amateur

Enthusiasts breakfast

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Enthusiasts breakfast
Enthusiasts Warsaw 2004

Social Cinema finsbury

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Finsbury crowd
Social Cinema 2 2005

Film makers

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Film Makers
Katowice, Poland 2004

Vol 1: Enthusiasts

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:07:37 +0100

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

June 2004

Location

Publisher

Centre for Contemporary Art [CCA]: Warsaw

Designer

Grzegorz Laszuk

Body

This book accompanies the exhibition Enthusiasts , and is the result of two years research amongst the remnants of Amateur Film Clubs in Poland under Socialism. The book builds a cultural context for the film-makers, their clubs and films; it features commissioned essays from the curator Lukas Ronduda, sociologist Sebastian Cichocki and cultural historian Mikolaj Jazdon, interviews with the film makers by Marysia Lewandowska and previously unpublished documentary material.

The Enthusiasts project celebrates the astonishing creativity of these amateur film makers.

Taken from the introduction, an email exchange between the artists and Adam Szymczyk Director of the Kunsthalle Basel.

CONVERSATION

Adam Szymczyk
Why have you been interested in the activities of the enthusiast?

Neil Cummings: The space of the amateur, enthusiast or hobbyist opens onto a range of interests and experiences generally invisible amongst the relentless flow of the state sponsored, or professionally mediated. The enthusiast is often working outside official culture and its products, frequently adopting a counter-cultural tone of tactical resistance and criticism.

Adam: I think one should also think about how the enthusiast or amateur was integrated into the communist system; because they enjoyed relative freedom and State support at the cost of distancing themselves from political issues. The activities of the enthusiast was perceived as quite harmless from the State’s point of view, as it was keeping a significant number of creative and curious people busy. It deterred them from becoming a threat to the system, in the way that dissidents were.

Marysia Lewandowska: Perhaps the more the state disarmed their potential opposition the more they invested in themselves, on a local level. The film club members seemed more intent, especially in smaller provincial centres, on creating spaces of discussion, of belonging and celebration. We could think of a process of politicizing on the level of self-awareness. Their amateur status, the internal network of competitions and festivals helped to keep their views local and specific. And with the exception of occasional review in “Ekran” and “Film” magazines, limited in terms of wider interest and reception. But those small social acts of scripting, casting, shooting, editing, screening and discussing added a potential for action in what were often bleak local circumstances.

Adam I don’t know if it adds to the discussion, but it’s perhaps important to remember that during the Communist time, there was a wide array of periodicals published, on various aspects of cinema. Perhaps not reaching many readers, but some of the issues of those magazines achieved almost cult status. I can remember very clearly waiting for a new issue of a pocketbook size black and white magazine “Film na _wiecie”. It was more serious than “Film” or “Ekran”, with monographic issues on film directors, or styles in cinema. Then there was the “Kino” magazine with fantastically stylish pinups on the back cover, with some quite serious film criticism inside. And there were some local magazines like “Obscura” which I think was published in Lód_ as a kind of samizdat-like photocopied booklet. In a way I agree that there existed a quite good climate for discussion among film-fans and academic writers, although not very visible to a broad audience, for obvious reasons. If political self-awareness was there, it was pretty hard to translate it into any kind of political act.

Neil: The film club enthusiasts often invert the logic of work and leisure, becoming truly productive when pursuing their passions, and using work for their own rather than the factory or States intentions. And in this sense we think of their practices as being political -in the broadest sense.

Adam I like the notion of inverting work and leisure, but I think the politics of leisure in an authoritarian system belongs to a dominant and superior logic, which covers all forms of possible activity. Direct political action would be the only conceivable transgression of this logic. The big question is if art could be transgressive at all under these circumstances.

Marysia: Surely that’s right, the totalitarian dream of control and organization in every aspect of social life, complicates the idea of that kind of separation between work and leisure. But could direct action ever be possible without beginning in self/reflection, and with a desire for a different kind of organizing principle? All that has to happen through a local and intimate social engagement, which we see amateur film making as an example of.

Neil: And I’m not so sure if this superior logic you refer too, ever existed; an authority that covers all forms of action? But I suspect that, if it did, then yes the only means of transgression would be direct political action, which sounds like violence and terror. What we were thinking through is how, given the actual circumstances of State intervention: control of housing, work, food distribution, the broadcast media, etc; and the (false) celebration of industrial production, that the film club members on a local level made a space for “themselves”. And this space works on many levels. As a social club - these people were bound together by their passion for film. They watched and discussed foreign films in what looks to me like an “underground” network. To the clever and devious ways the film stock itself was siphoned off from officially sanctioned projects and used to make their “own” films; even the collaborative nature of scripting, acting, shooting, developing, and screening the films. So in this sense I think the members were truly productive, truly creative in time remaindered by labour.

And it’s this enthusiasm - for all manner of activities- that all political and economic systems are trying to harness for instrumental ends.

Adam: I think the dialectics which included emancipatory social processes on one side, and repression aimed at the conservation of old structures of power on the other - the dialectics leading to the awakening of civic society in the 1980 - has been changing dramatically throughout the last decades. What we have now is a consumer society where amateurs of any kind are not welcome, and professionalism has become a new religion. And I think this is precisely why it’s important to explore a kind of selfless attitude –that the amateur film makers embody- which is largely forgotten nowadays.

Neil: As for the big question as to whether art could ever be transgressive under these circumstances, I would suggest not. But it’s clear, even to someone who did not live under this regime, that ideas, emotions and aspirations find a form in these films that have no expression elsewhere. And in that sense they offer alternatives; mutual bonds of discussion and resistance. So no, not transgression, but difference.

The Exhibition

Our second group of exchanges relate to the exhibition, and how to find exhibitionary forms; of “reconstruction” or installation, or through the use of contextual materials -printed, projected, etc- that can set a scene into which, or through which, the films can be approached.

Adam: How to make this exhibition without it only (mis)representing a certain historical phenomenon?

Marysia: Difficult question, and it sounds a bit like a warning, and so it should! But lets start with this: What is my own investment in this process of representation?
On the conceptual level it forces me to deal with the historical phenomenon itself. It demands to reveal how that process was embedded, or not, in my consciousness. While we artists and intellectuals were all keen to attend the DKF (Film Discussion Clubs) screenings, no one I was studying with had the slightest interest in the amateur film-makers. Even less so when it was done by factory workers. Our indoctrination with the slogans of class solidarity kept us apart, until the events of 1980. So here for the first time is a chance to face those blanked out areas. In a way to acknowledge the repressed within my own relation to history. Of course, this cannot be easily done.

Adam: This is really interesting. I think there must have been a major difference between the 1960’s and the 1970’s as to how this possible creative alliance between the workers and the intellectuals was designed. For instance in the catalogue of the 1st Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbl_g from 1965 -which was organized and supported by local heavy industry- you see photographs of artists standing next to workers in a big industrial hall. They are engaged in a discussion about the technology of production, and on the opposite page you see the result of this exchange; artwork installed in public space, the ideal sunny space of youth, with the hope of advanced real socialism. Images of artworks and “production stills” are alternating with images of ship engines and gigantic turbines that this factory produced. What’s presented is a desire for melding together art and industrial production, work and leisure, reflection and action etc. In March 1968, the workers were maneuvered into a clash with young intellectuals and given the role of defenders of the nation and socialism, against the “Zionists”. The “Privileged Youth” were given a reproach.

Then came the permissive 1970’s under Edward Gierek, and an overtly consumerist decade, which brought some great and now forgotten films, mildly psychedelic imagery in graphic design, imported luxury goods for the few, and pop music through portable radios for everybody. This is the time when amateur film clubs flourished, and when the effort of authority is concentrated on creating this enormous space of entertainment, and also on giving a vast pop-cultural experience to the masses. This is the time when Park Kultury i Wypoczynku, a sort of socialist Disneyland, was created in Silesia, and when the organization of leisure became a political priority. When I think of my childhood in 1970’s Poland, I always have this memory of beautiful weather and blue skies always open between the apartment blocks. I think amateur film clubs were no different to other harmless activities such as DIY, model-making, amateur photography, sightseeing, camping or “being an artist”.

Marysia: Adam you seem keen to suggest that all amateur activities, including hobbies are the same. I recently came across an interesting review from of one of the film festivals in1969, where the critic Janina Szymanska begins with a similar suggestion by saying “ So amateur film making is just a hobby, some fun and a way of relaxing after work, not dissimilar from fishing or playing cards.” But for us amateur film making is a different order of activity, because the result of the activity –the films- are in many ways a reflection, criticism or celebration of the conditions in which they are made; and then, this reflection is offered –through screenings- to others. It’s difficult to imagine the activity of a fisherman or a model-maker being subjected to such social scrutiny through exhibition. So maybe, as producers of cultural artifacts, these film makers were closer to “being an artist“ than a fisherman. They carried a different social obligation.

Neil: We have the intention of “curating” three separate film programs themed as Love, Longing and Labour that run concurrently, in three different cinema like spaces. We want to reconstruct a small clubroom, and make an Archive Lounge. The Archive would make visible some of the vast variety of films, and enable our selection to be seen as a possible interpretation -one of many- and not in any way authoritative.

Adam: Well, how to keep the amateur film running and not let it fall apart into a series of disconnected film stills? I think one could depart from the very metaphor of film projection – a projection of a film image onto the screen can be translated into a projection of subversive content from the past into the present. And to try and free a possible speculative force of “quotation” from the linear history of amateur film clubs. I think the form of representation of the past needs to be meta-historical, in other words, it needs to deal with its own conditions; to represent but also attend to it’s own pretence to finality. This is all aside from representing the phenomena of the film clubs itself.

Marysia: Adam, as you not so long ago said yourself in Gazeta Wyborcza [national daily newspaper] “An exhibition is not the same as window dressing, it’s closer to a re-furbishing of the mind”. So the practice of exhibition carries some responsibility; it participates in the interpretation of knowledge, or experience and in this case history; so this feels very relevant at the moment. Currently, we are thinking of the exhibition as some sort of archaeology of a “double repression” in contemporary social and cultural history. Firstly, and as you mention above the enthusiasts and their products are dominated by the image of the professional in all aspects of cultural life. And secondly, the places to which the clubs were predominantly attached - factories and industrial complexes- are being erased from our European consciousness and replaced with images of consumption, shopping, service economies and communication. Things are always manufactured elsewhere.

Neil: I like the sound of this “speculative quotation” and that it could exist between history. Part of our interest relates to what I suggested above, in that enthusiasm rather than labour, is a potentially unlimited source of capital. So the possibility that the film-makers were truly productive in their leisure-time is extremely relevant for us all now. That is, given the current struggles to harness intellectual property, open source software development and issues around the creative commons, etc.
The growth in immaterial labour, service and communication economies mean that we no longer know when we are working or not. Free time disappears, and enthusiasm becomes a major resource for capital.

And I’d like to think that we are very wary of the authority, and what Marysia called the “responsibility” of an exhibition has over the material exhibited. We are keen to allow visitors a space for critical reflection on the themes we are momentarily “curating” the films into. That’s why a searchable digital Archive of films we have found and collected, but not screened, is so important. It means that visitors will be able to make their own programme, to complement, or contradict ours. We’d like to avoid finality.

Adam: Thank you for the conversation.

London, Basel, Warsaw, April 2004

Description

ISBN/ASIN

83 88277 33 2

ArtWords Link

Enthusiasm Longing

admin — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:57:37 +0100

Longing cinema
enthusiasm London 2005

Vol 2: Enthusiasm

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:04:32 +0100

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

April 2005

Location

Publisher

Whitechapel Art Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Fundacio Antoni Tapies

Designer

Gzegorz Laszuk

Body

This book accompanies the exhibition Enthusiasm; it features an interview with the curator Anthony Spira, and commissioned essays on the films and film programmes - Love, Longing and Labour, from Art Historian Amelia Jones, anthropologist Rachel Moore, artist and critic Carles Guera, political theorist Magda Pustola and previously unpublished film stills; it's tri-lingual.

The whole publication is released under a Creative Commons: Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike v2.0 License

from the Introduction to Enthusiasm

2005 marks the tenth anniversary of Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska’s collaborative work. They exert a subtle but pervasive influence in numerous cultural spheres; their committed art practice continues to generate networks of collaborators, colleagues, friends and supporters. And, despite the accelerated development of their art projects, Cummings and Lewandowska have remained deeply committed to teaching, they provide an inspiration to younger generations of artists and thinkers.

Over the years, each individual project has added momentum to a wider critical undertaking that scrutinises the invisible power structures, the modes of communication and exchange, that regulate our everyday lives. They have worked with Museums, Banks, Galleries, Archives, places of Education and Department Stores in London, Geneva, Copenhagen and Paris. They have explored the entanglements of art and capital in 19th century Manchester and researched trafficking and smuggling of surrogate goods on the Polish Ukrainian border; documented lost property recovered by London Transport in a single day, and impersonated a famous art dealer. Their projects, although diverse, have consistently engaged with the cultural institutions that designate and mediate art, and the increasingly devolving experience of art, to their public.

This publication forms part of the latest manifestation of 2 years of research into films produced by Poland’s amateur film movement from the 1950s to the mid 1980s. Under the Socialist regime, ‘leisure’ in Poland was organised through numerous factory-sponsored clubs, the most popular of which were perhaps those encouraging the making of films. This publication and the accompanying exhibition explore how such amateur endeavour became an asylum for the marginalized; for dreams of happiness, love and freedom.

In the summer of 2004, ‘Enthusiasts’ curated by Lukasz Ronduda was first exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. It was accompanied by a publicationn that explored the social and cultural context in which the amateur filmmakers worked. With a deft sleight of hand, the project’s subsequent title and focus has shifted to ‘Enthusiasm’. A move aimed at opening up the phenomena of enthusiasm to a universal audiences; and concentrating on how enthusiasm affects and motivates us all.

Ranging from short satirical animations and ‘experimental’ films to ambitious documentaries and epic romances, a selection of the films found by the artists are arranged in three themes - Love, Labour and Longing – for the duration of the exhibition. In this publication, Historian Amelia Jones describes how love becomes a highly subversive force in the hands of these amateur filmmakers. Anthropologist Rachel Moore situates ‘longing’ between ‘private repression and public violence’ while political theorist Magda Pustola traces how the films ‘inconspicuously transform homo laborans into homo faber. In his essay, film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski evokes the complexity of life ‘behind the iron curtain’ and compares consumerist advertising in the free world to propaganda under a Socialist ideology. Artist Carles Guerra meanwhile, situates Cummings and Lewandowska’s Enthusiasm in a contemporary social and political context. Grzegorz Laszuk, designer of both volumes has, together with the artists, sensitively and intelligently brought all of the disparate parts of this publication together. We would like to thank all of these people, and many more, for their shared passion and enthusiasm, without which this project could not have taken form.

We are equally indebted to Wojciech Krukowski at the CCA, Warsaw, Grzegorz Boguta of the Culture Foundation (Fundacja Kultury) Warsaw for his continued commitment to the cause and to Grzegorz Molewski, Tomasz Piatek at Kino Polska for helping with the release of the official newsreels.

Finally, we would like to thank the artists, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, for their unstinting generosity and energy. This partnership of institutions and individuals is indebted to them for their creative and inspirational involvement in every aspect of this publication and the exhibition it accompanies.

Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Anselm Franke, Kunst-Werke, Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Nuria Enguita Mayo, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

Read an interview between us and the curator Anthony Spira From Enthusiasm to the Creative Commons.

Buy the book from the Whitechapel or Artwords

Description

ISBN/ASIN

0 85488 143 3

ArtWords Link

Cinema

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Cinema
Film Club, Mechelen 2006

Not Hansard: the common wealth

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:44:15 +0100

Sub-Title

End Date

10 Jun 2000

Start Date

2 May 2000

Location

John Hansard Gallery

Body

The project Not Hansard: the common wealth takes as its starting point the founding of the John Hansard Gallery in 1979, with a gift from the Hansard family, publishers of the daily Parliamentary journal since 1821.

Hansard records everything spoken in parliamentary debates and is available the following day.

Over the preceding nine months before the exhibition opened, we attempted to collect printed material -not commercially available - produced by local and national clubs, societies, hobbyists, collectors, enthusiasts and associations. A sliver of that which is spoken outside of the professionally mediated.

Requests for donations were flyposted, features appeared in local newspapers, adverts in free publications, and spots on local radio and television. Invitations were emailed, posted with on-line newsgroups and spread by word of mouth.

Framed by the turn of the new millennium - the request for contributions specified the first issue of the year 2000 - this collection represents the interests and activities, the hopes and aspirations of a vast and varied society at a moment of reflection. It is a hinge between what has been, and what might yet be for themselves and their society.

The displayed publications open onto a broad field of interests -a space where representatives no longer speak on your behalf, or profit from your passion- but where the quiet curiosities of social life find their own form. It's possible to discern how humble DIY aesthetics slowly dissolve into the more glossy and aspirational, as obscure proclivities fuse with the commercial. The media constantly test the local and mundane for a viable title, seeking the market edge.

The Not Hansard project reflects the rich and sumptuous texture of the 'everyday'. An environment of endless curiosity - enabled by the generously donated publications - emerges; a thin sliver from the avalanche of the possible has been momentarily arranged.

A catalogue is available that records all of the contributors, it's intended as an appendix to any daily Hansard.

visit our friends at The Folk Archive
and at Hansard

Chance: films

admin — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:49:54 +0100

Annual Film competition at at the KFKM Film and Video club, Mechelen Belgium

Love cinema

admin — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:03:38 +0200

Love Cinema
Installation, Whitechapel Gallery, London

amateur

Enthusiasts breakfast

Social Cinema finsbury

Film makers

Vol 1: Enthusiasts

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

Location

Publisher

Designer

Body

Description

ISBN/ASIN

ArtWords Link

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Enthusiasm Longing

Vol 2: Enthusiasm

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

Location

Publisher

Designer

Body

Description

ISBN/ASIN

ArtWords Link

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Cinema

Not Hansard: the common wealth

Sub-Title

End Date

Start Date

Location

Body

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Chance: films

Love cinema