22–23 April 2017
CITIZEN included film and video work from artists installed throughout the house.
When we think of cities, particularly when we are imagining the city from the country, we think of a mass of people – a single body – with no one voice heard through the cacophony of so many.
In these works, the artists are observing individuals and in The Neighbour Before the House, by Mumbai artist studio CAMP, we hear the voices of the citizen, gentle and thoughtful, describing a familiar urban landscape.
The artists who presented work:
CAMP
Seamus Harahan
Winnie Herbstein
Runa Islam
Workshops run by artists:
Rebecca Brown
Margaret Salmon
SCHEDULE AND EVENTS PROGRAMME
THROUGHOUT THE WEEKEND
Seamus Harahan, Winnie Herbstein and Runa Islam artwork installed in the first and second first floor rooms.
Spring Cafe open for lunch and cakes, 10.30am – 5pm
House and Garden open to explore, 11am – 5pm
EVENTS PROGRAMME
Saturday 22 April
11.00am – 1.00pm: Quick animation workshop with Rebecca Brown. Practical workshop trying out quick animation techniques using mobile phones and gif generators. Studio.
12.00 – 1.00pm: Heritage Tour
1.00 – 1.15pm: Performance Reading by Winnie Herbstein
2.00 – 3.00pm: Heritage Tour
3.00 – 6.00pm: In-Conversation with Runa Islam, Opening Reception, Skype Intro by CAMP and Screening of The Neighbour Before the House.
Sunday 23 April
10.30am – 4.30pm: SUPERLUX Workshop: The Observational Camera with Margaret Salmon. Studio.
12.00 – 1.00pm: Heritage Tour
1.00 – 1.15pm: Performance Reading by Winnie Herbstein
2.00 – 2.30pm: Talk about Hospitalfield’s collection of historic maps by Alasdair Sutherland
3.00 – 4.00pm: Heritage Tour
CAMP
CAMP was founded in November 2007 by Shaina Anand, Sanjay Bhangar and Ashok Sukumaran. CAMP is not an ‘artists collective’ but rather a studio, in which ideas and energies gather and become interests and forms. In this process they try to move beyond binaries of art vs. non-art, commodity markets vs. ‘free culture’, or individual vs. institutional will to think and to build what is possible, equitable, and interesting, for the future.
CAMP’s current members are:
Ashok Sukumaran
Sanjay Bhangar
Shaina Anand
Simpreet Singh
Zinnia Ambapardiwala
Following the group’s interests in thresholds of authority, questions of infrastructure and reconfiguring distribution platforms, and the possible cinemas that emerge, their long-term projects include the pad.ma and indiancine.ma online archives; Wharfage, a five-year project on contemporary trade in the Western Indian Ocean and ROADS, a current research project looking at the anthropology of roads in in South Asia with University of Edinburgh and SOAS.
The Neighbour Before the House is a video charting gentle observation of home spaces within the city of Jerusalem. CAMP worked with Palestinian families living in or displaced from their home to explore the rooms, windows, streets, fences, rooftops and distant places with Pan-tilt-zoom type security cameras. The video is an interplay between stories prompted by scenes coming into view and probing shots which try to investigate the current use of once familiar spaces. Historic sites, domestic scenes and street life are all caught on camera. The reality of the occupation of East Jerusalem is revealed through this slow visual exploration and mundane day-to-day happenings, commented on within the family groups.
Images: CAMP, Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour Before the House), 2001, CCTVVideo, 60 minutes.
SEAMUS HARAHAN
Seamus Harahan was born in 1968 in London and raised in Coalisland, then has spent many years in Belfast where he lives today. The city of Belfast is present within many of Harahan’s video works, showing scenes of residential and civic areas as well as observations of individuals and groups. His work includes elements which seem close to documentaries and to music videos, where he puts together footage filmed in everyday situations and pieces of pop, reggae or folk music. Harahan’s camera’s viewpoint, hand-held and often unsteady, gives the feeling of taking a glimpse from a window, over a hedge or as a bystander on the street. This approach enables him to capture natural, unstaged, behaviour and, in some works, for example Before Sunrise, to present a visual experience similar to our own viewpoint as we move through the spaces of our cities. His framing and collage of sound and image bring drama, humour and pathos.
In 2015 he won the Film London Jarman Award. In 2014 his work was featured in a survey exhibition of contemporary film and video works at Tate Britain, London and had a solo exhibition at Outpost in Norwich. In 2009 he received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award, designed to help artists at a critical point in their development. Seamus Harahan was among the first artists to represented Northern Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.
For CITIZEN Harahan exhibited a series of videos which show political landscapes, some overtly and monumentally political such as the Stormont estate and some which are linked to the individual experience of political implications, for example isolated, cheap, housing blocks and parks restricted by boundary fences. The works, brought together in the same space, add to the collage element of his work and can be seen in sequence and in reference to each other, opening up space to imagine further narratives from the collected scenes.
WINNIE HERBSTEIN
Winnie Herbstein works across a range of media including video, text, performance, sculpture and installation, seeking to investigate the silences and gaps in our ‘official’ narratives.
Winnie Herbstein was born in 1989 and graduated from the Environmental Art programme at the Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Solo shows include Before I could speak, X spoke at Outpost Gallery, Norwich in 2017 and Soft Shoulder at SWG3 Gallery, Glasgow in 2016. Recent group shows include Domestic Observations at Jace Space, LA in and Bit Between Teeth at Sattler and Potszch, Leipzig, both in 2016.
For CITIZEN, Herbstein presented a video, Circling Roads, which was created through encounters in Arbroath and the surrounding area. The work features a narrative which takes the listener from a road accident story to description of being consumed by nature. Herbstein also presented a new performance reading during the weekend.
winnieherbstein.com
Images: Winnie Herbstein, Circling Roads and Soft Shoulder, 2016.
RUNA ISLAM
Runa Islam’s work, often in film, explores the structures, materiality and histories of representation and visuality. By adopting diverse methods and approaches in the making and the presentation of her work, she disrupts and alters visual and architectural space, challenging the act of seeing.
Runa Islam was born in 1970 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include at SFMOMA, San Francisco in 2017; KIOSK, Ghent in 2014; Arter, Istanbul in 2012; Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2011 and Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal in 2010. In 2013 she exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah and in 2009 at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennale in Brisbane.
For CITIZEN, Islam exhibited a 16mm film work First Day of Spring (2005) which was made in Dhaka and creates a roving portrait of a group rickshaw drivers who were choreographed to rest, the opposite of their usual daily activity, creating a peaceful scene with in the hectic sounds of the city. The rickshaw drivers use their own cycle power to transport passengers across the city and are therefor usually in motion, becoming a little-observed part of their machine. This film turns the camera onto the resting workers and casts a gentle and attentive eye across each of them.
Images: Runa Islam, The First Day of Spring, 2005, 16mm film, colour, sound, 7 minutes.
REBECCA BROWN WORKSHOP
On the Saturday morning, Rebecca Brown led a workshop in quick drawing and collage animation techniques using mobile phones, scanners, flickbooks and gif generators.
Two examples of animations made during the workshop:
Rebecca Brown graduated with an MA in Illustration from Edinburgh College of Art and completed an artist in residence scheme there the following year. Prior to that she had studied at Gray’s School of Art, Fachhochschule Hannover and Cyprus College of Art. Although drawing forms the starting point for the majority of her projects, she tends to apply illustration to another artistic process; printmaking, bookbinding, ceramics or animation, paying close attention to the tactile nature of the finished piece. Her work is largely themed around storytelling, particularly the mysterious narrative within old wives tales and superstitions. Rebecca Brown was selected for the March 2017 Interdisciplinary Residency at Hospitalfield.
http://www.rebeccabrownillustration.co.uk
Images: Hand drawn illustrations by Rebecca Brown.
SUPERLUX Workshop: The Observational Camera, with Margaret Salmon
Hospitalfield was delighted to work with Lux Scotland’s membership programme SUPERLUX to present a workshop by Margaret Salmon on Sunday 23 April. Entitled The Observational Camera, the workshop considered the differences between ‘observation’ and ‘documentation’ within filmmaking and artistic practices. Participants were introduced to various historical and theoretical examples of both street photography and street filmmaking, including the presentation of Salmon’s own film Gibraltar (2013).
A practical introduction to two types of 16mm cameras that Salmon uses to make her own work, the Cannon Scoopic 16mm press camera and the Bolex will followed later in the day, before using these in a group filming exercise underpinned by the idea of engaging with a place in an ‘observational mode’.
Participants were encouraged to come for the whole weekend’s events.