I am relooking at my own list of aims to pick it apart a bit, self criticise, expand, elaborate or just slag it off completely.
1 To make Art works.
The idea that ‘Artworks’ are the final output of my time is contingent on several other ideas that mostly involve the actual social role of the artist as well as the idea that the contexts for Art needn’t be dicated by anyone in particular; galleries, curators, theorists, archives, museums, funding bodies, national agencies, collectors or competitions. The only context that matters is the space inwhich a work becomes finished by the artist her/himself. The moment it becomes a thing readily available to be experienced by anyone. In this regard the audience of ‘Art’ is very diverse and ranges from the local vernacular of ‘artisanship’ to the seedy misery of wealth and business.
2 To form a new Archive of (film based) motion picture works.
If I had a patron, a wealthy one, I’d ask for a few million quid to buy as much film stock as I could and set about propogating this archive. However, where are the guiding principles? Where is the Brunhes inversion? The essential drive to make film records that preserve the current times is based on my belief that we have not yet fully understood or resolved the philosophical problems raised by existing film archives (ones arising out of the birth of film) in the senses of cultural memory, the terms and conditions of humanity and the nature of life. Therefore, we cannot let a discontinuity in media technique dicate the full experience of the solutions that film offers us to problems of sustainabiltiy.
3 To produce works in/through/with/about film apparatus.
Included in above?
4 To collect, select, re-use, re-purpose existing film motion picture
material to extend any of 1, 2.
The idea that film begets film (Leda) is very important to the materiological networks my project explores. Films reused, films altered, films remade, films restored, films as living things……
5 To Produce a set of open and experimental guidelines, directives and
plans.
Not even sure what I myself actually mean here. Will drink more cider and have a think….
6 To ensure works are accessible in Cinema form for Cinema presentation in a
Cinema as part of ‘Cinema’.
Basically the idea of the importance of the ‘cinema’ as a socio-cultural vital organ. This is also a kind of joke, that it encapsulates the logical end position of certain ideas found in the cinema and archive worlds.
7 To make research tests into any related film technology apparatus and
share any findings openly.
This could be elaborated better, or written entirely better.
8 To explore digital technologies in relation to film translation and
restoration.
Is this infact the same as number 7. I use digital techniques to augment and inform analogue ones. But I am not a fan of the idea that digitising everything is a good idea. I think it serves short term anxiety over the public role and value of film archive collections, in that a pressure is excerted from ‘the cloud’ which falsifies the intrinsic materiological ‘livingness’ of film records and seeks to covertly replace their network of creative, historic, playful, local, real world, sustainable, varnacular to a dangerously meaningless dataset and abstract condition, itself contingent only on a narrow phase of technology. In another way it (the process of digitisation) seeks to render film artefacts as mere surfaces containing shapes, colours and movement.
9 To provide facility in Analogue Motion picture, ie Cinema for use by
associated Artists and Film Makers.
Infact, I dont want to share any of the things Ive collected until Ive used them to make things myself, which may never happen.
10 To engage with, support and collaborate with any other individuals,
organisations or associations or networks who have similar aims
Another lie just like 9.
Not really….
