Amateri in Split

Mr Cole's latest picture, Amateri, or The Lost Innocents, will premiere at Kino Klub Split in Croatia as part of the cineclub's 65th Anniversary celebrations.

The video was made in collaboration with the Klub during his artistic residency in April-May 2016, and is inspired by the club's specific history and the culture of the Kino Klubs of the region of the former Yugoslavia in general.

A selection of films made by the students of the Institute's roaming art school, Unfound Peoples Videotechnic, will also play.

EVENT: Amateri at Smotra Vi – 65 Godina Kino Kluba Split
WHERE: Kino Klub Split, Ulica slobode 28, 21000 Split
WHEN: Friday, 24th March 2017, 19.00
COST: Free

This project was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

Split Log 6

Mihovil Pansini called his Zagreb ‘anti-films’ a “visual acoustic phenomenon” but it is the middle word that best evokes the feeling, of vibrations on air, of an architectural space to be filled, of an in-between rather than a finite surface. His opposite number on the coast, Ivan Martinac, regarded his own pictures as “films of state”, pyschogeofilmic distillations of a/the “shared otherworldliness” of Split on small format stock. Despite my narratively-oriented work, I feel closer thus far to these Croatians than the distant Belgrade Klub with all their ‘plot’ and “unembellished reality”. It is not so much that I have lost the plot, as that it has dissolved: in the spirit of Martinac and Pansini, hoovering up their images with scant regard for causality, and in unnerving contrast to my infamous Nexus residency in which I literally pre-scripted every minute of the whole three month trial, I have drifted these weeks, absorbing information and experience like a sponge, releasing pungent drips when squeezed by the participants of the Unfound Peoples Videotechnic.

The workshops have progressed well: the participants are broadminded, self-determined and curious, with a healthy dose of dissidence. Despite labelling this inaugural program UPV’s ‘Alpha Semester’, though, it remains very much a beta proposition: I am as yet unsatisified with both form and content, but these are early tests that need to be made, the felling of outlying trees (with attendant squirrel carnage) necessary to get our tractors to the rich bounty at the heart of the forest. We have, I believe, struck a nice balance of my meaningless English-language blather prompting homework assignments of serious enquiry inspired by mis- and partial-understandings of the obscure words and unstable theories asserted in class by a professor who must, above all else, profess to be a terrible speaker.

The Institute’s enemies will be bitter to hear it’s going so well that we have decided to extend my time at the Kino Klub for a few extra weeks. Research into the culture and history of the Kino Klubs, combined with preparing the workshops, has eaten into the time that I had hoped to devote to putting a new video together. Inspired by those historic enclaves of young (mostly) men, engaged in their ideas and their surroundings, creating and solving their own artistic problems, entitled, imprisoned and inspired, I hope I can work something out with their (mixed) spiritual descendents. As a pack-dog, a member of one official, one unannounced, and thirteen secret artist collectives, anyway, it is an unpassable opportunity to hole up in a Klub of huge cultural importance for a few weeks, to steal and to leak esoteric techniques and forge some irreverent tribute to the Yugoslavian ‘amateurs’ who changed the direction of Balkan film and art. I hope to warm up the sensors in the first couple of weeks of May.

Gastrodimensional cake-chart illustrating total of work yet to be achieved.

Unfound Peoples Videotechnic at Kino Klub Split: Mr. Cole's new residency

This April, Institute co-founder Graeme Cole will hold an artist’s residency at Kino Klub Split in Croatia, supported by Arts Council England.

Mr. Cole will be introduced to local artists and institutions, and create new film and video works in the context of the rich culture of experimental film and video work of the former Yugoslavia region. He will also hold a series of free workshops for local film and video artists.

During the residency, Mr, Cole will research the structure and function of the Kino Klub model and use his findings to construct a program of workshops and resources to explore the language of artist’s moving image in the age of the ubiquitous lens. This aspect of the project will be developed into an itinerant absurdist filmmaking academy, hereby known as the Unfound Peoples Videotechnic.

Graeme Cole recently completed his MA in Filmmaking at Béla Tarr’s film.factory in Sarajevo, in neighbouring Bosnia & Herzegovina. He is an independent artist-filmmaker whose films have played at festivals all over the world. Working mainly with Super 8 and other consumer formats, Mr Cole’s films take the language of narrative-based genre movies and infect them with an absurdist sensibility. Meta-narratives and open-source laboratory work expand and re-categorize the parameters of his cardboard and fog universe.

Kino Klub Split was established in 1952 and its activity is recognized in public as one of the original entries in the history of Croatian non-professional, alternative, amateur cinematography. Kino Klub organizes weekly screenings and boasts a classical film school program covering audio-visual media, new media, copyright and amateur film and computer animation. The club cultivates an atmosphere conducive to creative growth, freedom of opinion and expression, and the conditions for free circulation and exchange of ideas and experiences.

Mr. Cole’s project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

For more information on the April 2016 workshops and how to apply, please read on:

 

UNFOUND PEOPLES VIDEOTECHNIC presents

(Hrvatski)

UPV Videomaker’s Radical Deprogramming Program
“How to lose yourself, find yourself and lose yourself again.”

Artist-filmmaker Graeme Cole (UK) will hold a series of FREE interconnected filmmaking workshops during an artist’s residency at Kino Klub Split, April 2016.

The program is intended to reboot our assumptions and fetishize the tools and (im)possibilities of filmmaking in the context of the historic Kino Klub movement. Each workshop will consist of a lecture, creative exercises, discussion and screening.

Short filmmaking assignments in the form of audio-visual research will be set between workshops and reflected upon in class. The emphasis is on creating with the tools you have available (particularly camera phones and tablets), but Kino Klub will help facilitate filmmakers with other equipment where necessary. These assignments are intended to be completed as ‘homework’, but Mr Cole will be available for support where possible.

At the conclusion of the program, we will hold a presentation in which each participant will screen their work to an invited audience and we will preview Mr Cole’s residency project.

Local filmmakers and visual artists are invited to apply for the workshops, which may be most suitable for those who are just starting out or who have made a couple of films already. Please email a couple of lines explaining your experience and your interest in the program to graeme (at) zoomcitta dot co dot uk and include links to your work if possible. Alternatively, please contact Sunčica at Kino Klub on 0918965860 (Limited to 5 places).

Week 1 – Saturday 9th April
*Mythology of the Self *
There is no autobiography, only automythology.

This module looks at the personal voice of the filmmaker. Taking the genre of ‘essay film’ as a starting point, we will explore how the filmmaker relates to their surroundings and personal history, and how best to transform, disguise, exaggerate and lie about their feelings through art in order to reach more fundamental (and entertaining) truths.

Week 2 – Saturday 16th April
*Rotting the Image*
The odour of a film’s look.

All too often, lazy imagination, cinematography and post-production can result in a visual quality that posits dull or unmediated visuals as code for some kind of yawn-worthy ‘realism’. In this module, we will debate whether or not the moving image exists as an ‘object’ in the age of digital code, whether we should pretend it is anyway, and how it can be decomposed to evoke evocative new so-called realities.

Week 3 – Saturday 23rd April
*Something About Sound Design, Gardening & Mutants*
How to control sound, and how you can never control sound.

Admitting that sound is our enemy can be the first step towards learning to manipulate it against the audience. In this module, we will look at ways of artificially introducing sounds into the environment of our cowering images, and how to use alternative sound structures, associations and textures to infect the minds of unsuspecting ‘viewers’ through their ear-holes.

Week 4 – Sunday 1st May
*Setting Your Attitude In Stone*
Manifestoes, obstinacy & self-flagellation.

Every film needs a manifesto. You need a manifesto. Your wardrobe needs a manifesto. Your hairdresser requires precise instructions. This module will take a look at existing and implicit artistic manifestoes, and examine their power both as liberating tool and comforting straitjacket. Finally, we will categorize our own valuable faults and habits in the light of what we have discovered over previous weeks.

On weeks 1, 2 and 3 you are invited to join Mr Cole on Sundays to test our theories and collaborate on a new video work.

Miscellaneous Fragmentary: The bashful cue mark

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173645/