The Measure of It
Performance and artist’s talk: Kayla Parker
Studio One at Plymouth Arts Centre
Wednesday 28 April 2010
6.00pm – 8.30pm
Thanks to Stuart Moore and Jude Bryson-Meehan; Caroline
Mawdsley and Plymouth Arts Centre; the South West Film and
Television Archive; and the Faculty of Arts at University
of Plymouth.
The Measure of It is supported by a research award
from MADr, the Centre for Media, Art and Design Research at
University of Plymouth
Exploration of feminine landscapes
“The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were
made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman
takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of
suspicion.”
‘Orlando’ (1928) Virginia Woolf, Selected works of
Virginia Woolf p. 490
Programme 1: films screened
1. Nuclear Family 4min 15sec
1990
Autobiographical film in which the film-maker’s mother
recalls incidents from her daughter's childhood in a
Somerset mining village, and the three imaginary friends,
two with red hair and one with dark hair, who ‘came down
from the stars’.
2. Unknown Woman 8min 45sec
1991
A woman's psychological journey filled with suspense and
pursuit, which uses a mixture of drawn animation,
stop-motion and live-action footage; originated from dreams
of a woman and a crow, in which the two beings shared one
sentience.
3. Cage of Flame 9min 40sec
1992
A bewitching celebration of menstruation that uses a
variety of animation techniques from pixillation to scratch
on film. An antidote to the vacuous sanitised view of
menstruation promoted by advertising.
“A dream life of angels. What wings really mean. The wise
wound and its belly music. Desire is vulvic and creativity
claims the calendar of bodies.” (Gareth Evans for Animate)
4. As Yet Unseen 2min 15sec
1994
A personal view of the relationship between daughter and
mother, set in a room which is poised on the threshold of
birth or death. The room is at first blank, colourless; we
enter through the window like an intruder or ghost. The
room becomes literally a ‘living room’ as elements within
it come to life; memories of early childhood are activated
and set in motion.
Running time: 35 minutes
Programme 2: films screened
“… when a familiar image grows to the
dimensions of the sky, one is suddenly struck by the
impression that, correlatively, familiar objects become the
miniatures of a world. Macrocosm and microcosm are
correlated.”
The poetics of space (1958) Gaston Bachelard pp.
169 - 170
1. Walking Out 10min 2000
The third in a series of 16mm films in which the form of
the non/narrative, and the depiction of an ‘other’ reality
and psychological landscape was driven by the dreams
experienced during the process of making of the film;
Unknown Woman is the first,
Cage of Flame the second.
The form of the work develops organically,
intuitively, and through dreams. The pattern emerges
step-by-step, frame by frame.
Projected onto the window of the Norwich Gallery during the
exhibition Animation: synaesthesia in the experimental
animated film (2001) curated by Suzie Hanna; after dark the film became
visible to people in the street outside.
2. Heirloom loop 2008
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; the title; ‘heir’ is a
homophone of ‘hair’.
3. Hold loop 2008
Dressmaker’s pins, buttons, small metal screws, plastic and
silver rings: a collection of ‘found objects’, once used to
bind things, and people, together: they have been lost or
discarded, then rediscovered and printed into the emulsion
of 16mm black and white negative film using household
bleach: leaving a trace of their presence falling through
time and space. Shown as large-scale projection onto the
exterior wall of the Davy Building at University of
Plymouth for Peninsula Arts’ British Animation
Awards (2008) screenings in the Jill Craigie cinema.
4. The Measure of It loop 2010 work-in-progress
16mm scroll, the length (time) determined by the dimensions
of my body (space): the ‘skin’ of the film is pierced with
tiny holes using the needle of a dressmaker’s electric
sewing machine (unthreaded). During projection
constellations appear.
5. The Measure of It loop 2010 work-in-progress
Projection of 16mm film scroll, the length (time) of which
is determined by the distance (space) between my
outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip. I draw the
landscape I can see from Studio One in the time it takes to
project the 16mm films in programme 1: marking the black
emulsion with a surgical scalpel, I use the windowpane as a
lightbox.
Running time: 15 - 20 minutes
Interval with refreshments: 10 – 15 minutes
Programme 3: film screened
1. Meshes of the Afternoon
Maya Deren / 1943 / b/w / silent / 12
minutes
Filmed by her second husband Alexander Hammid; and made
originally as a silent film, with the soundscape composed
by her third husband Teiji Ito in 1959. The film won the
Grand Prix Internationale at the Cannes Film Festival in
1947.
Shot in two weeks, during World War II on a borrowed 16mm
camera, the prevailing atmosphere of unease, fear and
instability saturates the film: as European immigrants to
the United States, during this period both Deren and Hammid
would have felt particularly alienated from North American
culture.
She seized upon the 16mm format used by amateurs and to
film documentary footage during the Second World War; and
in 1946 set up the first screenings of independently-made
16mm films in a cinema. She also initiated the idea of the
film tour and co-founded the Creative Film Foundation in
1954.
Deren composed and constructed her films in great detail,
and was a meticulous editor. She wrote extensively about
film, including An anagram of ideas on art, form and
film in 1946, in which she emphasized film-making as a
matrix or anagram:
“In an anagram all the elements exist in a simultaneous
relationship. Consequently, within it, nothing is first and
nothing is last; nothing is future and nothing is past;
nothing is old and nothing is new… Each element of an
anagram is so related to the whole that no one of them may
be changed without affecting its series and so affecting
the whole. And conversely the whole is so related to every
part that whether one reads horizontally, vertically,
diagonally or even in reverse, the logic of the whole is
not disrupted, but remains intact.”
Running time: 45 – 60 minutes including discussion
Ends 8.30pm
Running times are approximate
Contact: kayla.parker@plymouth.ac.uk
http://www.kaylaparker.co.uk
http://www.sundog.co.uk