Fugitive Images

Flat Screens 9: screening and conversation, with Alisa Lebow

29th February, 2012 7:00 pm 10:00 pm

Flat Screens 9: another superb and timely free film (Top Secret again, a UK pre-premiere) & feast event to nourish the mind, heart and body…

We are delighted to invite you to join us at the coming 9th Flat Screens film, food & conversation event on Wednesday 29th February 2012, from 7 – 9.30pm…

Flat Screens 9 invited filmmaker and curator Alisa Lebow to present the film. 

There will be another wonderful complementary feast, thanks to the excellent Therese, who will prepare on site her delicious Pizza from her portable pizza oven. So please attend, ready to partake, and do bring what you would like to share for dessert and/or drink. Thank You.

Due to the nature of the space, booking for this event is essential. 

Please RSVP to info@fugitiveimages.org.uk / Studio75 is located at 75 Hebden Court, Laburnum Street, Haggerston E2 8BG; www.studio75.org.uk/map.html

Filming revolution: as events continue to unfold, filmmakers try desperately to capture the events as they unfold. Snap decisions are made about what should be included and what left out, writing history in the moment. Filmmaking becomes a part of the making of that history, the document that can stand in for memory. Yet, without the time to reflect, to let things settle, to look from many perspectives, how can one really make sense of such momentous events?

Flat Screens 9 will look at a recent film about the Egyptian Revolution and reflect upon our desire for the immediacy of the image.

Alisa Lebow is Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Brunel University, also a filmmaker, curator, and film theorist, specialising in documentary film.

This is the penultimate Flat Screens, and the last will be on April 4th, with a grand finale and the wonderful Daniel Edelstyn and Hilary Powell presenting their new feature How To Re-Establish A Vodka Empire.

Flat Screens 8

7th December, 2011 7:00 pm 10:00 pm

Flat Screens 8: another superb and timely free film & feast event to nourish the mind, heart and body…

YES

Written and Directed by Sally Potter; with Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian and Sam Neill; UK; 2004; 100 mins

www.yesthemovie.co.uk

Preceded by a surprise short film; and with a filmic gift publication for all, in the spirit of the season…

Presented by writer, curator and editor Gareth Evans

We are delighted to invite you to join us at the coming 8th Flat Screens film, food & conversation event on Wednesday 7th December 2011, from 7 – 9.30pm

There will be another wonderful feast, thanks this time to the excellent Alberto, who will present his delicious Pasta e Fagioli with homemade bread, a most warming winter fare. So please attend, ready to partake, and do bring what you would like to share for dessert and/or drink. Thank You.

Due to the nature of the space, booking for this event is essential. 

Please RSVP to info@fugitiveimages.org.uk / Studio75 is located at 75 Hebden Court, Laburnum Street, Haggerston E2 8BG; www.studio75.org.uk/map.html

Sally Potter: I started writing YES in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City. I felt an urgent need to respond to the rapid demonisation of the Arabic world in the West and to the parallel wave of hatred against the United States. I asked myself the question: so what can a filmmaker do in such an atmosphere of hate and fear? What are the stories that need to be told?

I began by writing an argument between two lovers, one a man from the Middle East (the Lebanon), the other a woman from the West (Irish-American) at a point where their love affair has become an explosive war-zone, with the differences in their backgrounds starting to cast a long shadow over their intimacy…

Critics say it is…

strange and brilliant (The Guardian)

a breathtaking visual adventure (Salon)

bold, vibrant and impassioned (Los Angeles Times)

cause for amazement and celebration (Independent on Sunday)

a life-affirming film… if 9/11 really has ‘changed everything’, then YES, with its timeless romance, reminds us that life and love go on (The Daily Star, Lebanon). 

And so, towards the end of a challenging year, just say YES on 7th December…

The Delmarva Chicken Of Tomorrow

10th November, 2011 17th 12:00 am

at Espacio Enter Canarias

Black Duck are showing The Delmarva Chicken Of Tomorrow at Espacio Enter Canarias, 17-20 of November 2011. 

full program here


Flat Screens 7

9th November, 2011 7:00 pm 10:00 pm

This event is now FULL, to reserve a seat on the waiting list please email info@fugitiveimages.org.uk

Flat Screens 7: another incredible, timely but not secret film (this time)

…But not seen here for a long time. This is wrong and is being remedied here, now…

Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000

Directed by Alain Tanner; written with John Berger; Switzerland; 1976; 1 hour 56 mins; Subtitled

With short readings from John Berger’s work and a free 96pp catalogue for all attendees, examining John Berger’s life and work, with original writings by Berger, Michael Ondaatje, Geoff Dyer, Anne Michaels etc…www.johnberger.org

 Presented by writer, curator and editor Gareth Evans 

We are delighted to ask you to join us at the 7th Flat Screens screening &conversation on Wednesday 9th November 2011, from 7 – 9.30pm.

Lasse will be there to make a most amazing feast, his Swedish specialty, Jansons Temptation, for everyone. We will provide the savory dish, so please be hungry, and bring what you would like to share for dessert and/or drink. Thank You.

Due to the nature of the space, booking for this event is essential.

Please RSVP to: info@fugitiveimages.org.uk / Studio75 is located at 75 Hebden Court, Laburnum Street, Haggerston E2 8BG; www.studio75.org.uk/map.html

Gareth thinks this is one of the greatest films of the late 20th century – ceaselessly relevant, empathetic, true to life and imagination at the same time. Effortlessly played, written and directed, it’s both a joy and an ongoing inspiration.

Pauline Kael (late of the New Yorker) says… "There are eight key characters in Jonah,

all in their twenties or thirties, and all seeking solutions to the problems brought to general consciousness by the events of 1968… Each of the eight characters is a utopian of some sort, except for the disillusioned former activist, Max… Each of these people is autonomous, looks for his own answers, and acts upon them, and together, the film suggests, they can give birth to a Jonah who will have the acumen to connect their visions…

Critics say it is… an exhilarating film with characters that are filled with life and who

refuse to become trapped in endless dreams that can never come true… a heady experience following their agile ruminations on time, language and perception, deftly superimposed on a film that pleases visually and formally… the performances are so thoroughly integrated with the material that I'm not sure where performances begin and the work of the director and the writers leaves off. The entire cast is splendid.

City Portraits

25th October, 2011 6:30 pm 8:30 pm

Lasse will present "i am here' as part of City Portraits panel, at Kings College, London.

Featuring both artists and academics, the panel discussion accompanying the City Portraits exhibition will focus both on the original project and its results, and on wider issues of ethics, representation and recognition in visual and other research. What are the possibilities afforded by representations of the sort featured in the City Portraits project and related installations; do they challenge existing understandings of how people should be represented in social and cultural research; and can they contribute positively to participants' sense of themselves and their surroundings, to their sense of place?

Panelists are:

Paul Sweetman is a Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King's College London. He is a founder member and co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's Visual Sociology Study Group, and co-editor of Picturing the Social Landscape (Routledge 2004). He has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Visual Studies since 2008, and a member of the Editorial Board of Sociology between 2003 and 2005.

Laura Hensser is a British Photographer who graduated from UCA Farnham with a BA in Photography in 2008. She has been the recipient of the MI 2 (Prime Minister's Initiative Fund) to make work at the NID (National Institute of Design) in Ahmedabad, India. Laura has exhibited internationally and in the UK, including as part of the group exhibition 'Miscellaneous'. Recently Laura has been working on a photographic project called 'City Portraits' under the CCI and Cultural Olympiad.

Lasse Johansson
(Fugitive Images) works with film, photography and installation in order to explore issues around the everyday and the formation of place, with special interest in public spaces and the identities they give rise to.

Alison Rooke
(Goldsmiths) is a visual sociologist whose teaching and research is concerned with the dynamics of participation in the city brought about- through arts based urban interventions, urban planning, research and evaluation as well as informal spaces of citizenship and community. Alison works in partnership with a range of arts organisations and institutions developing collaborative approaches to research and evaluation.

Rebellious Media Conference

8th October, 2011 9th 12:00 am

http://rebelliousmediaconference.org/

Just Doing It: Women Documentary Makers and Social / Cultural Change
 
The single most welcome development in contemporary film-making, whatever the genre, has been the steady rise of exceptional women film-makers. If the numbers game still reflects a startlingly uneven playing field, what is in no doubt is the striking relevance and formal / aesthetic / thematic innovation that these makers are bringing to their medium and chosen concerns. Here, three leading international practitioners present their work in the context of documentary film's exponential rise, spread and relevance.
 
Emily James is a campaigning documentarist, whose acclaimed short films have explored a wide range of key issues. Her recent feature - Just Do It - tracking a benignly embedded year with direction action climate campaigns - was released in July.
www.emily-james.com <http://www.emily-james.com/> ; www.justdoitfilm.com <http://www.justdoitfilm.com/>
 
Manu Luksch is an artist and digital-social activist. Her CCTV-sourced feature 'Faceless', starring Tilda Swinton, pioneered a found-footage radicalisation of urban space. She has recently created 'function creep', about waterways and utopian alternatives.
www.manuluksch.com <http://www.manuluksch.com/> ; www.ambienttv.net <http://www.ambienttv.net/> ; www.function-creep.com <http://www.function-creep.com/>
 
Andrea Luka Zimmermann was a founding member of media collective Vision Machine. She has just completed 'Prisoner of War', a disturbing feature about the costs of American militarism and is developing 'Estate', a major project on inner-city public housing.
www.fugitiveimages.org.uk <http://www.fugitiveimages.org.uk/>
 
Gareth Evans is a writer, editor and curator.
 

Flat Screens 6: Another (incredible and timely) Top Secret Film

21st September, 2011 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

A UK preview, presented by writer, curator and critic Gareth Evans.

We are delighted to ask you to join us at the 6th Flat Screens screening & conversation on September 21st  7 – 9pm. Therese will be there to repeat her most amazing feast, making free Pizza in her portable Pizza oven. We provide all ingredients, please be hungry, and bring what you like to have for dessert or drink.

Sorry, the event is now fully booked.

info@fugitiveimages.org.uk, Studio 75 is located at 75 Hebden Court, Laburnum Street, Haggerston E2 8BG


For, “those who cannot learn form history are doomed to repeat it.”

George Santayana

Critics say this film is:

 "A poignant portrait of an uncompromising artist who believed in the power of music as a tool for social and political change.”

"An essential portrait of an artist who ought to be far better known."


"Enthralling and fascinating! That voice - it's so beautiful and soulful and tenderly ironic. Go see this film."


“A remarkable chronicle of one man's pursuit of justice through music in the 20th Century while serving as a lesson for the 21st."


Who himself said about one of my favourite songs, that “this song is about the philosophy of all songs”…

He loved John Wayne, and was “possessed by the American fantasy and dream he saw projected on the Hollywood screen.”

And, “by the time of his death the FBI had a dossier on him that was over 400 pages long.”

Flat Screens 5: Top Secret

27th July, 2011 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

This event is now FULL, to reserve a seat on the waiting list please email info@fugitiveimages.org.uk

Flat Screens 5: Top Secret

We are delighted to ask you to join us at the 5th Flat Screens screening & conversation on July27th  7 – 9pm.

Booking for this event is essential. info@fugitiveimages.org.uk

 

Writer, curator and producer Gareth Evans will introduce the screening (of another film than his own):

Would you like to come and see a surprise 90 minute film made in 2010 and as yet unseen in this country beyond one screening?

Described by international critics as....

"Stunningly beautiful. I don’t know how you can put more into a film, or make one that’s more deeply moving."

"An extraordinary film about the unknown and the unknowable."

"Such a moving masterpiece... a philosophical treatise that is as stunning to the eye as it is disturbing to the brain... I was enthralled. So was the audience around me."

“may just be the most profound movie I have ever seen."

Looking forward to seeing you!

Floating Cinema

20th July, 2011 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Shoreditch Festival 2011 hosts the Floating Cinema

Wednesday 20 July 2011 6-9pm
Waterhouse Restaurant, Regent's Canal
Orsman Road
N1 5QJ

Rail Haggerston/Hoxton 

The Floating Cinema will reside outside Shoreditch Trust's Waterhouse Restaurant for five days as part of Shoreditch Festival 2011, hosting expert film history tours with screen historian Ian Christie (Saturday & Sunday) and featuring onboard artists' film screenings each evening.

Fugitive Images screening evening, 6-9pm 

Since 2009 the artist collaboration Fugitive Images has used their home, Haggerston & Kingsland Estate, as a starting point for a series of projects reflecting on the rapid changes taking place in the local area. After years of neglect the estate has been transformed into a flagship regeneration project. The old estate is scheduled for complete demolition by 2012 only to immediately reappear in a new guise; the mixed dwelling combining luxury flats with social housing in a high-density development.

For this Floating Cinema event Fugitive Images will screen some of their short films shot on the estate during its slow 'shutting down' and talk about their body of work including the striking photo installation I AM HERE clearly visible from nearby Laburnum Boat Club.

'i am here' is part of the Shoreditch Festival

17th July, 2011 4:00 pm 5:00 pm

There will be a walk through the estate, and background on teh 'i am here' proect on July the 17th, at 4pm. everyone welcome.

Flat Screens 3: screening and conversation

13th July, 2011 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

Flat Screens 3

We are delighted to ask you to join us for tea and home baked cake at the 3rd Flat Screens screening & conversation on July 13th 7 – 9pm. FREE

Please rsvp as there is limited seating via Studio 75, Hebden Court, and info@studio75.org.uk

Looking forward to seeing you!

Selected scenes from PUBLIC HOUSING, Frederick Wiseman, 1997

+ the main feature

DARK DAYS, Marc Singer, 2000

 

Dark Days

Near Penn Station, next to the Amtrak tracks, squatters have been living for years. Marc Singer goes underground to live with them, and films this "family." A dozen or so men and one woman talk about their lives: horrors of childhood, jail time, losing children, being coke-heads. They scavenge, they've built themselves sturdy one-room shacks; they have pets, cook, chat, argue, give each other haircuts. A bucket is their toilet. Leaky overhead pipes are a source of water for showers. They live in virtual darkness. During the filming, Amtrak gives a 30-day eviction notice. (Written by jhailey)

Visionary Trading Project

16th June, 2011 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

Fugitive Images

Thoughts on a future where exclusivity and exclusion should surely be indefensible; an evening with Fugitive Images and guests.

Since 2009 the artist collaboration Fugitive Images has used their home, Haggerston & Kingsland Estate, as a starting point for a series of projects reflecting on the rapid changes taking place in the local area. After years of neglect the estate has been transformed into a flagship regeneration project. The old estate is scheduled for complete demolition by 2012 only to immediately reappear in a new guise; the mixed dwelling combining luxury flats with social housing in a high-density development.

For the event Fugitive Images will screen their short film I KNOW IT IS NOT A PALACE and talk about their photo installation I AM HERE

To further explore our work at and the ongoing regeneration of Haggerston & Kingsland Estate they have invited two guest that recently have conducted extended researched on these issues.

David Roberts
Urban Studies Masters student and Architectural Design PhD candidate

"My interest lies in the instability and possibility of public art in social change. Has I AM HERE opened a new dialogue between residents and their city? Has a symbol of defiance inspired an unfolding culture of empowerment and protest? How can this transformative potential continue as residents negotiate their future?"

Therese L Henningsen
Anthropologist

"My research follows residents on Haggerston West and Kingsland Estates in order to examine an apparent givenness of a built environment at a moment of imminent transition. How do the residents perceive the changes to the spaces in which they live? How do they understand the reasons for the transition and what are their hopes, fears and dreams for the new rooms and roofs to be called 'home'."

Flat Screens 2: An evening with John Smith in person

29th May, 2011 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

An evening with John Smith in person!

We are delighted to ask you to join us for tea and home baked cake at the second Flat Screens screening & conversation on May 29th,

from 7 - 9pm. FREE

Please rsvp as there is limited seating via Studio 75, Hebden Court, and info@studio75.org.uk

Looking forward to seeing you!

John Smith was born in Walthamstow, East London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. Inspired by the Structural Materialist ideas which dominated British artists' filmmaking during his formative years, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he has developed a body of work which deftly subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction. Drawing upon the raw material of everyday life, Smith's meticulously crafted films rework and transform reality, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema. Since 1972 John Smith has made over fifty film, video and installation works that have been shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television around the world and awarded major prizes at many international film festivals.

Hackney Marshes [30min] 1978
Amongst other things Hackney Marshes is a document of public housing 43 years on from Housing Problems. It eloquently depicts the High Rise Phase and its contingent problems. This naively rolled out programme prioritized high density, at the time considered as the universal solution to the problem of public housing.
In addition Hackney Marshes is a film that plays with visual representation. John Smith continuously undermines taken for granted truths and simple solutions and invites the viewer to be critical of the images they are presented with.

The Girl Chewing Gum [12min] 1976
"In relinquishing the more subtle use of voice-over in television documentary, the film draws attention to the control and directional function of that practice: imposing, judging, creating an imaginary scene from a visual trace. This 'Big Brother' is not only looking at you but ordering you about as the viewer's identification shifts from the people in the street to the camera eye overlooking the scene" Michael Maziere, 'Undercut' magazine 1984

Blight [14 min] 1994-96

Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. The images in the film record some of the changes which occurred in the area over a two-year period, from the demolition of houses through to the start of motorway building work. The soundtrack incorporates natural sounds associated with these events together with speech fragments taken from recorded conversations with local people.

Although it is entirely constructed from records of real events, Blight is not a straightforward documentary. The film exploits the ambiguities of its material to produce new meanings and metaphors, frequently fictionalizing reality through framing and editing strategies. The emotive power of music is used in the film to overtly aid this invention.

+ surprise film

Flat Screens 1

20th April, 2011 6:30 pm 9:30 pm

We are delighted to ask you to join us for tea and home baked cake at the first Flat Screens screening & conversation on April 20th, from 6.30 - 9.30pm. FREE

Please rsvp as there is limited seating via Studio 75, Hebden Court, and info@studio75.org.uk

Looking forward to seeing you!

Towers in the Sky

The Tower Block has featured in many works of literature and films such as G.J. Ballard's novel High Rise (1975), Haneke's Benny's Video (1992), Rose's Candyman (1992), etc . It has often been used as a setting for stories with dark undertones of violence and social breakdown. Curiously non-fiction work has reproduced this kind of response as well. Nowadays, where tower blocks built by councils are narrated as failed social experiments; increasingly the people inhabiting them have become equated as being failed people, too. There we see the peculiar force of representation and popular imagination.

This first screening in a series of 10 explores another aspect of the High Rise, looking locally as well as internationally. How does the High Rise, and the people living within it, fare in a different context? The two films are chosen in order to pose questions around belonging and exclusion.

Journey to the Lower World by Marcus Coates (30min, 2004)

For his film 'Journey to the Lower World' Marcus Coates filmed himself performing a shamanic ritual for residents of a Liverpool tower block scheduled for demolition. Wearing antlers and with a deer skin strapped to his back, the film focuses on the response of the audience to the live performance - caught between scepticism and belief, spoof and sincerity.

High Rise (Um Lugar ao Sol) by Gabriel Mascaro (71min, 2009)

What does it mean to have a penthouse in poverty-filled Brazil? During the film, penthouse residents open up their homes to reveal their thoughts on social inequality, politics, and the world that surrounds them, as well as discussing more intimate subjects such as their desires, fears, insecurities, prejudices and personal histories.

Through dialogues with the owners of penthouses in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Recife, High-Rise explores the social and cultural mindset of the elite, and the phenomenon of the 'verticalization' of the Brazilian cityscape. This is a film about height, status and power.

Pages of Hackney

5th April, 2011 6:00 pm 8:00 pm

we will have a presentation and Q&A at the wonderful Pages of Hackney Bookshop.

Early in 2008, three months after the vote to transfer the Haggerston and Kingsland estate from Hackney council to L&Q housing association we began our work at the estate.

Tonight we will talk about the process that led up to the publishing of Estate. The journey started via our I am here project, a photo installation where we exchanged 67 bright orange boards covering voids units at the estate with large-scale photographs of past and current residents. From there we developed our work by route of a number of presentations at TINAG, Urban Encounters, Tate Britain, and texts for Homecultures and Streetsigns. Estate emerges out of this long-term engagement on Haggerston & Kingsland estate.

We will also show some short excerpts of film material we have started to shoot with residents on the estate.

These events are well-attended so do rsvp to info@pagesofhackney.co.uk or 020 8525 1452 to ensure your place.

Black Duck HOST 02

1st April, 2011 6:30 pm 9:00 pm

A selection of videoworks curated by Art Funkl, Red Nomade and black duck.

Artists: Victoria Lucas, Gillian McIver, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Marina Stavrou, Ju Underwood, Andrea Racciatti/Juan Bobbio, Consuelo Zori, Cristina Ghetti, Claudia Martinez, Teresa Tomás, Dolo Piqueras and Laura Rodriguez Moscatel.

Reelhealthstories at NHS event at UCL

2nd March, 2011 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

The Reel Health Stories shortlist, including Bruce & I and The Ramp, will be screened on 2nd March 2011at an evening event about the NHS. Professor Michael Stewart of the UCL Anthropology Department is organising the event, which will be held at the AV Hill Medical Lecture Theatre, UCL Main Campus, South Quad 18.30- 20.00 Doors open 18.00.

Apologies for the short notice, but please contact Prof Stewart if you would like to attend m.stewart@ucl.ac.uk

Stones and Scissors

26th February, 2011 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

STONES AND SCISSORS

Stones and scissors: exploration of buildings, structures, places and histories; the act of cutting, editing and retelling. Studio 75 artists Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Gillian McIver and Nazir Tanbouli present a selection of their moving image works.

this event has limited access due to to the size of the space, please rsvp by email info@studio75.org.uk

Nazir Tanbouli

Basement Diary

A post-disaster movie. A visually poetic and striking film made by the painter Nazir Tanbouli, evokes post disaster alienation and trauma.

Baladi

Stop frame animation; a portrait of home and locality using everyday objects. "Baladi" in Egyptian means local, from home - and the drumming here is "baladi" music and the dance the objects are doing is known as "baladi" dance ...

Andrea Luka Zimmerman

The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow

Between dream and nightmare, The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow is a traversal of here and elsewhere, first and third world; a fairytale of production, resources, capitalism, globalisation, refuse and refusal: The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow is a film not about the struggle to be seen, but about the struggle to see.

+Sponsored by Suppressed Policy Sportsmanship (something about the war)

by Joshua Oppenheimer

Gillian McIver

- a selection of very short works about places

Gauforum

Field recording of an unusual building in Weimar.

Crossings: Berlin: Gleim Tunnel

Traversing the fault lines of history.

The House on Sadovaya Street

A wander through the flat of the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov

Mosti: the Bridges of St Petersburg

A montage that mixes classic Russian film footage with my recorded material, fusing past and present in a representation of one of the principal motifs of St Petersburg.

Studio 75

18th February, 2011 21st 12:00 am

Gillian McIver, Nazir Tanbouli, Lasse Johansson and Andrea Luka Zimmerman launch Studio75, a disused flat on Haggerston estate, on Hebdon court.

This Is Not A Gateway Festival

22nd October, 2010 9:00 am 9:00 pm
Hanbury Hall
22 Hanbury Street
London
E1 6QR
United Kingdom
Estate - Book Cover
Estate - Book Cover

We were excited to launch Estate at the TINAG festival. What an amazing turn out. Thank you for coming!

Sunday 24 October, 4-6pm at Hanbury Hall, in the Rosa Luxemburg Hall

The pursuit of public Housing provision was one of the 20th century's redeeming contributions. Yet, in the first decade of the 21st century, public housing as an ideal is a contradictory territory resulting from policies that value entrepreneurial charities or a subsidised private sector over state funded and administered housing.

Estate is a timely contribution to the debates entangling millions of individuals and countless neighbourhoods. The starting point is a visual essay on the Haggerston West & Kingsland estates in Hackney, east London, in the process of demolition and re-building. The 56 photographs document the spaces left behind when people were moved out. Despite residents living in limbo for over 30 years as refurbishment plans were continuously proposed, shelved and re-proposed, the images highlight their innovative solutions to the difficulties of continuing to live while an idea and a set of buildings were being abandoned around them.

Texts from Paul Hallam, Cristina Cerulli and Victor Buchli contextualise the artists' project through a set of questions resulting in a work that refuses to settle, creating dialogue between photography, archaeology of the recent past, autobiography and critical theory.

The launch:

The launch event will reflect such a hybrid approach. Thus we will start off with a visual engagement, by screening three short films about housing and more importantly the people living in them. The films will enrich and stimulate the panel debate, which takes a more direct political and theoretical approach to the current state of affairs. Our panelists are (apart from Lasse and Andrea), Neal Purvis, independent housing advisor, Ruth-Marie Tunkara, resident and community developer, and Cristina Cerulli, architect. Before the debate is opened up to the floor, we have asked the members of the panel to briefly expand on the following questions:

1) Public or Affordable Housing - does it matter?
2) In order to create dynamic & safe affordable housing environments, should we prioritize the formation of a more equal society through social reform or prioritize the construction of 'estates' designed in a manner aimed at controlling behaviour through surveillance and gated style of communities etc?


Screening:
Housing Problems 1935 [13 min]

By Arthur Elton E.H. Anstey
Housing Problems is considered a seminal film because it was the first documentary to have the subjects looking and talking straight onto the camera. Yet it also reflects the attitudes of that time considering the poor as somewhat a race apart. We choose it to introduce the idea of perception and image production as a major component in how poverty is seen, compounded and perhaps even produced.

Hackney Marshes [30min] 1978

By John Smith
Amongst other things Hackney Marshes is a document of public housing 43 years on from Housing Problems. It eloquently depicts the High Rise Phase and its contingent problems. This naively rolled out programme prioritized high density, at the time considered as the universal solution to the problem of public housing. In addition Hackney Marshes is a film that plays with visual representation. John Smith continuously undermine taken for granted truths and simple solutions and invites the viewer to be critical of the images they are presented with.

Work In Progress [10 min]

Andrea Luka Zimmerman & Lasse Johansson
This will not only bring us up to the present but also introduce Haggerston & Kingsland Estates. The excerpts is a reflection on the ambiguity of the changes going on at the Estate as well as visually connect with some of the images in Estate.

Bruce and I/The Ramp

4th July, 2010

The Ramp won 1st prize at Reelhealthstories, judged by Ken Loach adn David Morrissey.

Bruce & I won runner up prize.