Particles in Space

Still from Machine for Living – Créteil (2017) by Sabrina Ratté 

Particles in Space
+ Q&A with filmmakers
Barbican, Saturday 3rd March, 12.00
Introduced by curator Edwin Rostron

BOOK HERE
Multibuy ticket for both Barbican programmes Particles in Space and Labyrinths: The Films of Peter Burr available here

Featuring work from 1958 to 2018, this programme explores ideas of space, line, shape and form, through an eclectic range of techniques. Formal abstraction mixes with the personal and fantastical, often within the same film. Celebrating the breadth and potential of experimentation in animation, the programme presents works by artists unafraid to push the medium into new territory. 

The Edge of Frame Weekend 2018 is supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Royal College of Art, and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Programme:

Free Radicals
Len Lye
USA 1958 (revised 1979) 4’
16mm
A masterly poetic expression of Lye’s lifelong concern with movement, as a celebration of energy. Lye described this film as “white ziggle – zag – splutter scratches…in quite doodling fashion”.

Lo
Ted Wiggin
USA 2017 3’10
We must protect this house.

Figure Study II (WORLD PREMIERE)
Jonathan Gillie
UK 2017 3’47
Figure Study II is part of an ongoing series of works dealing with the human figure. The animation improvises around the idea of the human form consisting of a series of internal processes which ebb and flow according to the external stimuli it encounters.

Trans/Figure/Ground
Lauren Cook
USA 2016 5’30
Painted 16mm film undergoes a monstrous transformation becoming neither analog nor digital. A film about uncanny valleys and the space between.

Longueurs d’ondes
Sabrina Ratté
Canada 2013 1’03
Inspired by pioneers of video art, Longueurs d’ondes investigates the interactions between the electronic signal and the human body.

Void Vision (WORLD PREMIERE)
Alexander Stewart
USA 2018 8’30
16mm
Void Vision focuses on a cinematic scenario where the real and the simulated are equally constructions. It presents images to be questioned, as the nature of reality is considered and re-considered in a fever-dream of paranoia and reification.

Soft Body Goal
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Finland 2017 3’37
Body without bone. Sloppy and improper. Body seepage. Naked sewer rats. Hairless aristocratic cats. Slime. The body of the future, fluid & flexible & folding into itself. Body negotiations. 3D software as a lab for new subjectivities/monstrosities. I dub all the voices. Unfortunately, the mischievous flubber seems to have a mind of its own.

Breathing
Robert Breer
USA 1963 5’
“Breer’s unpredictable lines flow forth naturally with an assurance and a serenity which are the signs of an astonishing felicity of expression.” – A. Labarthe, Cahiers du Cinema

99 Clerkenwell Road
Sophie Michael
UK 2010 8’
16mm
Shot at night in an empty shop, this semi-abstract film captures the simplicity of light and colour in motion.

Machine for Living – Créteil
Sabrina Ratté
Canada 2017 4’12
Created using photographs, 3D animation and video synthesizer, Machine for Living combines documentation and abstraction and straddles the line between utopia and dystopia.

PathExtrude
Brenna Murphy
USA 2016 4’44
An abstract film.

Measure
Kayla Parker
UK 2017 1’
Views of a landscape engraved directly into the emulsion of 16mm black film leader using the blade of a surgical scalpel.

Dry Standpipe
Wojciech Bąkowski
Poland 2012 12’09
Poetic narration composed of private video films.

6 Weeks in June
Stuart Hilton
UK 1998 6’
35mm
An animated road movie. 11000 miles across the USA and back in a transit van with a rock and roll band, a pencil, a stack of A6 paper and 6 weeks in June to do it.

 Still from Figure Study II (2017) by Jonathan Gillie