Jane and Louise Wilson at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

Jane and Louise Wilson, Unfolding the Aryan Papers 2009, Installation view courtesy of the BFI London / © Dave Morgan

A few months ago I wrote about an exhibition that would be opening at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. The exhibition, Unfolding the Aryan Papers is by Jane and Louise Wilson. I first saw it in London in March at the British Film Institute. I've already written about the main part of the exhibition, the video installation, in an earlier post so I won't repeat myself. Except to mention the space the film is being shown in - it's a box, constructed of a gauze-like material, darkened, and with mirrors which project the film infinitely on either side. The effect of the mirrors is very powerful though the temporary structure meant that noises from outside the box, people walking past, chatting, high heels on the floor etc. made it difficult to hear the film properly. Though this could also be to do with the fact I saw it on the opening night when the noise level might have been increased slightly by the wine on offer!

There was a large room upstairs in the Talbot Rice Gallery which contained archive material and new work by Jane and Louise Wilson which had not been part of the BFI exhibition. Old black and white photographs from the Ealing Studio Archive which Kubrick had collected are displayed alongside original photos of Johanna ter Steege, and new ones taken by Jane and Louise Wilson, and bronze sculptures of the yardsticks that are used in the original Ealing Studio photographs.

Once again what really struck me was how the re-use and re-interpretation of this material has finally brought it to life. It's very moving to hear Johanna ter Steege talk in the film, about the amount of time and feeling which she, and Kubrick, had invested in the project. She says something along the lines of 'this has brought some kind of closure to the film' which she was denied when the project was halted. I heard, though I can't find the reviews anywhere, that there have been criticisms of this exhibition as being too superficial, as somehow trivialising the very serious and horrific events it discusses. However that is so at odds with the impression I get from the film. The film is invested with the emotion and energy which Johanna ter Steege put into the original research and photographs for the film, the huge amount of research which Kubrick and his team carried out for it, and the amount of research and inspiration which the Wilson sisters have created with their film, and the photographs and sculptures, ensure that the installation creates a lasting impression.

On a final note about this exhibition - it's interesting how the revived interest in this film, through the re-use and promotion of the archive material, has reportedly led to interest in finally making this film. An article in The Times states that "Warner Bros still owns the rights to the film… and Harlan said the studio should employ a leading director such as Ang Lee, who made the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, to bring Kubrick’s vision to the screen. He said he would happily become involved in the project again." Although Warner Bros. haven't confirmed yet if they are going to resurrect this film.

Exhibition at the Changing Room, Stirling

Art is not a mirror, its a hammer!

An exploration of the John Grierson and Norman McLaren Archives.
11 July - 5 September 2009

The result of a collaborative project, this exhibition will feature film and archival material selected by artists Katy Dove, Luke Fowler and archivist Karl Magee.

Grierson and McLaren film screening

4 September 2009, 7.00pm

Featuring Hitchcock on Grierson

Please join us for the screening of Hitchcock on Grierson Alfred Hitchcocks tribute to the famous documentary maker John Grierson televised in 1965. Courtesy of STV

Refreshments will be served. This event is free but please call Tolbooth Box Office on 01786 27 4000 to book tickets, as space is limited.

Art and Archives

There is a two-day conference coming up at the Monash Centre in Prato, Italy, 'Archive/Counter Archive', which sounds really interesting. The aim of the conference is to offer "fresh thinking and dialogues on the current relations between contemporary art and the archive. The focus of the conference has been shaped by the ways artists are responding to the archive, but also by the histories - and future possibilities - of practices of collecting and drawing" (quote from the announcement about the conference on Art & Education, link as above). It's not something that is really a part of my current job, hence the reason I'll be in Scotland in July and not Italy, but it's a use of Archives that seems to be increasingly common - or maybe it's always been there and it's just that I'm looking for it now. If anyone is going I'd love to hear about it!

Although I said it's not part of my job, working with artists is something that has been going on for some time now at Stirling University Archives. The Archivist Karl Magee has worked with The Changing Rooms Gallery in Stirling in the past and there is another exhibition coming up which I'm pretty excited about. It is an exhibition about John Grierson and Norman McLaren entitled 'Art is not a mirror, it's a hammer!' (an oft-quoted line by John Grierson). The exhibition is still in the planning stages but going by the information below it is going to be a great show

"Launching a long-term project with artists Katy Dove, Simon Yuill and Luke Fowler The Changing Room is working with the University of Stirling to investigate their Grierson and McLaren archives and develop new work in web, music and film. The exhibition presents an exploration of the lives of Stirling born filmmakers Norman McLaren and John Grierson as a starting point for the contemporary artists’ new works.
John Grierson, the ‘father of documentary’ and Norman McLaren, an Oscar-winning experimental filmmaker, animator and artist were brought up in Stirling and both attended Stirling High School. Grierson’s contribution to the development of film is well documented but he also had an important role in shaping McLaren’s career. In 1935, when McLaren was a student at the Glasgow School of Art, he won first prize at the Scottish Amateur Film Festival from a jury led by Grierson. The following year Grierson invited him to London to work in the creative hothouse that was the GPO film unit. Several years later Grierson brought McLaren to Canada and set him up with his own studio and full artistic freedom at the National Film Board, which Grierson had established in 1941. A string of international awards for McLaren’s pioneering, experimental work followed including an Oscar for his film Neighbours in 1953."

Both the John Grierson Archive and the Norman McLaren Archive are held at the University of Stirling. I have included an image below from the Norman McLaren Archive as it's such a beautiful letter, and a wonderful example of the wealth of material in the Archives. I love how he finishes the letter "P.S. the fighting is nowhere near this place" - I wonder if his reassurances to his mother worked, probably not!

Letter from Norman McLaren to his mother whilst he was in China, 1949
© Norman McLaren Collection, University of Stirling

'The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation', John Grierson

© Sean Snyder, Index, 2008-9 Courtesy the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Lisson Gallery, London; Galerie Neu, Berlin

Ok, so I've cut the quote slightly but it just seemed so relevant to Index, an exhibition currently showing at the ICA in London by the American artist Sean Snyder. Index is a manifestation of a research project Snyder has been working on, going back, examining and digitising his own archive of images and recordings. In his own words
"Using archival and media resources, as well as references from the history of cinema, photography and art, the research attempts to define a cumulative vocabulary to approach the vast role that imaging technologies play in the construction of ideology."
'Optics. Compression. Propaganda', Sean Snyder in Art and Research: a Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, Vol. 2, No. 1 Summer 2008

The eponymous Index part of the exhibition is photographs of his archive of images and recordings, including photographs of tapes and other analogue recording materials as well as the digital devices he was transferring his archive to. Maybe this is just the archivist in me but I found it quite frustrating that there wasn't much, if any, contextual information given about most of these photographs. Maybe this was the point, to think on them as art objects themselves rather than repositories of information. However if this was the case then it seems to conflict with another part of Snyder's research project, a website from which the digital archive will be able to be accessed (which gives some information about the content and context of the photographs in the exhibition). However, even with the lack of information about the information in the photographs, they still make interesting images and it's always great to get a glimpse into the world of information that informs artists' work.

© Sean Snyder, Exhibition, 2008, DVD projection, 7 minutes, Installation view at ICA, 2009
Courtesy: The artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Lisson Gallery, London; Galerie Neu, Berlin

In addition to Index there are three video installations: Exhibition; Afghanistan, circa 1985; and Casio, Seiko, Sheritan, Toyota, Mars. I thought they were all really interesting but I particularly liked the first film Exhibition which uses a Soviet propaganda film from 1965 about an exhibition of contemporary Mexican art by Riviera and other Mexican artists I hadn't heard of before and mixes this with film footage of an art history lecture in a rural community. I liked the similarities it pointed to between the art in the exhibition space in the gallery and then the art lecture in the rural community where the art works were hanging on the outside walls of a farm building. Even in the rural setting the conventions of the art world were adhered too, the work was framed, revered and examined just as it would be in a gallery setting. I read, in the programme for the exhibition, that it was meant to be 'exploring the ideological basis of the original documentary' but it was the similarities, the adherence to cultural conventions, that I thought was most interesting.

Awaken awakened: project & process - research seminar

'Awaken awakened: project & process' was a research seminar at the Glasgow School of Art based upon an exhibition 'Awaken' which is on at the School of Art until 28 February 2009. For the exhibition designers based in the Department of Textiles and CAT (Centre for Advanced Textiles) were invited to reinterpret archive materials from the Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections Centre for current and future textile and design work.

© The Glasgow School of Art
John Walter Lindsay's travel journal is almost 60 years old

The seminar was chaired by the exhibition curator, and programme leader for the Textiles Department, Jimmy Stephen-Cran, with contributions from a number of the artists involved, along with the Art School Archivist, Susannah Waters. Issues raised and discussed during the seminar included the idea of the experience of encounter with the archive, questions over originality and authorship, and the use of personal archives and found objects in the creative process. The artist's talks were all very interesting, particularly as they all seemed to have quite different experiences of the encounter with the archive.

Susannah Waters, and a number of the artists, commented on the difficulty of the initial visit to the archive. With such a vast amount of potentially useful and interesting material how do you find a starting point. For me this highlighted the importance of the archivist as a facilitator, suggesting possible materials of interest, and being able to offer their knowledge of the collections to assist the artist in narrowing down the type of material they would like to look at. One thing which really came across in the seminar was the amount of inter-departmental co-operation between the Archive, the Textile Department and CAT, in order to make the artists work possible, and make the exhibition a success.

© Joanna Kinnersley Taylor Print croquet on paper

I think Susannah raised a very interesting point when she contrasted the artists use of the archive with that of the more usual visitor to the archive - the historical researcher. Not only do artists use the material in different ways but they would also look at and categorise it differently. So, to quote an example Susannah used, a series of posters of events at the art school were catalogued according to their content, e.g. 'degree show poster 1977' fashion show poster 1968', the artists were generally more interested in the style of the poster, the colours, design layout, than the content and context. This idea of different user groups benefiting from different types of cataloguing is something I have also had to consider whilst cataloguing the Lindsay Anderson Collection. The project I work on is in collaboration with the Film, Media and Journalism department and I have found it very beneficial to consult with other team members from that department when I was compiling my subject index. This ensured that the index would be accessible and relevant to them in their research and, we hope, to other film and media academics. Obviously you cannot catalogue a collection purely with one particular user group in mind but it has been very useful to have the insight of film and media academics at hand and I imagine that the same can be said in the case of the GSA archive and its use by these talented artists and teachers.

Something which I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the idea of personal archives, people creating their own archives as they go along, whether consciously or unconsciously. This related to my own work cataloguing the Lindsay Anderson Collection but it was also an issue that was raised during this seminar. I noticed that when Joanna Kinnersley Taylor was talking about her project she mentioned that a starting point had been an old map she had up on her wall. It was also noted during the seminar that the artists used their own objects, in particular items they had found and collected over the years, as inspiration for the project. This blend of personal, informal archives with the institutional archive is something that strikes me as being very different to the type of research that archives are normally used for, where context and source are all important. I also liked the idea of the CPJ's (Creative Process Journal's) which the artists worked on as they went along, documenting their design process and the development of their ideas. These CPJ's are works of art in their own right and could one day be valuable archival items for other artists and researchers.

I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m looking for it, but it seems to me that archives are being used in an increasing variety of ways to re-imagine and invigorate ideas about the valuie of the Archive. Opening up the archives to re-interpretation and re-examination by artists/film makers/academics seems to be something I’m hearing about more and more, though like I said maybe it is just because I’m looking for it?