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| Still from Distress Signals |
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| Still from Ghost Walk |
I’ve recently put a selection of videos on
Vimeo. These are short films I’ve made with a number of collaborators: David Ashford,
Miriam Austin and particularly Evie Salmon. They feature footage originally
shot in New York, Paris, London and other parts of the UK. Combining this ‘found
footage’ with specially prepared voice-overs, the films variously look at ‘dead’
media (video formats), strange locations (London churches, coastal areas, military
buildings, sites of literary interest) and the link between image and spoken
word.
More films will be added to the Vimeo page in
due course. I’ve been making videos for years and have a large archive of tapes
to work with. Some of the films are old, some are ‘new’ based on ‘old’ material
and others I’m in the process of shooting. The current selection includes:
Ghost Walk: a
film made with David Ashford about the churches featured in Iain Sinclair’s Lud Heat (1975).
Distress Signals: a piece featuring footage of New York’s Coney Island, pre-Hurricane
Sandy. Much of this area has now changed, almost beyond recognition. Some of these images appeared in an issue
of the film magazine Vertigo.
The Bird: a
video based on a performance piece by the artist Miriam Austin.
Territories:
a video that tracks William Burroughs across New York, Paris and London.
Codebreaker:
a film about Bletchley Park, their coding machines and the peculiar corridors in the on-site huts.
Headlands, Trailer: a short trailer for the Headlands live show performed in
Cambridge as part of the Festival of
Ideas.
Distress Signals, The
Bird, Territories, Codebreaker and Headlands, Trailer were each made in very close
collaboration with Evie Salmon. It’s her voice on the soundtracks. I shot and
prepared the footage, she provided the spoken word element and the final composition of the finished films was a joint effort. These videos reflect and inform
the live performances we do together which often involve spoken word, sound
elements and film projections. Some of this material will be featuring in Territories, the upcoming book Evie and
I are publishing via our friends at Contraband. As a multimedia artist, a brilliant writer and an interdisciplinary academic, Evie is a true polymath. It has been great working with her on these films and I'm looking forward to sharing the results of our current and future collaborations.
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