Following the eight hour screening of ‘And I’ at the White Building, we showed a short film called ‘Not And I’, online on the LADA Screens Channel, between 24th Feb and 9th March 2016. ‘Not And I’, has been made by Reynir Hutber and is derived from the photographs, rehearsal footage and other documentation of this unique work of endurance.
‘And I’ is a collaboration between artist and experimental filmmaker, Reynir Hutber, and many-storied artist and notorious orator, Marcia Farquhar. The film which will only be shown once at the White Building is a single-channel eight-hour video of Farquhar speaking without edits of sustained pauses. Her monologue, occasionally interrupted or prompted by Hutber, is improvised and entirely unrehearsed.
‘And I’ is an act of endurance for the performers and, potentially, the audience who are free to leave and enter the gallery at will. The video, which is the length of a traditional working day raises the notion of thinking, speaking and remembering as forms of unacknowledged labour. The film runs for the full period of a galleries’ opening hours and can be played only once in any one location – despite being a document it has the temporary quality of a performance.
The work draws inspiration from playwright, Samuel Beckett, and artist/filmmaker, Andy Warhol, whose durational screen tests of celebrities and ‘superstars’ disturbed the division between a film and a photographic still. As the film evolves, the line between an artist interview and a performance for camera will be blurred as different ‘personas’ and ‘voices’ emerge. The relationship between memory and fantasy, as well as theatre and reality, may be called into question. The aim of this work is to evoke a, perhaps uncomfortable, space between interview, tutorial and performance, the tone oscillating between the mundane and the theatrical and the atmosphere shifting at times from sociable and humorous to personal, exhausting and obsessive. The epic monologue may stop being about communication and become, instead, about staving off silence.
‘And I’ is based on an original idea by Hutber and draws on the long-durational live works of Farquhar. The work was produced in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency and was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
reynirhutber.blogspot.co.uk | www.marciafarquhar.com
About LADA Screens
LADA Screens is a series of free, online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage. It is part of Live Online, LADA’s dedicated space where you can watch short videos and films drawn from LADA’s Study Room or generated through our programmes and initiatives.
Each screening will be available to view for a limited time only, and will be launched with a live event at the White Building in Hackney Wick, London. Online art magazine, thisistomorrow will also feature the films on their website for the duration of the screenings.
LADA Screens is curated by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). LADA is a ‘Centre for Live Art’: a knowledge centre, a production centre for programmes and publications, a research centre setting artists and ideas in motion, and an online centre for digital experimentation, representation and dissemination.
For more information about LADA Screens please contact Alex Eisenberg.
