During January and February S1 Artspace will host three programmes of artist film and video featuring work from the UK, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Australia and Peru, combining video formats with screenings in 16mm and Super 8. S1 / salon is curated around material selected from an open call with the intention of creating a platform for presenting artist film and video without prescribed themes or categories. Each salon features films selected by an artist working in the moving image.

This is the second season of S1 / salon. A national tour of tonight we are golden, a programme featuring fourteen films from the first season will be launched in February.

 
Sarah Baker (London)
A Portrait of Bill May, 2004
7’ 12”
In the late eighties Sarah Baker and Bill May competed as synchronised swimmers in national US contents. May has been the United States National Champion in all synchronized swimming events since 1999 but remains unrecognized by an Olympic Committee that excludes male competitors.
Katy Dove (Glasgow)
Luna, 2004
2’40”
A family of angular form whirl jostle like autumn leaves, a runaway painting reconfiguring itself. Compound shapes slowly effervesce at the surface of the screen as it becomes layered with new species of form and the whispering nocturnal soundtrack climbs.
You, 2003
5’
You Coloured bodies traverse the screen occasionally interlocking for a moment, combining, dividing and multiplying like cellular structures on a kaleidoscopic Zen voyage.
Pil & Galia Kollectiv (London)
Kustom Kar Inferno, 2004
4’ 45”
A cast of cut-out fire-breathing motor cars perform strange rituals of terror, worship and ignition.
Diego Lama (Lima)
Schizo Uncopyrighted, 2004
5’ 50”
The shower scene from Gus Van Sant’s 2000 re-make of Hitchcock’s Psycho is played in tandem with the original highlighting a slavish attention-to-detail in retelling cinema legend.
Dominic Redfern (Brunswick East)
Roller, 2004
3’ 30”
A banal accident appears to be looped, reversed and restored by its own kinetic force in technology’s own daydream.

 

Volker Schreiner (Hanover) Counter, 2004
5’ 58”
Schreiner has clipped numerals from footage of taxi meters, buses, hotel doors, sports shirts, telephones and dialogue to compile a countdown in film.

Part 2
selected by Sheffield-based artist Steve Hawley

Steve Hawley is an artist who has been working in film and video since 1981 and has exhibited at video festivals and broadcast worldwide. Most recently he was one of twenty-one artists commissioned for Euroscreen 21 showcased throughout Europe last year and was commissioned for the Hong Kong Microwave Video Festival. Steve is Professor and Head of the School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University. He lives in Sheffield and is a member of the artist band Sunken Ditch.

Hawley & Dutton
Similar to Nothing, 2005
8’
Courtesy of the artists

Two identical eight-minute videos of a man wandering through derelict swimming baths are projected alongside each other. As one slowly slips out of sync with the other a gap is opened in the flow of the narrative where the man appears semi-aware of the image beside him.

Peter Fischli & David Weiss
The way things go (Der Lauf der Dinge), 1987
30‘ courtesy of the artists and Sprüth Magers Lee

Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. Fire, water, law of gravity as well as chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects - of things. It brings about a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and precision.

John Wood & Paul Harrison
26 (Drawing and Falling Things) excerpt, 2001
5’ 50”
Courtesy of the artists and f a projects.

Steve Hawley invited Harrison & Wood to select around five minutes of their work to be screened.

Jeff Keen Marvo
Movie, 1967
5’, 16 mm
distributed by Lux

“Keen is indebted to the surrealist tradition for many of his central concerns: his passion for instability, his sense of 'le merveilleux', his fondness for analogies and puns, his preference for 'lowbrow' art over aestheticism of any kind, his dedication to collage and 'le hasard objectif'. But this 'continental' facet of his work-virtually unique in this country co-exists with various typically English characteristics, which betray other roots” Tony Rayns

Lewis Khlar
Pony Glass, 1997
15' 16mm
distributed by Lux

Pony Glass is the story of comic book character Jimmy Olsen's secret life. In this cutout animation Superman's pal embarks on his most adult adventure ever as he navigates the treacherous shoals of early '60s romance trying to resolve a sexual identity crisis of epic proportions.

Tim Macmillan
Ferment, 1999
5’ 35mm
distributed by Lux

An old man suddenly suffers from a heart attack and falls to the ground. Time stands still and we travel across town, down streets, through buildings, into rooms and along corridors, catching glimpses of people and snatches of sound as they exist in that one instant. Gradually the human condition unfolds before our eyes. Ferment is a stunning animation film utilising Macmillan's unique time-slice camera technique