Year of release: 2009
Original format: HD video (16.9)
Running time: 1 minute 20 seconds
Screening format: DVD
Credits: A film by Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk
Description
The title refers to a small, walled, city garden, a space that is literally twenty foot square. The film captures intimate moments within the garden on an early summer’s day: microscopic stop-frame animation of insect life in flowers and time-lapse photographs of sunlight moving across leaves is counter-pointed by the sound of birdsong, tadpoles and fish feeding in the pond. Site, sight, sound and memory, on a perfect afternoon in summer.
A ‘foot’ is an English unit of measurement related to the scale of the human body (there are approximately 3 ‘feet’ in a metre). The film looks at how we understand our place on the earth, as part of the natural world. Twenty Foot Square also recalls a psychic place, measured out in frames of time; a mythic garden of eden.
Production notes
We’re in the garden: I’m manipulating flowers and taking series of sequential photographs hand-held at 50x magnification (I need to use my feet as well as my hands for this); Stuart is recording time-lapse on a stills camera fixed to a tripod and making sound recordings.
Publication and comments
Strange New Times editor at Plymouth Uni’s first media arts festival The People’s Republic of South Devon (online) (24 September 2009 at 14:21)
Uni to host its first Media Arts Festival The Herald: thisisplymouth (online) (Sunday, September 20, 2009, 19:38). Plymouth: South West Media Group
Exhibition selected
2011
One Minute exhibition at Peloton Gallery, Sydney Australia. Presentation of the One Minute collections volumes 3, 4 and 5 (24 November - 17 December 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)
One Minute volume 4 international touring programme of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry: One Minute volume 4 blog
The first of the London Underground Film Sessions, presented by Robert Monk and David Sharkey at The Horse Hospital London, UK (6 April 2011)
Flatpack and Fierce Festival, The Garage Presents... by VIVID, Birmingham, UK (23 March 2011)
The Museum of Club Culture Hull (Saturday 5 February 2011, from 12pm to 5pm)
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: Verge: Nocturne, Heirloom, Small World, Poppies, Blue Kayak (Stuart Moore), Project, and Sunset Strip (9 January 2011)
2010
One Minute volume 4 international touring programme of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry: One Minute volume 4 blog
Kinofest: international digital film festival, National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania (3 - 7 November 2010)
Plymouth Arts Centre with an introduction by Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker, a Q+A discussion follows after the screening. See programme notes (6pm Tuesday 19 October 2010)
Stew Gallery Norwich, UK (18 October 2010)
PARADOX The Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, UK (24 September 2010)
Future Proof exhibition Marseille Project Gallery France (18 September 2010)
The Ukranian Art Festival Koktebel (7 - 9 September 2010)
Big Screen: Liverpool and Manchester in July, then all Big Screens across the UK during August 2010
Directors Lounge Contemporary Media and Art present One Minute volume 4 at the Meinblau Berlin (4 June) and at the C.A.R. (Contemporary Art Ruhr) Media Art Fair, Essen, Germany (2 - 4 July 2010)
PRISM at S1Artspace Sheffield, UK (14 May 2010)
Moors Bar Crouch End, London, UK (Preview 6.30pm - 8.30pm 6 May 2010; then screening all weekend 11.00am - 9.00pm 8 and 9 May 2010 as part of the Crouch End Open Studios weekend) (Twenty Foot Square 60 second re-edit)
2009
Media Arts Festival Jill Craigie cinema, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK (Premiere: 27 September 2009)