Past

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Stills is delighted to announce another Cockburn Street Cinema a unique, open-air screening programme screened directly onto Stills' window throughout the long, dark evenings of the festive period.

Mastering Bambi

by Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács

Screening daily 12 - 8pm
Tuesday 20 December 2011 - Sunday 08 January 2012

Mastering Bambi is a recreated model of Walt Disney's 1942 classic animation film Bambi, in which the forest is stripped of its inhabitants, and what remains is a familiar but altered reality.

An important but overlooked protagonist in the original movie is the natural environment in which the story occurs- the pristine wilderness upon which Disney structured his Bambi is one of the first virtual worlds ever created. Disney strived to be true to nature, creating a illusion of realism and harmony as a metaphor for human society - Bambi's forest is depicted as a magical dell, rooted in European romanticism where the inhabitants peacefully exist.

The soundtrack is made by Berend Dubbe and Gwendolyn Thomas who have reconstructed the original film score, by twisting and folding the sound to evoke the dissonances in the original film.

Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács are an artist duo based in Paris and Amsterdam who produce works that reflect on the ornamental nature of today's society. By using intricate layers of re-mediation they animate myths that characterise contemporary culture.

Their works are shown in film-festivals, museums, galleries and broadcast TV. Recently including Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; IFFR, Rotterdam; MUHKA Antwerp; LAForum, Los Angeles; Experimenta Media Arts Biennial, Australia.

Cockburn Street Cinema is Stills' gift to Edinburgh during the winter holiday season - since 2006 programmes have included works by Robert Breer and David Shrigley; Jason Dee; Katy Dove and Sarah Purcill; Suki Best and Rory Hamilton; and Yto Barada and Bouchra Kalili.

Image Mastering Bambi 2010, 12.30 minutes, Full HD Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács
Courtesy the artists and Akinci. Sound by Berend Dubbe and Gwendelyn Thomas

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For the second instalment of Stills’ Social Documents programme Allan Sekula presents his most recent series of photographs Ship of Fools alongside his award-winning documentary film The Forgotten Space. Together, they examine the sea as a space of trade, work, exploitation, activism and the sublime.

The Ship of Fools events programme includes special screenings of The Forgotten Space; a series of lectures by photographers and visual culture specialists exploring art and the effects of globalisation as well as a new reading group where we will get to grips with Karl Marx’s Capital. For full details please click here.

Download the gallery interpretation material here.

Events Programme Overview

This programme is presented with generous support from The University of Edinburgh's History of Art department and the Roberts Fund.

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For Stills’ Focus Space Richard Williams exhibits a series of photographs and artefacts that examine the past, present and future of the once glamorous ship, the SS United States. The last, and fastest, ocean liner built by the US, its decaying 990-foot structure is now moored opposite an IKEA store at Pier 82 in the great port of Philadelphia, a place full of ruins of the industrial age. Now peculiar tourist attraction Williams presents the vessel as one of globalisation’s spectacular ruins. To download full exhibition details please click here.

Richard Williams is Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures at The University of Edinburgh. His books include The Anxious City (2004) and Brazil: Modern Architectures in History (2009). Though his published work invariably features his own photographs this is his first public exhibition.

Events

Friday 25 November 2011  Launch, 6.30pm
Friday 3 February 2012      Lecture, ‘A modern ruin - the United States in Philadelphia’, 6.00pm

This programme is presented with generous support from The University of Edinburgh’s History of Art department and The Roberts Fund.

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Stills’ Social Documents programme continues with Allan Sekula’s rich photographic and filmic mappings of modern life.

As a prelude to a new exhibition of Sekula’s photography, Stills presents a retrospective of his moving image works. Spanning over three decades of his practice, the films are both projected at set times and available to view on individual monitors. To download full programme details please click here.

Film screening times:

11.00 Performance Under Working Conditions (1973) 20’
11.30 Reagan Tape (1981) 10.38’
11.45 Tsukiji (2001) 43.20’
12.30 Gala (2005) 24.37’
13.00 A Short Film for Laos (2006) 45’
13.45 Lottery of the Sea: Prologue and Ending (2006) 27.30’
14.15 Performance Under Working Conditions (1973) 20’
14.45 Reagan Tape (1981) 10.38’
15.00 Tsukiji (2001) 43.20’
15.45 Gala (2005) 24.37’
16.15 A Short Film for Laos (2006) 45’
17.00 Lottery of the Sea: Prologue and Ending (2006) 27.30’

All films courtesy of the artist and Galerie Michel Rein, Paris. This programme is presented with generous support from The University of Edinburgh’s History of Art department and The Roberts Fund.

Social Documents is a trilogy of exhibitions that examines the emergence of documentary modes and tropes in contemporary art since 1990. Curated by Kirsten Lloyd the programme began in 2010 with The Ethics of Encounter (2010) and will conclude next winter with a group exhibition entitled ECONOMY.

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Stephen Sutcliffe mines cultural history of the last fifty years, pulling out the awkwardness of the archives of culture with a tender heart. Obsessively cutting statements from literature, theatre, film and television, the artist hoards material to re-present it in juddering, cut-up videos that shine with the brightness of glimpsed moments caught unexpectedly on a late night television.

Runaway, Success is a major new exhibition including work commissioned by Stills and is curated by Lisa Le Feuvre.

New work by the artist is shown alongside ten of his videos made over the last ten years and, invited by Sutcliffe, a selection of rarely seen, but much referenced, films by the American filmmaker Gary Conklin. This Festival exhibition launches a new Stills exhibition programme strand where artists are commissioned to both make a new work and to invite points of reference into Stills’ gallery spaces.

In both the new commissions and his short videos Sutcliffe focuses on fissures of self doubt that undermine the confidence of iconic individuals, revealing their failing as the root of their power. Obsessed by autobiographies of ‘cultured’ figures, Sutcliffe seeks out the self-construction that forms these ‘cultured’ icons, and how film, music and television have come to represent high culture as an attitude that can be adopted with ease, pointing to the self-conscious pleasure that conspicuous cultural consumption brings.

In asking what culture might be, Runaway, Success asks questions of the difference between the idea of culture and culture itself, proposing that the experience of art is embedded in the way in which we understand our place in the world through culture itself.

Film Lounge is delighted to present the 'Ages of Man' a rarely seen film, produced for American television, featuring the great British actor, Sir John Gielgud.

Gielgud, performs alone, on a bare stage reciting a selection of Shakespearean soliloquies and sonnets, based on the anthology edited by George Rylands in 1939, exploring the journey of life from birth to death.

Gielgud first performed 'Ages of Man' in August 1957 at the Freemason's Hall, Edinburgh to a sold out audience during the Festival. The performance was a great success and he toured the work all over the world for the next ten years, winning a Tony Award in 1959 for 'contribution to theatre for his extraordinary insight into the writings of Shakespeare' and an Emmy award for an 'outstanding dramatic program'

Associated Events

Image Stephen Sutcliffe, video still from Despair (2009)

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Anarcadia is a new film and series of photographs made among the desert expanses of Kazakhstan.

Filmed in a vast landscape apparently abandoned by colonial and commercial interests, the protagonists, an archaeologist and a surveyor methodically journey across the symbolically charged terrain.

Ruminating on their testimonies about the land, their narratives prompt consideration of its emerging yet unresolved identity and of the impossibility of conceptually and geographically capturing such vast, undefinable parts of our earth.

The 35-minute film installation is accompanied by a series of large-scale photographs of left-behind belongings and abandoned shelters which temporarily remain despite the impossibility of permanence in this shifting, elemental landscape.

Originally from Scotland, Ruth Maclennan lives and works in London (UK). Ruth devises curatorial and collaborative art projects to enable new contexts for making, experiencing and questioning art and its relation to other areas of life.

Co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, in association with Stills, Edinburgh, Ffotogallery, Cardiff and Castefield, Manchester. Funded by Arts Council England, and with the generous support of the British Council. Additional support from the Henry Moore Foundation

Produced with support from                             Artist talk is supported by    

Image Desert Mine Desert, Ruth Maclennan, 2011 

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Launching Friday 17 December 6pm - 9pm 

Screening daily 4pm - 9pm 18 - 24 and 26 - 30 December 2010 FREE

Robert Breer       A Man And His Dog Out For Air   1958   1'56

David Shrigley    Conveyer Belt                            2008   3'07

Curated by Debi Banerjee and Kim Knowles 

Every year Stills lights up the dark winter evenings by projecting short films into our gallery window. This time Cockburn Street Cinema will screen two playful animations which bring the humble black line to life; A Man And His Dog Out For Air by American, experimental artist and animator, Robert Breer and Conveyer Belt by David Shrigley, the Glasgow-based artist whose work encompasses drawing, sculpture, photography, animation and music.

These two films, made fifty years apart, bring together complementary historical and contemporary perspectives on animated drawing. Their use of the black line against the white ground, alongside the rhythm and humour makes them a fascinating double act.

Breer started his career as a painter and began to experiment with animation in the late 1940s. In A Man And His Dog Out For Air Breer adopts a deceptively simple technique, evocative of the artist Paul Klee's approach to drawing. The result is an animated sequence of abstract line drawings which continually disperse and reform.

Also screening is David Shrigley's Conveyer Belt; a series of random and increasingly obscure objects appear and disappear across the frame in a curiously deadpan manner. Shrigley is best known for his humorous drawings and sharp wit.

Image A Man And His Dog Out for Air, Robert Breer (courtesy of LUX, London) and Coveyer Belt, David Shrigley (courtesy of the artist) 

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Renzo Martens: Episode III- Enjoy Poverty (2009) Saturday 6 November - Friday 12 November
Artur Żmijewski: Repetition (2005) Saturday 13 November - Friday 19 November
Frederick Wiseman: Primate (1974) Saturday 20 November - Friday 26 November

When artists site their practice within the fabric of social relations, documentary modes often play a central role in mediating events and experiences. Though the resulting material often bears a close resemblance to ethnographic mapping, investigative journalism or even community work, in contrast to the strict ethical codes to which these disciplines adhere many of today's artists operate in somewhat murkier waters. Working outside - or even deliberately corrupting - accepted conventions and frameworks, the artists participating in this two-part exhibition find alternative means to engage with social realities in situations of war, sex and political urgency.

Download curator Kirsten Lloyd's essay 'The Ethics of Encounter' published in Artpulse magazine, Summer 2011, here.

A series of week-long presentations of three individual film works which interrogate the operations and effects of power launched The Ethics of Encounter programme.

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During the 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival Stills presents the first solo exhibition in Scotland of Glasgow based artists Alexander and Susan Maris. The Pursuit of Fidelity (a retrospective), curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, takes a journey through the last twenty years of the artists’ practice. Moving across and between the mediums of photography, sound, sculpture, painting and drawing, this exhibition examines ideas of representation, truth and temporality.

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