Lis Rhodes - Specially comissioned essay | Luxonline

Lis Rhodes - Specially comissioned essay | Luxonline

LIS RHODES

'Only the permitted is really visible in a culture that equates real with visible; the unreal becomes invisible; I see is synonymous with I understand; reality cannot explain itself' Running Light (1996, 15m)

To attempt to write about Lis Rhodes' work is difficult – her engagement with the failures and power structures of language make any simple description of her films impossible. These are not films that one can describe from the outside: they demand an engagement of the senses and intellect. Language is at the heart of her work and is active as a site of exploration.

Lis Rhodes investigates how language can produce perceptions, interactions and social relationships. While firmly rooted in the history of experimental film, Lis Rhodes' films cross into performance, photography, writing, and political analysis. Performance can be seen in her early collaborations with Ian Kerr (Rumour Shock for the Lab.R, 1974, Cut A X, 1976, Bwlhaictke, 1976), as well as in her expanded cinema work when the viewers themselves become performers (Light Music, 1975). Photography appears a number of times, where the still image becomes animated through both its repetition (such as Orifiso, 1999), and through its re-representation (for example in the use of blown-up photocopies in Pictures on Pink Paper, 1982). Political analyses occur explicitly (for example in the discussion of the condition of migrant labourers in Running Light, 1996) and implicitly (such as the description of female experience in Pictures on Pink Paper).

Lis Rhodes brings a strongly political agenda to cultural practice through interrogations of the languages of film, through slippages between textual, visual and aural language, and through exposing power imbalances. This commitment is also seen in her involvement within the actual culture of avant-garde filmmaking itself. During the mid-1970s she programmed the London Filmmakers' Co-op, and was an instrumental force in the setting up of the feminist distribution and filmmaking collective Circles. Circles was set up, with Felicity Sparrow, to address how the work of women filmmakers effectively 'went missing'.

Lis Rhodes' commitment to the issue of visibility can also be explicitly seen in her withdrawal from the exhibition Film as Film, at the Hayward Gallery in 1979. Lis Rhodes was initially the only woman invited to become involved in the planning of the exhibition, and in response to the lack of women's representation within the exhibition committee, Annabel Nicolson was asked to take part. Together Lis and Annabel decided to concentrate on researching the history of female filmmakers. They were joined by other key women filmmakers - Felicity Sparrow, Jane Clarke, Jeanette Iljon, Mary Pat Leece, Pat Murphy and Susan Stein. The group made the decision to undertake an act of resistance to this gender imbalance by withdrawing from the exhibition but including in the Hayward catalogue a series of articles - 'Women and Formal Film'. By challenging the didactic and closed nature of those artists and filmmakers selected to present work, the group asserted an objection to the lack of institutional engagement with feminist film practice.

This essay considers Lis Rhodes' work through the structure of language, looking to languages of film, of power, as well to unarticulated histories.

Guy Sherwin - Works, Articles, Clips and Stills | Luxonline

Guy Sherwin - Works, Articles, Clips and Stills | Luxonline

MESSAGES Guy Sherwin1981-3  35mins black & white silent 16mm

A response to my young daughter's discovery of language and to her questions about the world.

Messages was made over a 3 year period, when my daughter Maya was first learning to talk and write.

It was my first film that involved gathering material around a central theme. That theme was not constant, but shifted its ground between ideas to do with childhood, with language, or with visual perception.

A major source of inspiration for the film was Maya's questions about the world, starting with questions to do with her perceptions of the physical world, and as she got older, questions more to do with social behaviour. These 'innocent' questions (apart from being almost impossible to answer) seemed to me to be of a philosophical order that challenged long-established 'truths' about the world. They made it clear to me that 'knowledge' which is hidden and acquired, supplants raw perception in many areas of our understanding (we learn to 'see' the table as square, not trapezoid).

I also included material from Jean Piaget's book of 1929 'The Child's Conception of the World', in which he asks a number of children questions about the origin of the stars, sun, moon. I wanted to include an external source of ideas to give myself a measure of distance from the project, and to place the emphasis on childhood in general rather than my daughter's childhood in particular.

The pace of the film is slow, and the structure of the film is open-ended. The images progress through oblique association rather than linear sequence, allowing the viewer to make his or her own connections with different points in the film, as well as drawing on personal childhood associations (two aspects of memory are involved here). The implication is that each person will 'see' the film differently and uniquely. I first used an open structure like this in 'Short Film Series', a group of 30 3-minute films which can be programmed in any number and permutation. The idea of the viewer 'doing work' (not necessarily unpleasant work) on the film is an important tenet of a progressive film practice.
G.S.

harness

Aleana Egan

Listening devices

Corin Sworn - Curtains/fabric walls

Moholy Nagy - Light Space Modulator

Moholy-Nagy explains: This piece of lighting equipment is a device used for demonstrating both plays of light and manifestations of movement. The model consists of a cube-like body or box, 120 x 120 cm in size, with a circular opening (stage opening) at its front side. On the back of the panel, mounted around the opening are a number of yellow, green, blue, red, and white-toned electric bulbs (approximately 70 illuminating bulbs of 15 watts each, and 5 headlamps of 100 watts). Located inside the body, parallel to its front side, is a second panel; this panel too, bears a circular opening about which are mounted electric lightbulbs of different colors. In accordance with a predetermined plan, individual bulbs glow at different points. They illuminate a continually moving mechanism built of partly translucent, partly transparent, and partly fretted materials, in order to cause the best possible play of shadow formations on the back wall of the closed box. (When the demonstration occurs in a darkened space, the back wall of the box can be removed and the color and shadow projection shown on a screen of any chosen size behind the box.) The mechanism is supported by a circular platform on which a three-part mechanism is built. The dividing walls are made of transparent cellophane, and a metal wall made of vertical rods. Each of the three sectors of the framework accommodate a different, playful movement study, which individually goes into effect when it appears on the main disc revolving before the stage opening.

Tobias Kaspar at Halle fuer Kunst Lüneburg

Press Release:

A boy and a girl in summer clothes at the Palazzo Venier di Leoni in Venice are the main protagonists of a series of photographs on view in the exhibition “Bodies in the Backdrop”. In addition to the two adolescents, the photos depict details of the space and other visitors, captured between fragmentarily photographed artworks and interior views of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. On the passe–partouts are excerpts from “Confessions of an Art Addict” (1946), the memoirs of the gallerist, collector and patron, Peggy Guggenheim. The citations, that don’t mention any dates, names or locations, turn into contingent fragments of sentences through the decontextualization, with the surprisingly contemporary everyday language easily bridging the distance between the decades.

The framed photographs are contrasted by a second and equal part of the exhibition, which – like the sentence fragments – defines the photographs and at the same time dialogically opens up a wide range of narratives and allusions: a kind of eccentric and simultaneously minimalist display composed of Perspex constructions, a red carpet and a temporary exhibition wall.

The title of the exhibition, “Bodies in the Backdrop”, is drawn from the eponymous text by Elisabeth Lebovici on the “agent d´art”, Ghislain Mollet-Viéville, a French collector, whose lifestyle, self-presentation and practice of marketing his collection of Minimal and Conceptual art Tobias Kaspar has dealt with for a period of time. As in his examinations in earlier projects, the reference to a person in the “body of work” at Halle für Kunst is not intended to be biographic or hagiographic. The specific reference is utilized as an abstract model, as material, in order to address the social, affective and economic relationships of tension between collectors and other actors in the field of art.

An interest in forms of desire, economies of visibility, practices of representation and marketing, is combined with considerations on the opposition between autonomy, not least secured by the judgement of peers, and heteronomy, for example market dominance and popularity. However, with this interest inrelationship networks in the art field, Kaspar focuses less on institutional framework conditions, but instead casts a view vacillating between intimacy and cool reserve to the actors themselves.

The exhibition “Bodies in the Backdrop” is Tobias Kaspars (*1984) first institutional solo exhibition. The artist has exhibited, inter alia, at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Kunsthalle Basel, Air de Paris (curated by castillo/coralles), Marcelle Alix, Paris, Alex Zachary, New York (all in 2011), Silberkuppe, Berlin (2010) and at Golden Pudel Club, Hamburg (2008). In 2011 Tobias Kaspar has graduated at HFBK, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.

Link: Tobias Kaspar at Halle fuer Kunst Lüneburg

Glottis

straight from wikipedia. vocal chord movement and sounds:

As the vocal folds vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a "buzzing" quality to the speech, called voice or voicing or pronunciation.

Sound production involving only the glottis is called glottal. English has a voiceless glottal fricative spelled "h". In many accents of English the glottal stop (made by pressing the folds together) is used as a variant allophone of the phoneme /t/ (and in some dialects, occasionally of /k/ and /p/); in some languages, this sound is a phoneme of its own.

Skilled players of the Australian didgeridoo restrict their glottal opening in order to produce the full range of timbres available on the instrument.^[2]

The vibration produced is an essential component of voiced consonants as well as vowels. If the vocal folds are drawn apart, air flows between them causing no vibration, as in the production of voiceless consonants.

The glottis is also important in the valsalva maneuver.

• Voiced consonants include /v/, /z/, /ʒ/, /d͡ʒ/, /ð/, /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /w/.
• Voiceless consonants include /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/, /θ/, /p/, /t/, /k/, /ʍ/, and /h/.

Radio program with accent stuff

1. North and South: Across the Great Divide
2. Warwick to the Severn

Warwick to the Severn

LISTEN :

Listen now (30 minutes)

Availability:

Available to listen.

Last broadcast today, 11:00 on BBC Radio 4 (FM only).

SYNOPSIS

Ian Marchant continues his trip along a very precise line dividing North from South to find out if it's changing.

You can walk the line that separates North from South across England, as mapped by Professor Danny Dorling of Sheffield University. Think of the border which used to separate East and West Germany: a stark division of different life chances. The line which divides the UK is just like that - it's the only comparable 'border' in Europe - according to Professor Dorling.

In these documentaries, writer Ian Marchant travels along the dividing line between North and South, zigzagging the line which runs, rather surprisingly, from Cleethorpes to Gloucester. His aim is to find out what the statistics really mean to neighbours who are separated from each other by a gulf of health, wealth, education, culture and prospects.

In programme two, Ian travels from Warwick to Cinderford and talks to accents expert Dominic Watt about the 'bath' divide (long 'a' makes you a southerner, short 'a' and you're probably a northerner). Poet and creative writing guru Professor David Morley talks about the pull of London and the joy of heading north and Ian meets geographer John Langton, who reveals the ancient origins of the north/south divide.

With his customary wit and deceptively gentle interviewing style Ian develops an understanding of what the North/South divide really means to the people who live on it. This is an under-the-skin, thoughtful interrogation of the social geography of Britain using this neat device to dig out fascinating human stories of the real - and changing - meaning of the North/South divide.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.

BROADCAST

1. Wed 28 Mar 2012
   11:00
   BBC Radio 4 (FM only)

Interesting Paper on 'Glottal Activity'

Variation of glottal activity in French accent imitation produced by native Germans

Sara Neuhauser

Abstract

This study is part of a project concerning phonetic and linguistic aspects of foreign accent imitation as a form of voice disguise. The main focus is on the detection of variation of particular phonetic parameters in German with an imitated French accent produced by native Germans and with an authentic French accent produced by native French speakers. Previous analyses suggested that variation of glottal behavior during accent imitation is possible but the fine adjustment seems to be extremely complex which might be helpful to distinguish between authentic and non-authentic French accents in German. Since glottal activity in syllable onsets differs in French compared to German, the present paper specifically investigates two forms of glottal variation: the realisation of junctural glottalisation and the realisation glottal friction (/h/). The study’s native German speakers rarely showed consistent and specific variation in the realisation of vowel junctures during French accent imitation. However, avoidance of /h/ and replacement by glottalisation were common features in their imitated French accents. The results further suggest that the competence of native French speakers in German as L2 might often be underestimated and patterns, such as junctural glottalisation and glottal friction seem to be well established.