videoclub is a platform for artists’ film and video. Its intention is to support artists, but also to showcase new artists’ film to the public to increase public engagement with artists’ moving image, and to create opportunities for critical engagement with contemporary art work.

Selected is a collaboration between videoclub and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), and is designed to present a cross-section of work by British-based artists across the UK. In the spirit of Derek Jarman’s life and work as a queer activist and convention-defying filmmaker, Selected celebrates innovation, experimentation and risk-taking in artists’ film.

Selected 5 features early career artists’ film nominated by 2014 Jarman Award shortlisted artists and touring the UK. Included in the programme are works by UK-based Lucy Beech, Tom Lock, Kate Cooper, and Min-Wei Ting presented in conversation with some of the artists themselves.

Friendly Things from the Future by Nicholas-Brooks

The only way she could ever look good is with distance by Richard Sides

This year videoclub celebrates the 5th edition of Selected by continuing to offer a strong sense of commentary on contemporary culture. Kate Cooper’s Rigged explores the objectification of women and the increasing plasticisation of culture; whilst Lucy Beech’s Cannibals presents a satirical look at the cult of self help.

Jamie Wyld, Director of videoclub, says: “Selected 5 screenings offer audiences an opportunity to see work by artists at the forefront of this cutting edge artform and enter into a conversation with them about the thinking behind their work.”

Selected will be touring to six venues in the UK, including: CCA, Glasgow (28 May); CIRCA Projects at The Northern Quarter, Newcastle (10 June); Fabrica, Brighton (11 June); Nottingham Contemporary (21 July); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (23 July).

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The theme of this year’s Jerwood/FVU Awards is ‘Borrowed Time’ and has been chosen to reflect the ever-more-precious creative time which is often secured through borrowing money and lingering debts. Additionally, as video is a time-based medium in an increasingly time-conscious society, how do the words ‘Borrowed Time’ hold up?

The awards are for artists, or collaborative groups working in the moving-image who are within five years of beginning their professional artistic practice. Applicants are encouraged to address the curatorial theme in innovative, bold, exciting and thought-provoking ways. Responses to the theme do not need to be fully formed proposals.

Two artists will be selected and their projects will be developed further over 10 months with a £20,000 award. The award also includes Film and Video Umbrella production support and two exhibitions at Jerwood Space, London and at CCA, Glasgow.

Find out more and apply online here.

Deadline: 27 March

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Video Jam & AND present Experiment Perilous Liverpool Anglican Cathedral 05.10.13

Following a recent 3 part UK tour, Video Jam returns to Manchester for their first event of 2015. Amongst a weekend of celebrations, this will be a special hour-long programme of entirely new film and live sound works to mark the grand re-opening of The Whitworth gallery following its major extension.

Video Jam have commissioned 4 emerging film artists to each work with a distinct sound artist or group to produce a film with live accompaniment. Especially for this event, the collective have obtained the rights to a small range of footage chosen by the North West Film Archive which relate in varying ways to Manchester’s social history and cultural development. The commission is an opportunity for each pairing to produce an audio/visual piece using their personal choice of this footage combined however they choose with their own visual and aural material. All of the artists involved will have access to the same archive footage, making the commission an experiment in individual interpretation.

Video Jam at the Whitworth Weekending 30.08.13

All artists in the programme have been selected due to their affinity with the city as a place of influence in some way on their practice. The pairings are: Liam Healy & Negra Branca | Amy Lawrence with Ella Deacy (and guests) & David McLean (and guests) | Ralph Pritchard & 2 Koi Karp | Paul Daly & O>L>A.

Video Jam at The Whitworth is a free event which will take place this Saturday 14 February from 7.30-8.30pm in The Grand Hall at The Whitworth, Manchester. For more information about each artist and their websites please visit here.

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Not Finished Article (NFA) is a collective of four established women artists based in Scotland: Nicky Bird, Alicia Bruce, Caroline Douglas and Sylwia Kowalczyk. They told us a bit more about how they came together.

As a collective we have distinct, yet complementary practices which together incorporate photography, moving image, the found photograph and the museum collection. Portraiture and community collaboration also play a distinctive role.

We meet regularly in our studios to share work in progress and support one another. The group has been meeting informally for several years including summer trips to the opening week of Rencontres Arles photography festival. We secretly named ourselves PPP for a few years and having informal catch-ups at each others flats to share and discuss work (PPP meant Photography, Pizza and Pinot Grigio). This name changed to Not Finished Article when we started to get exhibition offers as a group including 2014 Frames projections at CCA, GI Festival and Street Level Photoworks.

NFA will discuss their collective practice at TalkSeePhotography’s February event this coming Monday 9 February at CCA, Glasgow. They will also reveal a new collaborative outdoor work at Porty Lightbox, Portobello, Edinburgh as part of ‘Exquisite’ International Women’s Day Exhibition running from Friday 6 March until April 2015.

Exquisite by NFA

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See more art & design collectives we’ve featured on the site. Think we should feature your collective? Get in touch.

The third annual Tramway Artists’ Moving Image Festival will run from 15 to 16 November at Tramway. Steven Cairns who is Associate Curator of Artists’ Film and Moving Image at the ICA in London will be the guest programmer.

The festival includes programming from the ICA Artists’ Moving Image Network featuring work from Steven Claydon, Keren Cytter, Loretta Fahrenholz, Anja Kirschner & David Panos, Agnieszka Polska, Hito Steyerl, and Ryan Trecartin.

In addition to screenings, there will be live events and discussions around two themes: Sound and Music in Artists’ Moving Image and Contemporary and Historical References in Artists’ Moving Image.

For more about the programme and festival passes, see The Tramway website.

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One of the ways in which BBC Arts is looking to make the most of the BBC Archive is by opening it up to artists. Artists and Archive is a six month artists’ residency project which places six Scottish artists, who work with the moving image, at the heart of BBC Production. The project is delivered in partnership between BBC Arts, LUX: Artists’ Moving Image and Creative Scotland.

The six selected artists are, Kate Davis, Kathryn Elkin, Turner Prize-nominated Luke Fowler, Torsten Lauschmann, Alia Syed and Stephen Sutcliffe, who were selected from a long list of talent from across the country. They will create six new moving image works.

Alia Syed, Photo courtesy of BBC Scotland

Jonty Claypole, the BBC’s Director of Arts, said: We were bowled over by the quality of moving image artists in Scotland and are looking forward to seeing what the chosen six are able to produce. The BBC Archive is a rich and unrivalled resource so this is a unique opportunity for some of Scotland’s most interesting artists to create an eclectic mix of new works. We want to learn from these artists and see the archive used in new ways.

The archive stretches back to the founding of the corporation by royal charter in 1927. It contains a myriad of content, stored on different formats, from wax cylinders to pages from ceefax, 16mm film to video tape. The BBC archive is vast and packed with untapped potential, it is one of the largest archives of any broadcaster in the world.

Kate Davis, Photo courtesy of BBC Scotland

One of the artists in residence, Kate Davis, was born in New Zealand, but lives and works in Glasgow. Kate’s work is concerned with questioning how we bear witness to the complexities of the past. Her work is an attempt to reconsider, reclaim and reinvent what certain histories could look, sound and feel like. Informed by successive waves of feminist art and theory, Davis works across a range of media, including drawing, installation, bookworks and film/video.

“Normally I work on my own in the studio so it’s been wonderful to work in such a supported group environment where we are learning new skills, gaining special access to the archives and engaging with what the other artists on the residency are interested in and working on. The BBC archive is unique; it is a way of understanding how Britain saw itself and saw the world. The support has been tremendous from the BBC, LUX and Creative Scotland.”

Photo courtesy of BBC Scotland

This initiative marks the start of the BBC’s on-going commitment to allow artists access to archives. This is a truly exciting project and one which places artists and art making at the heart of the BBC.

The work will initially be exhibited through BBC Arts reinvigorated online platform, when it re-launches in June and then subsequently at different galleries around the UK.

For even more about the BBC archive and to catch a glimpse of some of its content be sure to check out Arts in the Archive at Art Screen, a new festival celebrating arts documentary running from 10 – 13 April at the GFT and CCA as part of Glasgow International.

Dazed Vision, the in-house video art arm of Dazed Group, launches today. It specialises in branded and editorial visual content for online, broadcast and beyond, translating Dazed & Confused‘s rich and unique print heritage for the video era.

Its first major editorial project will be the launch of a year-long landmark video strand, Visionaries on dazeddigital.com. This will see weekly video takeovers from some of the world’s most exciting creatives and collectives. Dazed‘s December cover star, James Franco, is first off the mark, while confirmed future Visionaries include Björk, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Kim Jones, Rankin and Warp Records.

Dazed Vision is simultaneously commissioning and scheduling a rich weekly content cycle across the worlds of style, documentary, art, music and culture for dazeddigital.com.

On launch Dazed Vision is proud to announce partnerships with the likes of Channel 4, Arte Creative, Copenhagen international Documentary Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and Tribeca Film Institute, with many more to follow.

The video arm is also working with a host of brands on large-scale moving image projects, looking to push the way audiences view and interact with branded content.

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American born visual artist, Michele Marcoux is from Cleveland, Ohio but is now based in Edinburgh. Here she tells us more about her upcoming exhibition at The Old Ambulance Depot.

The impossibility of memory – It’s all about telling stories…

In the late 1980s at a time when more than 2000 people a year were murdered in New York City, Southside Williamsburg, Brooklyn was an extremely hot and heavy neighbourhood. But it was also a place where I lived…

In April 2012 I went back there with my camera to capture the past, but where was it…?

The video shows me in the studio working on drawings for the upcoming blood/MarcyAV exhibition and talking about the inspiration for the show.

blood/MarcyAV includes myself, visual artist Michele Marcoux, sound artist Lynne Thermann and poet Sheila Black and explores the nostalgia but also the pain of youth, and the implicit as well as explicit violence of life in the city, especially for women. The show features painting/drawing, moving image, sound and text.

Lynne Thermann says “We cast back to our collective past. Traditionally, we honour our ancestors; however in modernity, we commit nostalgia. The show presents what survives from a shared city of dreams, which now exists only in artefacts of terror and love. We give life to the lost, re-animating the missing: young girls in the city, alive inside it.”

Sign up for the event on Facebook or get more info from my blog.

blood/MarcyAV is on display at The Old Ambulance Depot, 77 Brunswick Street, Edinburgh EH7 5HS. There will be a private view at 7 – 9.30pm on 31 October and the exhibition continues until Sunday 3 November 10 – 5pm.

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Want to read more blogs by artists? Look here.

1. Died Young Stayed Pretty by these_people

2. The Best of Things by mynameisgraham

3. Assault on Precinct 13 by Duncan MacDonald

4. Dreams That Money Can Buy by louisel

5. Donkeys Poster by colinkennedy

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See more of our Top 5 selections here.

 by John Gibb at Edinburgh screenWORKS

In the spirit of shared ideas and collaboration I’m going to borrow an analogy from software developer Brad Neuberg, the founding father of the coworking space. People everywhere go to bars. But they don’t talk to each other. Strangers stand around drinking their drinks, and they don’t talk to each other. People also go to house parties. But house parties are different. You might know one or two people there, or you might be faced with a roomful of strangers, but either way, people talk to each other. “People talk”, says Brad, “because of a shared context.” Shared context is what coworking space is all about.

Around the turn of the millennium, many modern workplaces underwent a strange new development: they no longer became necessary. For many professionals working in IT, software development, and digital media, the affordability of home computers and increased internet speeds made a day at the office a thing of the past. Who wants to schlep across town on public transport when you can work from home in your pants? While that may seem like a no-brainer, in reality the latter option proves not without its problems. For a start, the line between work and personal life becomes blurred and you’re faced with constant distractions while you are working, and constant reminders of work when you aren’t. Your house can cease to become a home. Then there is the lack of motivation; without the structure of the 9 to 5 many are prone to idle. But perhaps worst of all is the feeling of isolation. Your contacts dry up, you receive no input from co-workers, and you can end up feeling detached from the industry as a whole.

The alternative then, is to put your trousers on and get back out there. But if, like Brad, you don’t belong to any particular company then where do you go? The advent of the affordable laptop presented another option: the coffee-shop. Again, this is hardly ideal. You’re constantly buying food or beverages to justify your presence. You have to take your laptop with you every time you go to the bathroom. But also, you’re still lacking a sense of community, which is all the more depressing now, since ironically, you are working amidst a sea of people just like you. As Brad says, “coffee shops are just like bars.” In 2005, he came up with a solution to this predicament by renting space in a building and inventing a new word which would spawn an entire movement: coworking (no hyphen).

A coworking space functions similarly to the shared studio spaces long favoured by artists. More intimate than a coffee shop, it provides an office without the trappings of office life, and at a reasonable price too (coworks are often not-for-profits). People can come and go as they like, work, share ideas, and meet like-minded individuals. Built upon the values of collaboration, openness, community, accessibility and sustainability; it offers freelancers the opportunity to work independently, together. In short, everything that is beneficial about working for a company – social interaction, structure, access to free tea and biscuits – without actually working for a company. It offers users that shared context.

Coming into a coworking space to develop your projects tends to bring structure to your day and help motivate you to get things done. Being surrounded by people of like-mind, and having the encouragement and insight of others can only be a good thing too. Plus, there’s really no better way of finding new opportunities than to engage with as many people in your industry as you can.

It’s not surprising then, that coworking has taken off in such a big way. What is surprising though, is that what started out as a very tech-based work method has crossed over into so many different fields.  The Hat Factory, one of the first coworks set up in San Francisco in 2006, played host to mainly software developers and code writers like Brad. Now there exist coworking spaces for a whole range of specific industries, such as paragraph, a New York-based cowork, designed “by writers for writers”. At the same time, there are ones which offer an eclectic mix of people like IndyHall in Philadelphia, which states itself to be for “designers, developers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners, telecommuters, marketers, videographers, game developers, and more”.  It’s not just limited to the States either. To name but a few, there’s Bureaux in Melbourne, Raum betahaus in Berlin, and a flourishing coworking scene here in Britain, with locations such as THECUBE in London and The Hub in Bristol opening up all the time.

Edinburgh screenWORKS is a co-working space in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh, for those working in the screen and digital media industries. It provides quiet desk space, super fast wireless, locker storage, a postal address, free printing and a function room that can be booked for business meetings, etc. you can pay by the day or month and everything is covered even down to your free biscuits, tea and coffee. You just sign up for the time you need and get working. Check out our website for more info and get in touch to find out more and book a free trial day.

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SPECIAL OFFER: Sign up for July and get all of August COMPLETELY FREE. Yes, it’s silly season at screenWORKS and the glorious sun has made us very generous.
Simply mention our ‘FREE MONTH CENTRAL STATION OFFER’ when you get in touch and you can sign up, claim your free month and get working. small print: Limited availability. 1 free month offer per person only.

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