Thursday, July 29, 2010

Serendipitous Theorems

Tonight Immobilité will be screened outside of a museum exhibition context. It is playing at the Teatro Castro Alves in Salvador, Brazil, and I will be there for it.

But I have already mentioned that a few times on this blog so why blog about it again?

Because I have a little story that means a lot to me that I want to share.

When I first came up with the idea of making a feature-length "foreign film" shot entirely on mobile phone in Cornwall, UK, with the incredible support of the University of Falmouth's iRES interactive media group and Tate Media, I really did not have a clue what the final work would look like or if it would really ever get made. It was just an idea, and nothing else. Part of my Conceptual practice. An attempt to further expand the concept of writing while investigating the role of the artist-medium in the field of distribution. The work, I had decided, would be made improvisationally with a small cast and crew of non-professional actors. The flow of social events in our lives, i.e. what we were reading / eating / listening to / surfing / watching / or otherwise informally discussing, would trigger the source material that could then be manipulated in whatever way the project deemed necessary (yes, the project itself deems it necessary, this is what artist-mediums intuit from the get-go, although we are aware that the project cannot evolve without us a creative co-conspirators).

The first collaborator on the project was one of the actresses, Camille Lacadee, who I met at E:vent, the London gallery I occasionally exhibit new work in. Our first conversation was a three hour film in its own right. At the end of the long conversation we had already decided that my new work would "introduce" her. Before we parted, she insisted that I let her lend me a DVD she had with her, a film she said was her current favorite and that made me realize that the work still yet to come, Immobilité, could be more exciting than I at first may have imagined. The DVD was Pasolini's Theorem.

There's no need for me to discuss Pasolini's film here in this post; the web has ample information on the dreamlike sexual ambiguity and mysterious resonance of the players who populate the scenes.

What's really cool about the gig in Salvador, though, is that while they are only showing a few films in total, a major part of the festival is its massive Pasolini retrospective that is being screened in another Salvador venue, the Goethe Institut – ICBA. This Pasolini retrospective occurs in conjunction with the few other screenings and roundtables at the Teatro Castro Alves and this is where things get interesting because now there is a lingering resonance between these two works (Theorem and Immobilité).

In fact, when Immobilité screens tonight in Salvador, guess which Pasolini film will be playing at ICBA as part of his retrospective? Yes, Theorem.

I'm sure this proves something although I am unable at this time to demonstrate what exactly that proof is.


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