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