Describing Form is a new moving image touring programme from LUX which explores the way sculptures have been represented in artists' film. The programme will launch at the Henry Moore Institute and Tate Britain in early 2005 before touring UK and international venues.
DESCRIBING FORM 'Copy lifted from www.lux.org.uk/describingform'
"How to represent the weight and space of sculptural form on film? How to describe in moving images what is fundamentally still? It could be said that sculpture is described by the space around it, by the experience of perambulation, or touch. The moving image positions the viewer at one remove from this direct experience. The sense of material and surface and environment that is so immediate during a first hand encounter with a sculptural form becomes framed through the lens of the filmmaker, a document caught in another time and space. It is in the tension between these two states that avant-garde filmmakers, and the artists themselves, have brought their singular and experimental approaches to filming form. Artists as varied as Maya Deren and Richard Serra have explored structures of sound, performance and even humour to go beyond mere documentation, and present new ways of using the moving image to offer fresh perspectives on sculptural form."
Lucy Reynolds
Marie Menken
Visual Variations on Noguchi
1945 5mins
When the sculptor Noguchi asked the artist Marie Menken to look after his New York studio in his absence, she took the opportunity to record her responses to his sculpture, producing this powerful interweaving of sound with abstracted image.
Hy Hirsh
Gyromorphosis
1954 7mins
Hirsh puts into motion the inherent kinetic qualities of the construction-sculpture of Constant Nieuwenhuys of Amsterdam. 'To realize this aim I have put into motion, one by one, pieces of this sculpture and, with colored lighting, filmed them in various detail, overlaying the images on the film as they appear and disappear. In this way I have hoped to produce sensations of acceleration and suspension which are suggested to me by the sculpture itself.' Hy Hirsh
Liliane Lijn
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping
1973 14mins
'The title is taken from a Japanese koan, which is a Zen meditation problem. The film concentrates on a series of conical sculptures which were objects for mediation or how to empty the mind. I related this problem to the spacial problem of how to dematerialise a volume into vibration.' Liliane Lijn.
Maya Deren
Witch's Cradle Outtakes
1943 10mins
All that exists of a film Deren made of an environment based on Duchamp's string sculpture at the New York Surrealist Exhibition in 1942. These outtakes hint at a complex exploration by the artist of the relationship between Duchamp1s sculpture and symbols of witchcraft. The enigmatic images incorporate a female figure and Duchamp himself.
Dudley Shaw Ashton
Figures in a Landscape
1954, UK, 16mm, 18mins
An unusual documentary portrait of sculptor Barbara Hepworth, relating her sculptures directly to the natural forms of the land by positioning them within the Cornish landscape.
Richard Serra
Hand Catching Lead
1968, USA, 16mm, 3.30mins
A playful examination of the relationship of the artist to his materials. The hand of sculptor Richard Serra is filmed as he attempts to catch, and often misses falling lumps of lead. Whilst the forceful trajectory of the falling lead echoes the movement of the film frames, it also exposes the futility of the artistic process.
Hannah Wilke
Through The Large Glass
1974, USA, video, 10mins
Performance artist Hannah Wilke challenges the authority of sculpture in the museum, performing a striptease behind Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
William Raban
Waterfall
1983, UK, 16mm, 8mins
A rarely seen film of Ron Hasleden's sculptural installation Graveing Dock at the Acme Gallery. Raban experiments with the acoustics of dripping water, an integral element of the sculpture, in relationship to the spaces within and around the structure.
Daria Martin
Birds
2001, USA, 16mm, 6mins
The opposite of an overbudgeted Hollywood blockbuster, Birds is a kind of magic act that shows how the trick is done. Birds mines pre-digital tools to create low-tech special effects for today1s world, using archaic film tricks, the contrived staginess of theater, the old-fashioned pleasures of the "plastic arts" -color, form, and the transformative thrill of fashion to create a completely different kind of "virtual reality." Fantasy is made tangible, as the viewer's awareness vacillates between the magic of the materials transformation, and that transformation's failure. DM.
Describing Form is a LUX project supported by Arts Council England.
DESCRIBING FORM 'Copy lifted from www.lux.org.uk/describingform'
"How to represent the weight and space of sculptural form on film? How to describe in moving images what is fundamentally still? It could be said that sculpture is described by the space around it, by the experience of perambulation, or touch. The moving image positions the viewer at one remove from this direct experience. The sense of material and surface and environment that is so immediate during a first hand encounter with a sculptural form becomes framed through the lens of the filmmaker, a document caught in another time and space. It is in the tension between these two states that avant-garde filmmakers, and the artists themselves, have brought their singular and experimental approaches to filming form. Artists as varied as Maya Deren and Richard Serra have explored structures of sound, performance and even humour to go beyond mere documentation, and present new ways of using the moving image to offer fresh perspectives on sculptural form."
Lucy Reynolds
Marie Menken
Visual Variations on Noguchi
1945 5mins
When the sculptor Noguchi asked the artist Marie Menken to look after his New York studio in his absence, she took the opportunity to record her responses to his sculpture, producing this powerful interweaving of sound with abstracted image.
Hy Hirsh
Gyromorphosis
1954 7mins
Hirsh puts into motion the inherent kinetic qualities of the construction-sculpture of Constant Nieuwenhuys of Amsterdam. 'To realize this aim I have put into motion, one by one, pieces of this sculpture and, with colored lighting, filmed them in various detail, overlaying the images on the film as they appear and disappear. In this way I have hoped to produce sensations of acceleration and suspension which are suggested to me by the sculpture itself.' Hy Hirsh
Liliane Lijn
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping
1973 14mins
'The title is taken from a Japanese koan, which is a Zen meditation problem. The film concentrates on a series of conical sculptures which were objects for mediation or how to empty the mind. I related this problem to the spacial problem of how to dematerialise a volume into vibration.' Liliane Lijn.
Maya Deren
Witch's Cradle Outtakes
1943 10mins
All that exists of a film Deren made of an environment based on Duchamp's string sculpture at the New York Surrealist Exhibition in 1942. These outtakes hint at a complex exploration by the artist of the relationship between Duchamp1s sculpture and symbols of witchcraft. The enigmatic images incorporate a female figure and Duchamp himself.
Dudley Shaw Ashton
Figures in a Landscape
1954, UK, 16mm, 18mins
An unusual documentary portrait of sculptor Barbara Hepworth, relating her sculptures directly to the natural forms of the land by positioning them within the Cornish landscape.
Richard Serra
Hand Catching Lead
1968, USA, 16mm, 3.30mins
A playful examination of the relationship of the artist to his materials. The hand of sculptor Richard Serra is filmed as he attempts to catch, and often misses falling lumps of lead. Whilst the forceful trajectory of the falling lead echoes the movement of the film frames, it also exposes the futility of the artistic process.
Hannah Wilke
Through The Large Glass
1974, USA, video, 10mins
Performance artist Hannah Wilke challenges the authority of sculpture in the museum, performing a striptease behind Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
William Raban
Waterfall
1983, UK, 16mm, 8mins
A rarely seen film of Ron Hasleden's sculptural installation Graveing Dock at the Acme Gallery. Raban experiments with the acoustics of dripping water, an integral element of the sculpture, in relationship to the spaces within and around the structure.
Daria Martin
Birds
2001, USA, 16mm, 6mins
The opposite of an overbudgeted Hollywood blockbuster, Birds is a kind of magic act that shows how the trick is done. Birds mines pre-digital tools to create low-tech special effects for today1s world, using archaic film tricks, the contrived staginess of theater, the old-fashioned pleasures of the "plastic arts" -color, form, and the transformative thrill of fashion to create a completely different kind of "virtual reality." Fantasy is made tangible, as the viewer's awareness vacillates between the magic of the materials transformation, and that transformation's failure. DM.
Describing Form is a LUX project supported by Arts Council England.