s compelling, memorable film Carlton (2006) are devoted to a cultural philosophical meditation upon the Carlton cabinet, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1981, and a founding example of the work made by the radical design group Memphis, established in Milan that same year. Outlandish, mischievous, heroically quirky – riding a perilous back-curve between supreme aesthetic poise and assuredly knowing kitsch – Memphis design was as much the articulation of an anti-historicist mission statement as it was a deft-footed style surf on the surging tides of 1980s excess.

Tuesday 1 May

Berwick Street CollectiveNight Cleaners, 1975, (90 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 3.15 pm

Nightcleaners Part 1 was a documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin , Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan ), about the campaign to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner’s Action Group and the unions – and the complex nature of the campaign itself. The result was an intensely self-reflexive film, which implicated both the filmmakers and the audience in the processes of precarious, invisible labour. It is increasingly recognised as a key work of the 1970s and as an important precursor, in both subject matter and form, to current political art practice.

Wednesday 2 May

Rollo JacksonGang Signs & Prayer, 2017.
Looped all day in sequence.

A visual testament to Stormzy’s life and upbringing, the film chronicles Stormzy’s inner battles and temptations as he becomes master of his own destiny. “Return of the Rucksack,” “Bad Boys” and “100 Bags,” taken from Stormzy’s award winning debut studio album “Gang Signs & Prayer,” serve as the soundtrack to the film of the same name.

“Young youts like myself, that grow up in the hood, we often don’t know that we are actually the masters of our own destiny … There are so many things that steer us in the wrong direction however, we decide what happens in our own lives and like my album, I endeavoured for this film to portray just that. Derived from my album Gang Signs & Prayer, and written and directed by the legend that is Rollo, I’ll let the visual do the talking.”

Stormzy

Rollo Jackson, Slimzee’s Going on Terrible, 2014.
Looped all day in sequence.

Slimzee (‘Godfather of Grime’) was the co-founder of Rinse FM and DJ in the UK Garage collective ‘Pay As You Go Cartel’.

Slimzee’s Going on Terrible charts his life, following his early days in pirate radio to receiving a career-threatening Asbo. Features old & new footage and interviews from fellow DJ’s & MC’s and even his own mother. 

Thursday 3 May

A series of films by Frank Abbott, 10 am – 5 pm
Looped all day.

[CANCELLED] Frank Abbott, Neither Here Nor There: Displaced over 40 years, 1978-2018, live performance, 6 pm – 7 pm

Displaced over 40 years, Frank Abbott performs a live retrospective of his hand-held projector work.

*** Please note the evening performance has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. ***

Friday 4 May

Mark Leckey, The March of the Big White Barbarians, 2005, (5 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Looped all day.

London’s Public Sculptures are articulated by concrete poetry of Maurice Lemaitre in a free translation by Leckey’s Jack Too Jack.

“After doing the thing with the Epstein [sculpture], I went out actively looking for public sculptures, other monumental sculptures … again, this language feels lost to me … I know what they mean but they seem very distant … they felt neglected, and I wanted to try to sing them back, to reanimate them and make them alive again, because they seemed dead”

Mark Leckey.

Saturday 5 May

Eric BaudelaireAlso Known As Jihadi, 2017, (99 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Screening times: 11 am and 1 pm

Produced in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the film traces the journey and trial of a young man from the suburbs of Paris who travelled via Egypt to Syria to join the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda). The subject’s path to radicalism is explored both through judicial transcripts and through a series of landscape shots filmed at the locations traversed by the subject: a biography determined not by what the subject did, but by what the subject saw. In this way, Baudelaire’s film positions itself as both a remake and a test of the landscape theory proposed by Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi in his 1969 masterpiece A.K.A. Serial Killer, questioning how these landscapes reflect the social and political structures that form the backdrop for this journey of alienation and return.

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.

DISCLAIMER

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK TWO SCREENINGS

Monday 23 April

Harm van den Dorpel, more information coming soon.

Tuesday 24 April

Jasmine Johnson, L Making Pesto, 2013, (13:37 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, Thieves and Swindlers are not Allowed in Paradise, 2014, (9:20 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, Third Party, 2015, (15:38 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, A Perfect Instrument, 2016, 32:20 mins).
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 15.15 pm

These works are a series of four video portraits by the artist, in which individuals are selected for their proximity to global dilemmas, and for their capacity to articulate human anxieties. This will be the first time they have been presented together.

Wednesday 25 April

John LawrenceThe Solar Pessimist, 2017, (34 mins).
Looped all day.

The Solar Pessimist integrates a 34 minute spoken word monologue performed by actor Peter Hugo Daly (Gangs of New York, Cassandra’s Dream) with a soundtrack by Berlin-based musician Tim Eve (W/ndows, Night Angles) alongside professional lighting techniques including an ‘intelligent’ circular lighting rig and surround sound installation.

It was produced for the vast former industrial space at Spit & Sawdust, Cardiff, as a result of being supported through the Kim Fielding Award 2016—supporting ambitious, experimental approaches to practice across non-traditional gallery sites.

Somewhere between speculative ‘pub chat’ and philosophical diatribe our guiding voice becomes distracted, his thoughts distorted through the joint lenses of conspiracy theory, new-agism and that of the self-righteous contemporary consumer.

Within his meandering thought-processes are propositions about what best to be doing at the end of the world, how zero-gravity pornography will affect us all and…if the sun is a conscious being…what happens when he starts talking back?

For Video Days, Lawrence presents a version of The Solar Pessimist as a single channel video work, the production of which was integrated within the live event itself

Thursday 26 April (late opening)

NG83: WHEN WE WERE B BOYS, 2016, (74 mins). Filmmakers: Claude Knight (Producer & Director), Luke Scott (Writer & Director), Sam Derby-Cooper (Director).
Screening times: 10 am, 11.30 am, 1 pm, 2.30 pm, 4 pm, 5.30 pm, 6.45 pm

In Degrees of Blindness, Evans considers the different possibilities of perceiving the world, our surroundings, and explores different degrees of vision with varying backgrounds and forms of expression.

Saturday 28 April

Karen CunninghamMovable Type; Under Erasure, 2016, (13:32 mins).
Looped all day.

Movable Type; Under Erasure was commissioned by Legion TV and first shown at The Showroom, London in 2016. Filmed largely on location at Writing-on-Stone, Canada the work features an original monologue written and read by the eminent theorist and cultural critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.

DISCLAIMER

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK ONE SCREENINGS

Thursday 19 April (Preview)

Friday 20 April

Blind Skateboards, Video Days, 1991 (24 mins), Dir. Spike Jonze.
Looped all day.

Video Days is a skateboard video released in 1991 by Blind Skateboards, it was produced by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential skate videos of all time, providing early platforms for now legendary skaters including Mark Gonzales, Jason Lee and Guy Mariano.

Saturday 21 April

Forensic Architecture77sqm_9:26min, 2016, (27:23 mins).
Screening times: Every 30 mins all day (11 am – 3 pm)

Counter investigating the testimony of Andres Temme in relation to the murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel, 6 April 2006.
Commissioned by the ‘Unraveling the NSU Complex’ people’s tribunal; Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (HKW); Initiative 6 April; and documenta14.

Shortly after 17:00 on the 6 April 2006, Halit Yozgat, 21 years old, was murdered while attending the reception counter of his family run Internet café in Kassel, Germany. His was the ninth of ten racist murders committed by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground or NSU across Germany between 2000 and 2007. 

At the time of the killing, an intelligence officer named Andreas Temme was present in the shop. Temme was at the time an employee of the State Office for Constitutional Protection (Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz), the domestic intelligence agency for the German state of Hessen. Temme did not disclose this fact to the police, but was later identified from his internet records.

In his interrogation by the police, and in the subsequent NSU trial in Munich, Temme denied being a witness to the incident, and claimed not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. The court accepted his testimony. It determined that Temme was present at the back room of the internet café at the time of the murder. It also accepted that from his position in the shop it was possible not to have witnessed the killing.

Within the 77 square meters of the Internet café and the 9:26 minutes of the incident, different actors crossed paths — members of migrant communities, a state employee and the murderers — and were architecturally disposed in relation to each other. The shop was thus a microcosm of the entire social and political controversy that makes the ‘NSU Complex’.

In November 2016, eleven years after the murder, an alliance of civil society organisations known as ‘Unraveling the NSU Complex’ commissioned Forensic Architecture to investigate Temme’s testimony and determine whether it could be truthful.

We launch our next exhibition Video Days with a programme of talks, screenings and photography dedicated to the local and international skateboarding community.

In conjunction with local not-for-profit community group Skate Nottingham, we’ll be exploring skateboarding’s potential to drive cultural and social change, particularly through the re-engagement of young skateboarders with education and employment by supporting individual creative and cultural interests.

This event reflects Nottingham’s lively intergenerational skate community, and identify a set of themes that link the local and international significance of skateboarding to the objectives of the open cinema we are creating in the gallery. It also shows the rich texture of disciplines and interests reflected across the entire Video Days programme.

Skateboarding is an activity that reflects a consistent theme within the programme of human-kind’s disruptive and subjective relationship with the built environment.

Attend the preview

Email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk to confirm your attendance to the Video Days Preview.

Preview programme

An exhibition of photography from local skate photographers: 4 pm onward

Curated by Tom Quigley, who self-publishes Varial Magazine, featuring East Midlands skateboard photography. Alongside Tom’s own work, the exhibition will include contributions from active local skate photographers such as Neil Turner, Vic Camilleri, Dave Bevan, and Andrew Horsley (one of the founders of Sidewalk magazine, the UK and Europe’s longest running skate magazine, and internationally respected skate photographer) and images from Nottingham between the 1970s and 1990s from photographers including Andrew McDermott and Steve Tristram. Tom was recently the subject of the second part of the film series ‘We Can Fly’, and had work featured in the Sneinton Pride of Place collection of photography and visual art published by the Caravan Gallery, 2018.

From transgression to progression: 5 pm – 5.30 pm

A talk on skateboarding and Nottingham’s social, cultural and economic development, Chris Lawton Skate Nottingham.

Chris is one of the co-founders of Skate Nottingham. He is a Senior Research Fellow in economics at Nottingham Business School, here at Nottingham Trent University. He is also a feature writer for Caught in the Crossfire magazine, a long-running web-magazine on skateboarding, punk and radical politics. In this short discussion, Chris will talk about examples of skateboarders proactively driving inclusive development in cities around the world, particularly Malmö, Copenhagen and Tampere, and how both the activity and its wider culture and community provide opportunities for Nottingham (like Malmö, a medium-sized post-industrial city with a young population but significant regeneration challenges).

War & Rees, 2017, (7:17 mins), Daniel O’Neill: 5.30 pm – 5.40 pm

Dan is a skateboarder and academic historian, and is one of the Nottingham skate scene’s most prolific filmers.  This short film charts the final year of Nottingham’s large DIY skatepark project, which occupied waste ground next to the BBC Island – earmarked for development as part of Nottingham’s stalled ‘East Side City’ project; amid wider local political interest in the loss of genuine ‘common’ land in the city centre (and thus the radical potential of skateboarders repurposing blighted brownfield space land-banked by property developers and kept out of public use for more than two decades). The original DIY and a later, short-lived guerrilla skatepark in waste ground by BioCity were both demolished by the landowners towards the end of 2017, land which has, for the time being, been returned to its previously unused state.

A montage of Nottingham skateboarding past and present, (20 mins), Neil Turner: 5.40 pm – 6 pm

Neil has been filming skateboarding in Nottingham for almost 20 years, alongside documentary video work and photography, and is currently working on the first full-length video from Forty Two Shop, Nottingham’s only independent skate store.  Neil has filmed edits for Sidewalk magazine and has amassed a huge archive of footage of Nottingham skateboarders from the late 90s days of Old Market Square and Broadmarsh Banks through to now, which he will draw from and re-edit specially for this event.

Pieces of Palestine, featuring Isle Skateboards and SkatePal, 2017, (20 mins), Jacob Harris: 6.10 pm – 6.30 pm

A short film featuring the Isle skateboard team’s 2016 visit to the West Bank with award-winning charity SkatePal, to be shown with the permission of Jacob Harris (winner of the Bright Trade Show European Skateboard Awards for both his 2013 independent film Eleventh Hour and Isle’s debut video in 2015, Vase). Pieces of Palestine will help raise awareness and support for two of Skate Nottingham’s young female coaches who will be volunteering with SkatePal in the West Bank this October.

Video Days, 1991, (24 mins), Spike Jonze and Blind Skateboards: 6.30 pm – 7 pm

Video Days is a skateboard video released in 1991 by Blind Skateboards, it was produced by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential skate videos of all time, providing early platforms for now legendary skaters including Mark Gonzales, Jason Lee and Guy Mariano.