Screen Tests

There is conflict blossoming at the heart of culture, a conflict convened around the property rights that subsist in materials stored in public archives. Screen Tests explores this conflict, while enriching rather than depleting the public domain

Commissioned as part of the British Art Show Six, we collaborated with artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White to explore public moving image archives in each city of the exhibition's tour.

During the exhibition, we also negotiated with each of the archives to release our new films, along with the original source film and audio material, on a DVD entitled Screen Tests. The DVD's production was generously funded by the Arts Council England and therefore we made it available for Free under a Creative Commons: Attribution ShareAlike v2.5 License.

Features

Screen Tests 1/4 Screen Tests - 12.36''

The film unfolds as a series of Andy Warhol-like screen tests, slowly revealing the location and the occupation of those before the camera - students and models from the Manchester School of Art.

Screen Tests 2/4 Dragline - 06.57''

Dragline stumbles across an autonomous event, and echoing 1970’s structuralist film, returns the default setting of contemporary digital practice -sampling and looping - to its industrial roots.

Screen Tests 3/4 Broadcast Times: The Birth of Westward - 12.29''

As the exhibition train leaves the platform, we are taken on a documentary journey of “a happy hunting ground for tycoons” the birth of private television broadcasting.

Screen Test was launched at the Anticipating the Past: Artist: Archive: Film: conference on the 12th-13th May, at Tate Modern.

Mpeg4 samples coming soon.......