CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand: New Arts Agency Launches with Website

CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand: New arts agency launches with website and publication

The Artists' Cinema is a DVD and essay publication produced by newly founded arts agency CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand.

Curated by CIRCUIT director Mark Williams, The Artists' Cinema includes videos by Ronnie van Hout, Sriwhana Spong, Gray Nicol, Sean Grattan, Phil Dadson and Alex Monteith. Designed by Christchurch artist Aaron Beehre, the publication also includes six essays and a series of stills reproduced as full colour postcards.

Four of the works on The Artists' Cinema DVD were commissioned by Williams in 2011 with the brief "to consciously respond to, comment on, interrupt and/or reflect on the cinema context". Two further works exploring similar themes were included to create the publication. Stylistically, Williams says the works draw on a wide map of cinematic references; from Hollywood machismo to an 'unfilmable' early 20th century ballet; from landscape to 1982 Hollywood horror The Thing.

The Artists' Cinema is the first publication from CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand.

Supported by Creative New Zealand, CIRCUIT aims to support New Zealand artists working in the moving image through distribution, review, publication and research. The first milestone for CIRCUIT was the recent establishment of the online resource www.circuit.org.nz, which includes 300 streaming videos by New Zealand artists. Says Williams “The internet is a useful platform to research time-based art, even if the work is properly realised in another context.”

Founded by Williams earlier this year following a decade as curator at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington, Williams says the impetus for CIRCUIT was a period spent working for the London agency LUX in 2009, which is the largest distributor of artists' film and video in Europe.

“LUX's focus is artist support - through distribution, critical discussion, publication and asking questions about sustainable practice in this branch of art practice.”

Williams established CIRCUIT after a period of research in the four main centres where he interviewed artists, educators and curators. “It was important to establish what was important to the artists, and now that CIRCUIT is up and running the response has been overwhelmingly positive”.

The original curatorial model for The Artists' Cinema was LUX's own Artist Cinema Commissions. Continuing the spirit of collaboration between CIRCUIT and LUX, the works in The Artists' Cinema had their public debut in London at LUX in 2011. The New Zealand premiere subsequently took place at the New Zealand Film Festival alongside recent LUX commissions from Egypt, Germany, India, Lebanon, Lithuania and the United States of America.

Since launching CIRCUIT Williams has been inundated with international requests for inclusion of New Zealand work in international programmes. “I've been asked to submit local work in festivals in Brazil, the UK, was recently invited to attend the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany which has a section devoted to screenings by international video art distributors... we will shortly be presenting a selection of New Zealand work on Ubuweb.com which is the worlds major online resource for artists moving image work”. As well as streaming video, the CIRCUIT website features reviews and writing addressing issues in contemporary artist practice. Likewise, the publication also includes six essays exploring the aesthetic, structural and political aspects of the moving image works. Essayists include Sarah Hopkinson, Jan Bryant, Mark Amery, John Hurrell, Genevieve Allison and Ronnie van Hout, who in keeping with the autobiographical nature of his work, writes on Ronnie van Hout.

“I think these works are both entertaining and critical and I'm pleased each comes with an essay... I want to bring some of the criticality associated with the white cube into the black box”.

The launch of The Artists' Cinema will likewise include a screening of all six works, which will be presented by Mark Williams.

The Artists' Cinema Publication launch and screening

Christchurch 7pm Friday June 1 The Physics Room Tuam St

Auckland 6pm Thursday June14 Artspace/Film Archive Level 1, 300 Karangahape Road

Wellington tbc

The Artists' Cinema - works and synopses

2.5 kilometre mono action for a mirage (2011) Alex Monteith 4.30 mins, colour, sound Photography: Duncan Cole Sound: Jeffery Holdaway Super 16mm/35mm/Digital Video

Flux, balance, illusion. A Moto-X rider pulls a continuous wheelie over 2.5 kilometres of coast-line north of Muriwai in Aotearoa New Zealand. The wheelie is one of the most delicately balanced longer durations stunts for a MX rider.The action was conceived specifically for the hazy atmospheric conditions of the Aotearoa coast and takes place on the hard sand revealed only at low tide.

Carmen San Diego: Out Of Work And On The Run (2010) Sean Grattan 11 mins, Colour, Sound Digital Video

A philosophical drama where nothing dramatic takes place; a production that plugs wordy explanations of content into a cinematic form that looks like an action movie but sounds like a lecture. The script is entirely earnest, but the performances are removed from a stable ground determined by plot.

Between Worlds (2011) Phil Dadson 11 mins, Colour, Sound Digital Video

Exploring the interstice between worlds, inner and outer, between dimensions tangible and illusory: a world-upside-down view intersecting with reflections on geometry, nature, signs and portents.

The Other Mother (2011) Ronnie van Hout 8.30 mins, Colour, Sound Digital Video

A remake of the blood testing scene from John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing. As well as shooting and editing Ronnie Van Hout plays all of the characters. Background images were shot by Van Hout during an artists' residency at Scott Base in Antarctica. The title comes via John Campbell, the writer of 'Who Goes There' (the story The Thing is based on). Campbells mother had an identical twin sister that he confused for his own.

Costume for a Mourner (2011) Sriwhana Spong 8.30 mins, B&W, Sound Dancer/Choreographer: Benny Ord Digital Video

Costume for a Mourner re-imagines a dance from Le Chant du Rossignol, a ballet originally created for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes by Igor Stravinsky and his collaborator George Balanchine. Working from the only remaining artifacts of the ballet – the Stravinsky score, grainy photographs of the dancers and images of the costumes created for the ballet by Henri Matisse – together with strands of rumour, myth and anecdote, Spong's film is a synthesis of body, costume, image and movement.

Voodoo Dog (2011) Gray Nicol 5mins, Colour, Sound Digital Video

Like a canine Venus de Milo, Nicol's workshop sculpture of his dog begins to pre-figure more serious events. “In Voodoo Dog the camera carefully, lovingly roves over the surface of a sculpture of a dog, made from discarded machine parts. The camera seems to be telling us that each part holds stories and, consequently a power” - Mark Amery