Modern Edinburgh Film School is an education, research and production project that aims to explore, through a temporary participatory film school, combined themes of the sculptural screen, narrative and space, event as image, and acoustics and noise as form. It is an ambitious project that develops over participation with moving image artists, a curriculum of published film essays on recent and historical figures in moving image practices, a group show and screenings and the development of a new film that seeks to identify and explore the poetry embedded in an “Edinburgh screen, an Edinburgh camera” taken from an essay an American artist wrote in the late 1960s/early 1970s about art and film in Edinburgh.

The project seeks to raise funds to assist in the costs of publications, and to pay a group of artists in filmmaking and the moving image to contribute to the School as visiting lecturers, as faculty.

The work has a venue for next year, to be finally confirmed  and has attracted some public funding and while I am attracted to crowd-funding it does not seem practical to the nature of the show, which is discreet and academic. With this in mind I have created a small temporary print shop, featuring five new limited edition prints in the hope that this will raise £400-£1000 to contribute to the print costs for the Curriculum essays and artists fees.

The School will present a series of sessions on film and poetry, with the notion of a symposium and graduation at its completion. These themes are: “On Spaces of Uncertain Function”, “A Transmitter of Mysteries”, “Filming Day for Night, its message is open and allusive”, “This space evaporates, pursues, too,  yet requests time”, “flowers and questions, indoor: blue, black, permanent”, “Sculptural revisions, additions, equally found on photographs, maybe poetry and  possibly films” and “Displayed revisions echo future actions.”

It continues my work across the possibilities of combined media: writing, performance, sculptural installation, photographic images and recorded sound, alongside a deepening enquiry into the constructs of  and ephemeral gestures of identity, knowledge, feminine connotations and perception, which has included curated projects Belle Helaine for The Briggait, Heavy Influence for ESW and The Consequence for CCA/Intermedia, the installation Leves Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heavenfor The Embassy, the performance Untitled (2011) at Edinburgh International Film Festival, the film Linda Fratianne for CCA and writing on Rosemarie Trockel, Kate V Robertson, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. and Kai-Oi Jay Yung.

Modern Edinburgh Film School will call for participants and contributions from Edinburgh-based education sites in moving image, and contemporary visual artists by invitation.

Find more about the project on Tumblr and follow Alex on Twitter here.