Join Rita Says and the Jerico Orchestra for the screening of nine new films, followed by a live, improvised, audience-led choral performance.
[ID: Grainy black and white image showing the hips of a person wearing black underwear and fishnet stockings; around their waist is a thick black leather belt, on their hand in a black glove, and they are holding a knife]
Doors: 7:00pm (the first film will start promptly at 7.30pm)
Tickets £5 OTD or in advance via the link below
We are delighted to announce an evening of new film works and live performance presented by Rita Says and The Jerico Orchestra.
These film works, made over the last two years, combine references to fine art performance, documentary practice, LGBTIQ historical recordings, as well as transness and neurodiversity as an inspirational artistic resource. Covering Fluxus performance practice, the effect of AI on human communication, the politics of mental health diagnosis, people processes in contemporary music (Cornelius Cardew/La Monte Young) and the relationship between the history of experimental music and fine art gallery performance, these new films are an attempt to validate the moving image as an expressive form in an image-saturated world. The screenings will be followed by a live, improvisational performance.
Rita Says and The Jerico Orchestra are a live art project dedicated to exploring the connection between Fine Art Performance and the history of experimental music.
Notes on the films:
Everything We Know About You [10 mins]
This new piece by Roland Denning explores the effect of AI on human intercommunication and political opinion. Using a corporate AI program designed to generate an “authentic “ human spokesperson the movie looks at how we are subtly manipulated by algorithms and sales technology.
Hands Speak [5 mins]
Shot in 2020 at Our Wonderful Culture this piece references Warhol's Chelsea Girls through its use of split screen framing, high contrast film and improvised dialogue and action. Locked into an empty art gallery the cast pass the time by getting stoned and playing a series of games designed to break down habitual patterns of behavior.
Clank [2 mins]
A re-edited fragment of performance documentation from an action at Hundred Years Gallery.
Stag Reel: 001-IK [2 mins]
This performance film references the 1940s mail order 8mm stag movies created by Irving Klaw at his 42nd Street studio Movie Star News. Part fetish film and part Kurt Kren/Vienna Group homage, the piece was shot on super 8mm film and transferred to digital. The music is an improvised choral piece created by cast member Serena Bobowski.
Schreber and Me [20 mins]
My own gender transition compared against the life and ideas of the celebrated 19th Century psychiatric patient Daniel Paul Schreber as described in his book, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.
38D [10 mins]
An ongoing work in progress that deals with trans female, Cis female, hetero male and trans male attitudes to breast enhancement surgery… the good bits, the bad bits and everything in between.
Fluxus: 3 Easy Pieces Number 2 [10 mins]
3 more versions of classic Fluxus pieces, some known, others not so well known but all relevant and a continuing source of inspiration.
Composition 1960 Number 7 by La Monte Young (Waterloo Festival version) [8 mins]
This is our take on La Monte Young's groundbreaking minimalist work commissioned by Euchar Gravina for The Waterloo Festival. All voices were submitted online by members of the public: people processes expressed in musical form. An aesthetic model for an ideal political program.
I Found Malevich [20 mins]
In 2020 an American art collector called Ron Pollard asked if he could use our version of Symphony For Sirens (Arseny Avraamov) as part of the soundtrack of a movie he was making, a road movie telling the story behind a haul of paintings he had discovered some years earlier. Of course I said yes, and there began a collaboration with Ron over the last 2 years piecing the movie together during weekly zoom calls and emails, fine tuning the music and visuals to bring justice to his wonderful collection of Russian Futurist and Constructivist Art. This movie is a poetic meditation on art, love, loss and the passing of time as reflected in the Denver landscape and the surfaces of orphan painting: it's a poem dedicated to Russian Revolutionary culture and the obsessive passion of a born collector. This film stands as a poignant reminder of the beauty and fragility of Russian Revolutionary art and as a sad reflection on how much times have changed.