Year of release: 2008
Original format: Super16mm
Running time: 1 minute 50 seconds
Screening format: DVD
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Sound design: Stuart Moore
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk
Description
Artist’s own hair, collected after brushing and printed onto discarded 16mm colour negative film, using household bleach to reveal the yellow and green emulsion layers beneath the unexposed darkness. An heirloom is something that has special meaning and has been passed down through the generations of a family; in the title, ‘heir’ is a homophone of ‘hair’, ‘loom’ is a device for weaving together disparate strands that meet at 90 degrees, but also carries the resonance of appearing threatening, magnified, or hugely distorted.
Production notes
Publication and comments
Exhibition
2011
Soundwaves Festival, the Shorts a la Carte collection of 8 films screened ‘silently’ whilst each member of the audience curates their own soundtrack, part of the Listen! programme on the final evening; Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton, UK. Thanks to Philip Ilson, London Short Film Festival (17 July 2011)
Plymouth University Festival of Research: Materiality and Technology film programme presented by the Centre for Media Art and Design Research (MADr), Jill Craigie Cinema, Plymouth University. Other films shown are: Glass, White Body, and Verge 360 documentation (Monday 14 March 2011)
Angela Blackwell, curator of the Crafty Animators exhibition, with Animated Exeter organiser Susannah Shaw in the Thelma Hulbert Gallery; frame of Heirloom in background. Image © Midweek Herald.
Crafty Animators, Thelma Hulbert Gallery Honiton, Devon; Animated Exeter Festival. Other films shown are White Body, and Sunset Strip (15 January - 5 March 2011)
Shorts a la Carte Inamo Restaurant in Soho, Special Event for the 8th London Short Film Festival. Programme of 8 films projected (without sound) onto the diners’ tables; other films are: Twenty Foot Square, Verge: Nocturne, Small World, Poppies, Blue Kayak (Stuart Moore), Project, and Sunset Strip (9 January 2011)
2010
Hand Eye Visions: the Films of Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore Cine-City, the Brighton film festival; Lighthouse, Brighton, UK. We presented a programme of 17 direct animation films, made over the last 20 years, for the third and final Hand Eye Visions event, curated by Ian Helliwell (27 November 2010)
The Measure of It 16mm film-drawing performance and screening with artist’s talk, Studio One at Plymouth Arts Centre, UK (6pm - 8.30pm 28 April 2010)
2008
Media Arts: an exhibition of recent work by Media Arts staff, Scott Building, Plymouth University. Screened from looped DVD on monitor mounted on plinth (November - 23 December 2008)