“Kubelka’s cinema is like a piece of crystal, or some other object of nature: it does not look like it was produced by man...” (Jonas Mekas)

Beginning his work in film in the early '50s, Austrian Peter Kubelka is one of the world’s most ardent proponents of avant-garde cinema. In the '70s he embarked upon a life dedicated to de-specialisation, working broadly across film, cooking, archeology, music and cultural history in an attempt to evade being labeled as a filmmaking virtuoso.

Kubelka’s spirited lectures are works of art in their own right, combining words with non-verbal examples and encompassing centuries of creativity. On this rare visit to the UK, he will deliver two lectures which probe the idea of evolution as manifested in the development of cinema – using his entire film output as examples and illustrating his ideas in relation to the non-industrial preparation of food and the development of tools. The lectures will provide an invaluable insight into cinema as a form of art, for both audiences and practitioners alike. The first instalment will centre around Kubelka’s ‘metric films’ in which every element is precisely ordered in relation to the whole.

Operating like a band of experimental instrumentalists, the French collective Cellule d’Intervention Metamkine liberate music and cinema from the clutches of convention through rich and intense improvised performances. Using eight projectors and the magic of mirrors, filmmakers Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel cast out, manipulate and combine beams of multiple images as musician Jérôme Noetinger reciprocates with an electroacoustic sound field generated by tape loops, analogue synthesizers and amplified objects.

Evolution’s annual selection of new International avant-garde film and video shows that artists’ cinema, and the focussed engagement it commands, is still brimming with potential. Beginning with a step inside the medium in a series of new works by Jennifer Reeves, Joe Gilmore and Paul Emery, Kyle Canterbury, Simon Payne and Thorsten Fleisch. Moving on to four works by Jacqueline Goss, Robert Fenz, Steve Reinke and Ben Rivers that investigate borders, territories and visitors; and concluding with three new works by Dalia Neis, Lawrence Jordan and James Holcombe that borrow images from the cinematic past and re-frame them in the present.

Compendium is co-curated with Greg Kurcewicz.

As a key figure of the 1960s Lower East Side arts scene, Aldo Tambellini used a variety of media for social and political communication. In the age of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, Tambellini manipulated new technology in an exploration of the “psychological re-orientation of man in the space age.” He presented immersive, multi-media environments and, having made his first experimental video as early as 1966, participated in early collaborations between artists and broadcast television.

His dynamic Black Film Series (1965-69) extends from total abstraction to footage of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and black teenagers in Coney Island. Tambellini worked directly on the film strip with chemicals, paint and ink, scratching, scraping, and intercutting material from industrial films, newsreels and TV. Abrasive, provocative and turbulent, the series is a rapid-fire response to the beginning of the information age and a world in flux. “Black to me is like a beginning … Black is within totality, the oneness of all. Black is the expansion of consciousness in all directions.”  Aldo Tambellini will introduce and discuss his early work in film and video.

The collaborative work of musician Benedict Drew and artist Emma Hart centre entirely around the moment of their making. Their performances are dialogues - first and foremost between each other and their respective sensibilities - but also between sound and image, projector and screen. During Evolution they will unveil a new work and perform Untitled 2.. In the latter a long reel of spliced 16mm film consisting of clear and black leader is fed through the strings of Drew’s guitar before being taken up by a projector and cast back onto the performer by Hart. "...hypnotic, tense and utterly entrancing, at once magical and technically astute, a brilliantly restrained drama between a projector and a guitar, between a man and a woman.” (Ian White)

Ad Libitum’s Improvisation n°10 is a beautiful silent meditation on nature and abstraction. By intervening with the light cast from four modified projectors, French duo Laure Sainte-Rose and Christophe Auger superimpose, and weave together images of the same landscape creating abstract seasonal transformations through radiant chroma and texture.

Evolution’s annual selection of new International avant-garde film and video shows that artists’ cinema, and the focused engagement it commands, is still brimming with potential. Beginning with six works by artists Jeanne Liotta, Neil Henderson, Mai Yamashita & Naoto Kobayashi, Edson Barrus, David Gatten and Rose Lowder which meditate on nature and the passage of time. Continuing with three works by Ken Jacobs and John Price that examine the toil of labour; and concluding with three films that deal with profoundly resonant spaces and their representation as moving images.

Compendium is co-curated with Greg Kurcewicz.

“Peter Kubelka is the perfectionist of the film medium...” (Stan Brakhage)

In this second seminary lecture by Peter Kubelka, the multifaceted Austrian artist and theorist will continue to probe the idea of evolution as manifested in the development of cinema, this time centering around his ‘metaphoric films’ and illustrating his ideas by interconnecting cinema, food preparation, the development of tools and the intrinsic relationship between art and life. Kubelka’s metaphorical films use the language of cinema to propose an ethnography of our time, critiquing subjects such as socialised behaviour, advertising and tourism (see the description of Kubelka’s Friday lecture for further details).

Made possible through the kind support of the Austrian Cultural Forum, London.

Ken Jacobs’ films, performances and installations inspire a sense of awe and mystery that audiences must have felt when confronted by moving images at the very start of cinema. Beginning his work in the mid-50s, collaborating with legendary underground stalwart Jack Smith, Jacobs has opened doors to a new and unthinkable type of cinema.

He was amongst the first to investigate unfixed and ephemeral modes of presenting moving images, from live shadowplays to performances with bespoke projection systems. Pre-occupied by the potential of cinema to depict utterly convincing depth and volume, Jacobs’ investigations have succeeded in extending the confines of the screen in every conceivable dimension.

For Evolution he will create an astonishing rare live performance with his ‘nervous magic lantern’ projection system. Using neither film nor video, the nervous magic lantern is as mysterious as the unearthly forms and great luminous plains it somehow manages to cast onto screen.