Frieze London have announced their 2013 line-up for artist films commissioned by Frieze Foundation and screened to coincide with the fair this October. This year, for the first time, Frieze Film is co-curated by Nicola Lees (Frieze Foundation) and Victoria Brooks (EMPAC), and includes five new films.
Frieze Film is supported by Channel 4. The artists commissioned to make film-based works for Frieze Film 2013 are: Petra Cortright, Peter Gidal, Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Oraib Toukan, and Erika Vogt. This year’s newly commissioned works include a range of approaches, from the non-illusionist Structural/Materialist film of Gidal to the more freeform approach of Cortright.
The programme looks to interrogate and play with broadcast as medium. The participating artists will benefit from a production residency at EMPAC (The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center). The work that is made during the residency period will be shown at Frieze London and broadcast on Channel 4 television. In addition to commissioning these five new works, the programme will also explore the process and conditions of commissioning artist films with a think tank (16 October 2013) and a panel discussion (18 October 2013) in the Frieze London auditorium. Entitled ‘New Partnerships Between Art & Film’, the think tank and panel have been developed in collaboration with CPH:DOX, the CineMart of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and LUX, and are programmed by ART:FILM.
Nicola Lees, Curator, Frieze Foundation said: ‘Not only does this year’s programme explore a range of approaches to the medium of broadcast it also looks at the conditions under which artist films are produced. I am particularly pleased that we are able to offer the 2013 Frieze Film participants residencies at EMPAC. However, we are also looking to broaden this debate with the think tank and panel discussion that will explore the existing contexts for artist film and new possibilities for developing more ambitious projects in the future.’
The artists commissioned to make film-based works for Frieze Film 2013 are: Petra Cortright, Peter Gidal, Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Oraib Toukan, and Erika Vogt.
Petra Cortright
A member of the Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club, Loshadka Internet Surfing Club and Computers Club, Petra Cortright makes videos that intuitively play with online language and tropes, such as the representation of the physical body within the computer screen. DYI aesthetics characterise Cortright’s practice, which embraces and subverts the home-user’s attitude towards social media and technologies.
Peter Gidal
Peter Gidal’s starting point for his 16mm film is a soundtrack that consists of three lines from a 1,000 word story written by Gidal in 1971, read by William Burroughs. Gidal describes the film’s ‘so-called imagery’ as ‘a complex of barely visible cuts in space and time, the opposite of erasure, but nothing so much as visible’.
Patricia Lennox-Boyd
Patricia Lennox-Boyd’s commission for Frieze Film 2013 takes as a starting point the use of hands in the marketing of consumer goods to signify a product’s proximity to its means of production. She has described her desire to make a video that will be ‘touching’, ‘which is to say, someone will be holding a camera, which will touch a subject, touching something touching’.
Oraib Toukan
Oraib Toukan has an ongoing collaboration with artist Ala Younis on found film footage from the former Soviet Cultural Center in Amman. They have a working relationship with the digital builder Matthew Epler who designed a crowd-sourced database to globally identify 900 unknown film canisters in Amman.
Erika Vogt
Vogt has described her commission for Frieze Film 2013 as a kind of ‘anti- commercial commercial’. Using images including drawings and footage of friends collected throughout the summer months Vogt will create a layered composition that is interrupted.
Wednesday 16 October, Frieze London auditorium, ‘New Partnerships Between Art & Film’, think tank (invitation-only): This think tank invites experts from the art world and film industry alike to discuss existing genres and markets as well as new possibilities for developing films in a hybrid financing landscape. The challenges of new types of ownership, exhibition and distribution will be addressed, so as to develop and propose new ways of working across art and film.
Friday 18 October, Frieze London auditorium, panel discussion (3pm): Outcomes of the think tank of 16 October are presented and challenged through a public panel, including questions on film production, financial models, ownership and audiences. Questions that will be addressed include: ‘How does the institutional context influence the creative process?’ and ‘How can film and art productions be integrated in the future?’