Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

This September the border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed will transform into one giant cinema screen for the ninth Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. Running 25 – 29 September, the event will screen newly commissioned and imaginatively curated films besides hosting installations and other activities. A major element of the programme will be Sidsel Christensen’s new moving image work, Study for Composition X, commissioned specifically for Berwick-upon-Tweed in partnership with Nabroad, the Norwegian Collaborative Organisation for Contemporary Art Abroad.

Study for Composition X will be created on location in Berwick in August, capturing the geological qualities of the landscape and coastal line using the human form; the artist’s body as an interactive framing devise. This work is a development of a previous intervention in the landscape on the west coast of Norway, building on a series of video paintings commissioned by Open Gallery in London. Specifically created to deal with perception and place, the piece examines how humanity has affected the history of landscape portraiture in art.

The work will be installed on two opposing screens: one presenting the original videos created in collaboration with Open Gallery on the Norwegian coast, in which the artist faces across the North Sea to the UK, and the other presenting the new work, to be filmed in Berwick, in which the artist will return her gaze over the water. Responding to the Festival’s theme, North by Northeast, the work will connect the two coastal locations.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 25 – 29 September, more info at www.berwickfilm-artsfest.com.

Credits
1. Image Courtesy the artist, Photo by Mark Pinder © 2013.