Video content is integrated into our culture, with one-third of online activity spent watching the moving image. On smartphones, tablets, billboards and the big screen, the presence of film is inescapable, influencing everyday life from multiple angles. This growing demand creates a shift in modes of creative production, offering artists a wider platform for expression.
The genre of Artists’ Film is highlighted in the 2018 edition of the Aesthetica Art Prize exhibition at York Art Gallery, which calls into question new modes of communication, over-consumption and media disconnection. For example, this year’s Emerging Prize winner Electra Lyhne-Gold’s Lost in Translation questions the wider impact of advertising, providing reimagined narratives collaged together from mainstream media. Similarly, Kenji Ouellet’s I Am One comprises a collection of quotes about uniqueness, investigating ideas of individuality in the ever-growing urban landscape.
Alongside the display of both longlisted and shortlisted works at the exhibition, attendees are invited to discover an immersive showcase of innovative and thought-provoking films, installations and performances on the big screen Aesthetica’s Artists’ Film Screenings at 1331’s independent cinema Brandy Brown’s in York. Especially poignant in the context of today’s globalised world, the pieces facilitate a multiplicity of interpretations whilst interweaving personal and universal narratives.
Moving from domestic to urban landscapes, the inspirational reels look at contemporary themes such as identity, consumerism and international conflicts, whilst questioning the roles of spectatorship and privacy in today’s over-saturated world. In Installation & Performance, screenings look at global connections, with the important issues of climate change and the refugee crises forming the basis for the works.
Programmes include: Future Now: The 2018 Shortlist (27 June), an immersive and all-encompassing showcase of innovative and thought-provoking films from this year’s presentation; People, Places and Procrastinations (11 July), documenting the ways in which humanity occupies the spaces around us; Making a Home (25 July), an introspective and intimate view into personal realms; Installation & Performance: Global Connections (22 August), looking into contemporary urban societies and Installation & Performance: The Human Condition (19 September), which offers a lens through which to view the past and the future of ourselves and each other.
Find out more here.
Credits:
1. Riffy Ahmed, from Afloat.
