Soft season at inIVA: Film programme

[Natasha Anderson]

Institute of International Visual Arts


Friday, 29 November, 2.00pm at TheSpace at inIVA, 6-8 Standard Place, Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3BE

Work and Non-Work: A video screening curated and introduced by Anthony Iles

Thanks to all of you who made it down to the discussion last Friday at TheSpace at inIVA. 

As part of inIVA's Soft season of exhibitions and debates, Anthony lles presents an afternoon of films, which looks at the current conditions and aesthetics of work. By screening a series of films that cast an eye at the minutae of labour, we hope to present you with an opportunity to reflect upon your own positions within the work non-work nexus. Whether it be 'occasional labour in the cultural industry', the less salacious daily grind in the city, the unpaid labour which accounts for half this country's wealth, or the indispensable provision of an overqualified labour surplus. 

Featuring artist's films, activist documentary, gems from the history of sociology, the screening seeks to get under the skin of the habitual, the commonplace, of what goes by the name of 'the general interest'. The event assumes its place within 'Outsourcing' as not just another chain in a producing machine, another opportunity to consider the shifting roles of culture - makers, but a situation which begs the question: 'for whom do we work?'. 

Artists include: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Year Zero, Ursula Biemann, Humphrey Jennings and Black Audio Film Collective (John Akomfrah) Please see below for more information.

Refreshments provided.

The Films
Mierle Laderman Ukeles - Sanman's Place 28mins 1980/ World of Art; works in Progress  28mins. 1986
In 1969, "frazzled and dazzled" by the requirements of surviving as an artist while being a new mother, Mierle Ukeles wrote The Manifesto for Maintenance Art: "Care." Starting with personal maintenance, the work broadened to the maintenance of cultural institutions, urban and societal maintenance, and sustaining the earth itself. From 1977-80, the artist interacted with the entire New York City Department of Sanitation in the ground-breaking Touch Sanitation Performance. 

Year Zero - The Occupation. 26mins. 2001
Regeneration and gentrification in the East End Plot your place  in the social cleansing of a city; join in the consultations; include  yourself out. Benedict Seymour and David Panos' film looks at the rapid and disorientating transformations occurring not only to the physical fabric of the east end but through the social imaginary - work, housing, leisure and time itself. 

Ursula Biemann - Performing the Border, video-essay,  45 min. 1999.
A video essay set in the Mexican-US border town Ciudad Juarez, where the U.S. industries assemble their electronic and digital equipment, located right across from El Paso, Texas. <performing the border> looks at the border as both a discursive and a material space constituted through the performance and management of gender relations. The video discusses the sexualization of the border region through labour division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. Interviews, scripted voice over, quoted text on the screen, scenes and sounds recorded on site, as well as found footage are combined to give an insight into the gendered conditions inscribed in the border region

Humphrey Jennings - Spare Time 35/16mm, bw, 18 mins, 1939.
Although made for the GPO, Spare Time was in fact a Mass Observation film about the ways in which people in the industrial areas of Britain spend their free time. Its very title suggests how removed Jennings was from the dominant philosophy of Griersonian documentary because this film does not glorify the dignity of labour but shows instead the working classes producing their own culture. There is an expressive use of sounds and music and a surreal quality about the landscape which prefigures much
 
Black Audio Film Collective (John Akomfrah) -.Handsworth Songs, 16mm film, video, color, sound, 58 min 1986 Black Audio Film Collective was one of the film and video workshop collectives set up in the 1980s in the aftermath of inner city protests against British Institutional racism. As part of a movement for greater cultural and political representation for and by black people in Britain, it can be seen as part of the ongoing process of Britain's post-colonial history. Handsworth Songs, (1986, directed by John Akomfrah), was their most controversial work.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

inIVA Team