August 18 - September 5, 2012
et al presents two films, digital prints and a floorplan (for a moieties housing project at Redhill, Western Australia) at Jonathan Smart Gallery until September 5th.
The two short films (both around 15 minutes in length) are quite different in character, but installed to the same non-synchronised audio track - an improvisational intervention by Vitamin S et al. Friday 25 Feb 2009.
Film 1 is diagrammatic and image based, beginning with critiques of Israeli settler culture, the IDF and the great wall built by Israel to 'protect' itself from the Palestinians. There are aerial views of illegal settlements, and analysis of nuclear facilities and the force wielded by the State over individuals. A pencil is our guide through this film, pointedly keeping us on track with all the airs and graces of old school authority from the age of overhead projectors and transparencies. This is exactly the feel of the film, with et al out of shot manipulating the mylar teaching aids, filmed in soft focus on 16mm stock by John Cristoffels - the format being digitally transferred for projection.
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Film 2 is more poetic, more playful. It is substantively text based with et al's distinctive hand in various states of erasure. This work is grainier and more textured than Film 1; its rhythms of line and animation (William) Kentridge-like and well-suited to Mrsic and Co's sound. The first frame announces Two Truths - birth and death - and we vacillate between their senses of being and emptiness, their causes and their effects, for the duration. Bouncing between the void, matter, and the growth of the subject is a shifty sense of mass - as various claymation bodies enliven the film with humour, colour and volume - in amongst a preponderance of line and black and white text.
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Meantime, there are six digital prints brown-taped to the wall, each a high resolution scan of an altered, suitably annotated and enlarged old book cover. Material recycling is a typical strategy of the et al collective. From across The Colonial Empire, including Sierra Leone, Somaliland and Sarawak, comes economic and social data care of His Majesty's Stationary Office. Just how are those Imperial Territories performing? (It is important that they contribute!)
In two other prints, Mule News brings notice of land dispossession, while in a third, against a wonderful crimson, Mule announces "Falling Head First / Dropping Mind / Yam Dreaming / Koha".
JS
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Details of works
Film 1
16mm film digitally transferred
camera operator - John Cristoffels
Film 2
Super 8 film digitally transferred
Digital Prints
Mule News 20
Mule News 10
Mule News 41
The Colonial Empire (1939-1947)
The Colonial Territories (1948-1949)
The Colonial Terrirories (1957-1958)
from 2012
880 x 570mm unframed
A review of this exhibition, by Circuit's Mark Williams, may be viewed at: http://circuit.org.nz/blog/et-al-films-from-non-existent-in-the-everyday-world-jonathan-smart-gallery-aug-18-sep-5-2012