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.
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.
Monday 30 April
Simon Martin, Carlton, 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 Collective, Night 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 Jackson, Gang 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 Baudelaire, Also 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.
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 Lawrence, The 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 Cunningham, Movable 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.
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 Architecture, 77sqm_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.
Email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk to confirm your attendance to the Video Days Preview.
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.
