There were stories that the tunnels went on for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, piles of offal from VC hospitals, dead babies, assassinated priests.

Denis Johnson Tree of Smoke

If there were walls beneath my feet, she thought, if there were occult silos and excavations, cavities blasted in the earth, would I know? If there were secret chambers and bricked-in culs-de-sac, would I sense them?

Hilary Mantel Beyond Black

The Films

Strange Rocks Rocking, Vincenzo Pandolfi

Original Format VHS, Italy, 2003, Duration 30 seconds.

To author David Lewis-Williams the forking and branching arcades at Lascaux resemble a neurological vortex, a place where the initiate would have experienced psychic entry into deeply altered states of consciousness. The tunnels are cranial, and their walls served as porous, permeable membrane stretched tight over a world of spirits that lay just behind the rock.

Peter Conrad Creation: Artists Gods & Origins

Digital Intermediated Swimming, Lee Hyung-suk

Original Format 35mm, South Korea, 2009, Duration 5.00 minutes.

An aquatic sci-fi spectacular, perhaps the record of a salvage mission in deep space. The floating ribbons of celluloid being the sole remnants of a distant, forgotten, race.

Boundary, Devin Horan

Original Format DV, USA/Latvia, 2009, Duration 16.46 minutes.

The limbo states of drug addiction transform a rural retreat into a horror-zone of numb, drawn-out, introspection.

In Search of Hitler’s Bunker, Testcard

Original Format MiniDV, UK, 2011, Duration 6.16 minutes.

Three friends revisit twentieth century Europe’s heart of darkness. Finding, along the way, that their irreverent enthusiasm is stilled by the submerged horrors of yesteryear.

Keimkasten 3, Anne Kathrin Greiner

Original Format HD Video, Germany, 2010, Duration 8.32 minutes.

A shaven-headed protagonist wanders through an abandoned landscape of deserted factories and decaying production plants, while shadowy suited presences lurk at the edges of the frame. Are these apparitions paranoid visions? Or perhaps they are simply property developers keen to exploit this vacant terrain? Perhaps our hero should join them? Maybe not though, because he could well be insane, but, if so, who irons his shirts?

Spider-Man Vs. Macrovision, Clint Enns

Original Format Hacked Footage/Macrovision’s Ripguard, Canada, 2010, Duration 2.49 minutes.

Digital disintegration and corrupted systems recombine into a strange new beauty.

Laundry, Stuart Pound

Original Format JPEG, UK, 2010, Duration 1.00 minute.

The residue of conflict, overlaid by a life-affirming everyday domesticity.

Cave, Clare Charnley/Patricia Azevedo

Original Format HD Video, UK/Brazil, 2009, Duration 2.57 minutes.

Through the agency of an obscure science the spirits of the dead return to say their piece, forming a chorus of disembodied voices presenting conflicting and interwoven descriptions of the land beyond.

The Indeserian Tablets, Peter Rose

Original Format DV, USA, 2011, Duration 14.30 minutes.

A documentary from a parallel universe.

Sun Moon Stars Rain, Leslie Supnet

Original Format Super-8, Canada, 2009, Duration 3.20 minutes.

A head-trip into a psychedelic realm of esoteric symbols and transcendental happenings.

Slick Horsing, Kiron Hussain

Original Format DV, UK, 2010, Duration 2.22 minutes.

A carousel ride in a noirish funhouse.

1925 A.K.A. Hell, Max Hattler

Original Format Animation, Germany, 2010, Duration 1.36 minutes.

A retro-futurist vision of a possible afterlife, unfolding in a series of mechanistic vistas.

The Art Qaeda Project, Wei-Ming Ho

Original Format MiniDV, Taiwan, 2010, Duration 7.03 minutes.

A surveillance survey of the urban landscape, where incongruous fleeting objects combine with a ceaseless information stream.

Frequency Mass, John Davis

Original Format Super-8, USA, 2011, Duration 4.40 minutes.

An ambient hallucinatory film-scape, representative of altered states and drug-test visions or, perhaps, non-human perspectives.

Hoy Juega Chile (Chile Plays Today), Jorge Catoni

Original Format Video, Chile, 2010, Duration 31 seconds.

A harsh social document enlivened by avian activity.

The Sealed World, Toby Tatum

Original Format MiniDV, UK, 2009, Duration 6.00 minutes.

Two young women project themselves into a fictional fable or, if you prefer, a ghost story played out in a walled garden, where the two inhabitants endlessly sip tea and wait patiently for the rain.

The Well of Representation, Evan Meaney

Original Format Hacked ROM on Video, USA, 2011, Duration 7.20 minutes.

As Hal memorably demonstrated in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, machines can develop personalities of their own, and can consequently develop ideas that may run counter to their creator’s expectations. Also notions of a soul and belief in some sort of life after death need not be concepts restricted to human beings. Here the glitches and errors of a collapsing and malfunctioning computer programme opens a window onto the next world.

Down Down, Deeper and Down

Toby Tatum wishes to thank Jo Israel & Rachel Pearson for their valuable assistance in putting this programme together.

NB: These notes represent Toby Tatum’s own interpretation of the works and are not to be confused with individual artist statements. 

Tickets for the show can be purchased direct from the Electric Palace Cinema here: http://www.electricpalacecinema.com/index.php?content=book&film=493

Underground Worlds, Notes on Contributors

Vincenzo Pandolfi, Strange Rocks Rocking, VHS, duration 30 seconds, 2003, Italy

An inner journey into the most dangerous place to be.  Our mind.

Strange Rocks Rocking Film Still

Vincenzo Pandolfi, biography

Born Terracina, Italy, 1971.

Studied Film History at the University “La Sapienza”, Rome and took a Diploma in Film-making at the New York Film Academy. Vincenzo Pandolfi has made numerous short films. His film Anatomy won the BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM at the Horror Dance Film Festival in Houston.

For more information about Vincenzo Pandolfi visit: 

http://vimeo.com/9211334 

http://videoart.net/home/Artists/ArtistPage.cfm?Artist_ID=4840

Lee Hyung-suk, DIGITAL INTERMEDIAED SWIMMING, 35mm, duration 5.00 mins, 2009, South Korea

Sometime in the near future. In an old, abandoned film processing laboratory, films were floating in developing solutions like water weeds.

The digital lens swims freely in the solution and breaks into the area of the films.

DIGITAL INTERMEDIAED SWIMMING Film Still

Lee Hyung-Suk, biography

Born in Seoul, South Korea. He is currently studying at Yonsei Graduate School of Communication & Arts.  His first short film, Templementary (2001) was screened for the Wide Angle section in the 6th Pusan International Film Festival. Chapter 2 ; How To Breathe (2002) won Best Short Film Award at Pusan International Film Festival. Under Construction (2005) won Best Asian Short Film Award at Bangkok International Film Festival.

DIGITAL INTERMEDIAED SWIMMING Film Still

Devin Horan, Boundary, DV, duration 16.46 mins, 2009, USA/Latvia

“In life it is possible to become angelic, human, or animal.  I have become none of these things.”

Boundary is the first installment in a projected tetralogy of films (three shorts and a feature) that explore the implications of this phrase by Sadeq Hedayat. It is an experimental documentary of a remote landscape and an isolated community near the Russian border. In issue No.42 of CinemaScope Quarterly, “The Decade in Review,” film-maker and curator John Gianvito cited Boundary as one of the top ten films of the last decade. He described it as “a brooding non-narrative mood piece shot in an indeterminate East  European twilight that brings to mind the lyric intensity of Georg Trakl or Vladimir Holan.” Boundary documents a space of ambiguity,  a psychogeography, an absence of personal histories.

Boundary film stills

Toby Tatum, The Sealed World, MiniDV, duration 6.00 mins, 2009, U.K.

Mist parts to reveal two young women seated in an overgrown garden surrounded by wild flowers.

Toby Tatum, biography

Born 1974 Reading, England. Studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London.  Toby Tatum’s films have been exhibited at numerous film festivals and arts events worldwide, including screenings at: the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the London Short Film Festival and the Berwick Upon Tweed Film & Media Arts Festival.

For more information on Toby Tatum visit:

http://www.tobytatum.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toby-Tatum/165982176767236

http://twitter.com/#!/TobyTatumFilm

Anne Kathrin Greiner, Keimkasten 3, HD-Video, duration 8.42 mins, 2010, Germany

A man travels, seemingly involuntarily, between spheres physical and temporal, each remaining largely anonymous. The protagonist, too, appears to have only the vaguest notion as to where he may be. It soon transpires, however, that he has found himself isolated for a particular reason and that there is no going back.

Inspired by historical and political developments, social rites and personal memories,
as well as literary and cinematic sources, Keimkasten 3 is intended to trigger associations and to therefore work in conjunction with the viewer’s individual experiences and perceptions. Positioned within the grey area between narrative and experimental film, the piece is concerned with the standing and position of the individual within society and what occurs when the status quo is called into question.
The title of the film conjures up various associations: A Keim (seed or germ) can stand for
the birth or growth of something, e.g. an idea, but it can also have less positive connotations, such as unhygienic conditions and disease. The Kasten (box) evokes an environment that is physical, spatial and also, potentially, enclosed.

Keimkasten 3 film still

Anne Kathrin Greiner, biography

Born in southern Germany.  Studied photography and film at Napier University in Edinburgh and Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art, London.  Anne Kathrin Griener has exhibited her work widely in both solo and group exhibitions.  

Keimkasten 3 film still

For more information on Anne Kathrin Greiner visit: http://www.akgreiner.com/

To view an excerpt from Keimkasten 3 visit: http://www.alexanderhill.net/Keimkasten_3.html

Clint Enns, Spider-Man vs. Macrovision, FOUND FOOTAGE/MACROVISION’S RIPGUARD, duration 2.49 mins, 2010, Canada

A video examining digital copy protection. Macrovision’s Ripguard is a technology designed to prevent or reduce digital dvd copying. by ignoring it, and copyright infringement in general, the artist is often able to produce new and innovative work.

Clint Enns, biography

Clint Enns is a video artist and film-maker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. his work has shown both nationally and internationally at festivals, alternative spaces and mircocinemas.

For more information on Clint Enns visit:

http://www.vimeo.com/clintenns

http://cineflyer.wordpress.com/

http://www.badlit.com/?p=9404

Stuart Pound, Laundry, Animated Jpeg, duration 1.00 min, 2010, U.K.

A zoom away from a wall marked by past bullets to clothes drying above a courtyard, an unseen church bell strikes.

Stuart Pound, biography

Stuart Pound lives in London and has worked in film, digital video, sound and the visual arts since the early 1970’s, and hopes to return to painting in the future.

For more information about Stuart Pound visit:

http://www.stuartpound.info/

http://www.youtube.com/user/stuart007

Clare Charnley & Patricia Azevedo, Cave, HD Video, duration 2.57 mins, 2009, U.K./Brazil

Individual audio recordings were made by residents and visitors in rural Northumberland. Descriptions of views stripped of their visual referents, they are played out as monologue, chatter or cacophony. Forced together, they become a fictitious community, though a sense of isolation persists. As the light diminishes they take on other connotations; stars, souls, cities – though these romantic readings are undercut by the ordinariness of the speech they transmit. In the dark, and with a strong wind blowing, the poor shelter provided by the ‘cave’ posits the countryside as something much less hospitable than that described by the voices.

Clare Charnley, biography

Clare Charnley was born in 1949. She is the Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University. She has exhibited extensively worldwide. Her work includes numerous collaborations with Patricia Azevedo.

For more information about Clare Charnley & Patricia Azevedo visit: 

http://www.clarecharnley.com/ 

http://www.juliangermain.com/projects/patricia-azevedo.php

Peter Rose, The Indeserian Tablets, DV, duration 14.30 mins, 2011, USA

An annotated nocturnal portrait of a vanished culture- its stories, scripture, technology, religious practice, art and poetry as reconstructed from fragments found in the archive at Kiens. Offered in the spirit of Calvino and Borges with a nod to Greenaway.

Peter Rose, biography

Since 1968 Peter Rose has made over thirty films, tapes, performances and installations. Many of the early works raise intriguing questions about the nature of time, space, light, and perception and draw upon Rose’s background in mathematics and on the influence of structuralist filmmakers. He subsequently became interested in language as a subject and in video as a medium and generated a substantial body of work that played with the feel and form of sense, concrete texts, political satire, oddball performance, and a kind of intellectual comedy. Recent video installations have involved a return to an examination of landscape, time, and vision. Rose has been widely exhibited, both nationally and internationally, having been included in shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial, the Centre Pompidou, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Film Society at Lincoln Center, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Pew Foundation, the Independence Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and is fond of writing descriptions in the third person.

 As he has written: Some of us work in a proximate relation with our intended audiences, speaking familiar languages so that the archetypes of our culture may be recognized; and some work out a self-creating interiority from which, if we are lucky, we bring back the shape of a newly imagined alphabet of feeling. I find myself oscillating between these two agendas and find the dialectic a productive one, a reflection of the complex, contradictory nature of our times.

For more information about Peter Rose visit:

http://www.peterrosepicture.com/

http://www.ubu.com/film/rose.html

http://vimeo.com/user1592855

http://www.youtube.com/user/esorp#p/u

Leslie Supnet, sun moon stars rain, Super-8, duration 3.20 mins, 2009, Canada

mother nature mourns the death of her children

Leslie Supnet, biography

Leslie Supnet is a visual artist from Winnipeg, MB. Supnet aims to represent sincerity, lived experience, and the ineffable in both her drawing and animated work. Her animations have screened at various festivals, such as the Images Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Signal & Noise, Image Forum Festival in Japan, and LA Film Forum.

For more information about Leslie Supnet visit: http://sundaestories.com/blog/

Kiron Hussain, Slick Horsing, Digital Video, duration 2.22 mins, 2010, U.K.

“A fragmented allegory. A portrait. One lady kindling her photo-sensitive epilepsy”

Kiron Hussain, biography

Kiron Hussain is a film-maker based in Newscastle Upon Tyne.  His film Slick Horsing was awarded BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM at the London Short Film Festival 2011.  

For more information about Kiron Hussain visit:

http://kiron.x10.mx/

http://www.apengine.org/2011/01/kiron-hussain/

http://www.artreview.com/profile/kiron?xg_source=activity

Max Hattler, 1925 AKA Hell, Animation, duration 1.36 min, 2010, U.K.

1925 aka Hell is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage (1876-1954). 1925 is based on Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1925, below. The second loop, 1923 aka Heaven, is based on Lesage’s painting of the same name from 1923. The films were created during 5 days in February 2010 with students at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark.

Max Hattler, biography

Max Hattler is a filmmaker and visual artist interested in the space between abstraction and figuration in the moving image, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative. He works across the fields of film, video installation and live audiovisual performance, and has collaborated with music acts including Basement Jaxx, Jovanotti, Jemapur, The Egg, Ladyscraper, and his dad’s outfit Hattler. Max has shown his award-winning works at hundreds of festivals worldwide, including the European Media Art Festival, onedotzero, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Annecy, Animafest (Zagreb), and Image Forum Festival (Japan). He has performed live audiovisuals worldwide, including ICA (London), Animae Caribe (Trinidad), Cimatics (Brussels), Animation Show (California), SuperDeluxe (Tokyo) and the Museum of Image and Sound (Sao Paulo). Max graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2001, and from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Animation in 2005.

For more information about Max Hattler visit: 

http://www.maxhattler.com/

http://www.facebook.com/maxhattler.artistpage

http://twitter.com/#!/maxhattler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hattler

Wei-Ming Ho, The Art Qaeda Project, MiniDV, duration 7.03 mins, 2010, Taiwan

In a weird atmosphere, the project set out for an exciting adventure. Do the images represent the secret signals, an extraordinary parade or a silent protest? By means of guerrilla art action, we use the high power projector to project the images in motion with high mobility to display a stunning visual firework and present the conversation between the images and the city environment.

This video includes various elements of statistics and symbols such as Environmental Sustainability Index and Morse code. We use the concept of Morse code in the background music metaphorically and interpret the meanings of ESI behind the scenes by measuring the volume, capacity, square measure, quantity, time…etc. We mean to mix calculations, environment and visual images to present different thoughts.

Wei-Ming Ho, biography

Wei-Ming Ho is engaged in research and creations of visual art. He focuses on experimental media, film and video art.

For more information on Wei-Ming Ho please visit: http://vimeo.com/artqaeda

John Davis, Frequency Mass, Super-8, duration 4.40 mins, 2011, USA

Experimenting with light, movement, and various darkroom techniques, abstraction and repetition coalesce in an array of chance encounters that harmonically resonate to an original music score.

Images by John Davis

John Davis, biography

Utilizing sampling, appropriation, and recorded observation, I am interested in interpreting the ways meaning is constructed and represented culturally. Utilizing film, video, photography and sound, I incorporate conventions like detournément and the re-processing of the familiar as ways to trace the feedback loop between media, culture, and identity. I am also interested in celluloid film as a medium, and have been experimenting with alternative hand-processing and shooting techniques with both the Super 8 and 16mm formats. I also work with Electroacoustic music, experimenting with recording techniques and sonic variables.

Images by John Davis

For more information about John Davis visit: http://www.noiseforlight.com/

Jorge Catoni, Hoy Juega Chile (Chile Plays Today), Video, duration 30 seconds, 2010, Chile

Taped on “La Vega Central” Popular Market (Santiago, Chile), meanwhile was developing the World Cup 2010 (Chile v/s Spain game), and almost all the country were watching TV.

Jorge Catoni, biography

Jorge Catoni is a mixed media artist, illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer. He lives in Chile. His work has featured in numerous international screenings and exhibitions.

In April 2011 he was awarded the Video Art First Prize at Close Up Vallarta which took place in Vallarta, Mexico.

For more information about Jorge Catoni visit:

http://vimeo.com/jorgecatoni

Evan Meaney, The Well of Representation, Hacked ROM on Video, duration 7.20 mins, 2011, USA

Evan Meaney, biography

Evan Meaney is an artist, curator and educator currently teaching time-based media design at the University of Tennessee. His practice dives into the “liminalities and glitches of all sorts, equating failing data to ghosts, seances and archival hauntology.”

At the moment Meaney is hard at work experimenting with the super computing team at Oak Ridge National Laboratories as well as preparing for this years GLI.TC/H noise and new-media gathering. He is also just about to release his Ceibas Cycle DVD, a series Meaney has been working on for the last five years.

For more information about Evan Meaney visit:

http://www.evanmeaney.com/ 

http://vimeo.com/user5007896

Testcard, In Search of Hitler’s Bunker, MiniDV, duration 5.42 mins, 2011, U.K.

Continuing the British obsession with World War 2, our heroes Lepke B, Matt Gray and Adrian Shephard once again lampoon into peacetime Berlin in search of Hitlers Bunker…

Testcard, biography

The Testcard is the symbolic end to programmed schedules, the fear of losing structure, the fear of habitual behaviour patterns. We operate under the premise that there can be very little conscious awareness of a structure to one’s action, but unconsciously one is subject to a loosely determined destiny: future, present and past existing as one, accessed intuitively through divinatory methods…

Testcard explore the shifting world of the mind . Performance research range from Ouija board transmissions to brain frequency and mind/ body experiments seeking answers to hidden truths through intuitive approaches. We have performed in Russia for the festival of visual and performing arts in St Petersburg, the CYNET arts festival in Dresden, and Tate Modern in London for World Book day, and most recently in KIEV for the KIMAF festival.

For more information about Testcard visit:

http://www.testcard.org/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Testcard/104949306255399

http://www.last.fm/music/testcard+radio

http://www.myspace.com/testcard666

http://www.youtube.com/user/testcard666

http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/local-news/huge_haul_of_cannabis_found_in_hastings_caves_1_2937895