The Famous Statue of Klydroshi in São Paulo

The Institute's Mr Cole has provided a quasi-historiographic text to accompany Banzai Studio and Luciano Ferrarezi's installation A Famosa Estátua de Klydroshi as part of Move! Plasticity in São Paulo.

Do you have any idea how this might have happened? and 47 other questions, with no answers, in alphabetical order

It is something of a cliché, or better said “truism”, to state that a film or a piece of art that one has created does not attempt to provide any answers (“I wouldn’t be so bold”) but only to ask questions.

As a filmmaker and pre-maker, it’s an excuse that I unashamedly subscribe to. I’m dim but curious, so I think I’ve got things the right way around.

In the name of transparency, and of self-justification, I thought it might be time to share a few of the key questions that emerge in the work produced here at the Institute, plainly and unobfuscated by the convolutes of aesthetics or narrative.

Here, in strict semi-alphabetical order, are 48 of the most pressing questions that our work raises:

Am I in your way?
Are you some sort of idiot?
Couldn’t we just try?
Does this bother you?
Do I have to get up?
Do you expect me to touch that?
Do you have any idea how this might have happened?
Do you think I’m some sort of idiot?
How do you work this thing?
How far will you go to stop me?
How much is too much?
How the hell am I going to get out of this?
How the hell did I wind up in this?
Is doing that going to hurt more or less than not doing that?
Is that supposed to be funny?
Is this ever going to end?
Is this your dog?
Shouldn’t we give the whole thing up?
Shouldn’t we stick together?
What are the chances of getting out of this alive?
What are the chances of retaining my dignity?
What are you doing with that thing?
What are you trying to say?
What do you think that behaviour’s going to achieve?
What’s it worth to me?
What’s on your mind?
What’s that look for?
What’s the big idea?
What’s the worst that could happen?
What the hell were you thinking?
What time’s the last train?
Where am I?
Where did you go?
Where is it?
Who am I?
Who are you?
Who do you think you’re talking to?
Who’s going to clear this up?
Who’s that man?
Why are you hitting me?
Why did you hide it?
Why is he crying?
Why is she screaming?
Why me?
Why oh why oh why?
Won’t you leave me alone?
Would you like to dance?
Would you recommend [subject matter of film] to your friends?

Please feel free to add questions via the comments box if you believe there are any major themes I’ve overlooked. Once we’ve got all the key questions here in one place we can stop making art and hand it all over to the scientists to deal with.

Overkill

Yesterday afternoon I dropped into Nexus Art Cafe, scene of the Institute's now-defunct Universal Ear Studios complex, where Nexus Al suggested that I cast an eye over our former workspace as he'll be clearing it out at the weekend and doesn't want to chuck anything he shouldn't. Everything seemed to be in order, but I couldn't help noticing the rather excessive approach that had been taken to the removal of our Snuggle Office door sign, as designed by UNIVERSAL EAR 1st AD Rowan. I suppose the end of any snuggle is a wrench.

Post-brew, I had a chance street encounter with Girls Of Unfortunate Climes art director Rebecca Manley, whom I'd not seen since she departed the Nexus studio for the bright lights of London, leaving our versatile crew with bits, bobs, and instructions for a full pop-up set & costume design. Manley is looking forward to her forthcoming solo exhibition in Germany, where she is to create a physical representation of the entire internet. The artist and designer, who habitually wears a crinkle-cut Pringle around town, hinted that the work may involve a mirrorball, and I daresay there will be plenty of coloured paper involved too - as we parted ways, however, I realised she had neglected to mention whether her version of the internet would be functional or not.

Zoom Anthem

Every working morning at the Institute, we all get together to sing our anthem - Fat Larry's Band's "Zoom" - before the day's business begins. Whilst our Future Films department is temporarily relocated at the Nexus Art Cafe studio, they continue to fly the Zoom flag and can be heard performing "Zoom" ahead of the ongoing production of UNIVERSAL EAR each day. If you're in the cafe, please feel free to join them, or listen from your table with a cup of tea.

In the meantime, here is the first in a series of cover versions for the sake of appeal. You might particularly look out for Stevie D's choice to whistle through the instrumental section, and to punctuate the number with a kiss at the camera. Stevie D, we at L'Institute Zoom salute you and your interpretation of our official anthem.

UNIVERSAL EAR at Nexus Art Café

This May-June, L’Institute Zoom will begin reconstruction of the infamous lost adventure serial, UNIVERSAL EAR. Occupying Manchester’s Nexus Art Café studio, the Institute will create an open film set to which all are invited to observe and contribute.

The original UNIVERSAL EAR was an adaptation of the memoirs of Harley Byrne – arch-explorer and former postman – with each instalment recounting another of his adventures through space, time and sound on a mission to capture and make available for download “all the world’s music, ever.” Every week in May will see the (re)production of another episode, from Harley’s tussle with over-amorous humming killbots in 3000AD to his trip to the bottom of a teacup for The Song of the Biscuit Crumb Algae.

The Institute’s production schedule will be kept updated on the notice board in the entrance foyer of the café and at zoomcitta.blogspot.com. Café customers and curious cineastes alike are welcome to come through to the studio and hold a boom, paint a set, audition for a plum rôle or heckle gently from the sidelines. Various one-off training sessions and quasi-Redestructivish creative workshops will also be advertised in advance, and the production will be launched on the evening of May 6th with a grand Lumpenbal (rag ball) at Nexus Art Café.

For further information, please email info [at] zoomcitta.co.uk. The production will be documented publicly in the Nexus Art Café and online:

zoomcitta.blogspot.com

twitter.com/Nanneman (#UEar)

Facebook group

If spam is your thing, please sign up to the mailing lists at zoomcitta.co.uk and nexusartcafe.com.

BACKGROUND

Known to cineastes as one of filmmaking’s greatest follies, Francis Dove’s UNIVERSAL EAR is a rare and epic serial of which few can truly claim to have glimpsed, and none to have seen in its entirety. Shot in Manchester, 2012, with Harley Byrne starring as himself, traces of the original have been discovered by the Institute’s Future Films department using their modified 2D Quantum Propaganda Engine – a machine for dredging up cinematic artefacts that have not yet been created – and pieced together into a blueprint from which to start again. The ‘prehabilitation’ team, including director Graeme Cole and leading man Stewart Lockwood, will attempt to embody the spirit of the original 2012 crew in order to (p-)replicate the work as accurately as possible, whilst working with a fraction of the resources available to Dove and Byrne in the future.

In fact, the team will not even have the comfort of working on familiar terrain. Future Films’ lab at the Institute will be strictly off limits this summer while one of the major search engine companies maps the dynamic emotionality of the premises for its latest online cartography resource, an as-yet unnamed psychogeographic atlas of the known universe. Working instead from the studio of the Nexus Art Café, the production will actively seek support from the public in the form of voluntary participation and donations of obsolete clothing and objects to be re-imagined as costume and set. In return is offered the opportunity to train in the esoteric arts of Redestructivishm and to see the finished works broadcast to potentially hundreds of millions of people in art spaces, festivals and across the internet.

The permanent UNIVERSAL EAR crew also includes producer Nathan Povey; starlet Tuesday Betts as Byrne’s nemesis, ‘Being’; Peter Easterbrook as Harley’s brother, Santiago Byrne; Elly Strigner on Production Design; and Physical Welfare Enforcer, Fran Higginson; and intinerant Executive Producers Mick Sugden & Anselm Burke.

Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom at Nexus Art Café, Sept-Oct

Our redestruction of the 2112 televisual curiousity Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom will be available to watch in the most civilised setting of Manchester's Nexus Art Café for the next 6 weeks, as part of their She Laughs exhibition:

WHAT: Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom as part of She Laughs
WHERE: Nexus Art Café, Dale Street (opposite Vinyl Exchange), Manchester, M1 1JW
WHEN: 11th September - 21st October 2009 (Opening Friday 11th September 7 9 with performance)
COST: FREE
SPIEL:

"SHE LAUGHS

An exploration of humour in this context.

What does humour do, what does it say or can it simply function as something to be enjoyed?
From the slapstick sketches of Draycott & Trimm to the mysterious drawings of Tom Adriani this exhibition highlights the different styles & modes of humour within contemporary visual art and culture.

Funny things are made to attract us or make us think. Belly laughs, giggles & nervous titters give us different experiences within the humour in this exhibition; something ‘she laughs’ seeks to highlight.

25 She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.

Taken from Proverbs 31 describes a hard working, content & well regarded woman who can laugh because of her confidence in life. This phrase was chosen as inspiration for the title of this exhibition as an aspiration; how often can we laugh at the days to come? This exhibition hopes to celebrate life - a moment of laughter in what some see as an uncertain world.

This exhibition is designed to explore Nexus as a community art space; a project started by the church to create a space to meet & spend our days & nights together in the heart of Manchester.
Nexus is constantly changing & developing the ways in which it approaches visual art. Not being a ‘white cube’ adds a number of things to the work that is shown in the space & this exhibition, designed by Liz Gaunt & Dylan Thomas takes that forward in its installation. This space has been transformed as a heightened reflection of its Northern Quarter surroundings. There are many visual references to the shabby chic vintage shops & record stores all around making this exhibition something familiar. The visitors to this show know how to flick through records & are welcome to use the same action with the 12’ mounted pieces. Like there rest of the northern quarter enjoying the comfort of nostalgia, rummaging through like old records, absorbing their images the way you might next door or across the road."

My artistic credentials

7pm, and in our compulsory - as they should be - lab coats, the evening begins with Abramović's The Drill. Forced to stare unblinking into strangers eyes, we are slowly disarmed, but school hall conversation between initiatiates undermines our mutual separation and suspicion. Marina's personality is authorative but the exercise lacks discipline. No explanations, Marina, just drill us!

The tests continue during the more rigorously dogmatic performances, 13 of them, that take place simultaneously for the remainder of the four hour show. My companion unintentionally breaks the rules by getting close to a boy pressing himself to the floor and being sad with an iPod. This behaviour is clarified by Amanda Coogan's turn, in which she repeatedly climbs half-naked up the stairs to think for a while, then with dignity toss herself from her perch to a "mountainous mound" below. The challenge is clearly set: which one is the more upset?

Into the next room, and here is the man who has taken all the shoes. No! Half the shoes. The other half are where you left them. Subsequent debate reveals a divide in olfactory appreciation of the performance. Were the pigs heads real? No they weren't, I didn't smell them; yes they were, I smelt them. We will return to see whether or not the shoe-hatted twig man has moved or not, though either eventuality would be disappointing.

Eunhye Hwang's orchestration of four transistor radios, variously between her armpits or legs or those of the audience, works, and no-one knows why. Perhaps the faux-naivety of the giant 80s specs or the willingness to both feed and be fed jelly by us animals conveyed a generosity that inspired trust and receptivity. Absurd bird dancing may be just what we do in life, when you think about it, in the same way that crawling on the floor or rolling our Sisyphian selves upstairs and off institutional precipices may be just what we do in life, when you think about it, but Hwang's conviction is mainlined through instinctive, improvised relationships. On the other hand, it matters more that the habitual art of the competing miserables is always going on, even when you are elsewhere. Returning later to see what Hwang is up to now, we find Garth Williams (among other animals, targeted with intense arbitrarity) of the Institute's It's Nick's Birthday cast has been handed a transistor. He will later suggest the jelly was apple.

It is Williams, too, who suggests the lack of male nudity versus the lots of female nudity may be down to the inconsistency - and unpredictability - of the male organ over a four hour period. There would be no guarantee that all the participants would have a fair go.

In the basement, the man smashing a rock or something on some metal or something or vice versa is definitely the most saddest artist so far. He is audible from the staircase down which (rather than off which) another nudie lady falls slow-motionly. I wonder what will happen if she reaches the foot of the stairs before the four hours are up? "Only a fool looks at the staircase when there is a bare bottom on show." A fool or a well-brought up boy from Surrey.

The wolf in sheep's in bear's in woman's in wolf's clothing is fully explained in the programme so nobody is daft enough to participate. But the paranoia starts pulsing on arrival at the disembodied mouth of Vitaly Titov. Has the artist invented the moment in Russian medical history here recreated, in which the victim of a factory mishap was kept alive for 20 days as nothing more than a head? Or has he fallen foul of, or paid tribute to the Soviet state's notoriously imaginative way of lying about its scientific breakthroughs? Is the artist an artist at all, or just a man? Possibly a Soviet plant? Is the set, complete with antiquated hand-washing basin and "glory hole" through which participants are variously requested to feed or apply lipstick to Titov's disembodied mouth really here, or is it all done with mirrors? Are mirrors a genuine phemonenon, or is what I have come to think of as mirrors in fact just a continuum of of hard-working lookey-likeys?

After a pub debrief, I return to find my bicycle has been locked in the grounds of the Whitworth Art Gallery. Manchester's queer vegan poet and I proceed to unlock it through the gaps in the railing and are able, with mutual co-operation, to lift the contraption to freedom. A frenzied flurry of activity taken to satisfy fleeting subjective needs framed by an uncaring institutionalised urban space performed for the passive consumption of the UK's excessive surveillance network - just what we do in life, really, when you think about it.