tate summer school – Thursday

Today was Analog Day with artist Bill Leslie. Bill is currently doing a PhD at Kingston asking the question “How do sculptures change when they are filmed or photographed?”

We began the day hand colouring a strip of 16 ml film using marker pens.. This wake and sake exercise allowed us to see action and projection immediately – we drew, the film was shown. Our collective marks became translucent, changed size and in relation to each other.

hand colouring 16 mll film

We watched some of Bill’s work and then spent most of the day working in small groups on a film. Bill had brought with him a Bolex – a hand cranked camera.Working with this kind of camera requires measuring the distance between the lens and the physical material to be filmed – no auto focus here.

Every person had one run of the crank – or 20 seconds to work with. Each group was of variable size and had available to them the sum total of cranks of people in the group.

The groups were to work with the ideas and materials that had been generated in the summer school on previous days, although these could of course be modified/transf0rmed.

After lunch we went off into the gallery to see a video installation by Gustav Metzger which had been produced by projecting crystallisation and decomposition of crystals – what he called ‘auto destructive’ art.

watching Gustav Metzger – auto-destructive’ art.

The bulk of the day however was spent making.

Once again people had to think about how to bring their individual ideas together with a group project.

There was also time at the end of the day for a group discussion around the question of “Does talking change it?” and the ‘usual’ badge making.

Each group got to film, but this took a bit longer than expected (doesn’t it always?), so the manual processing of the film occurred in the evening. Not everyone was able to stay, although many did. The film will dry overnight, and be shown first thing on Friday.