Cloud Mime by Gordon Dawson

The fourth in the series of programmes of artists’ image is curated by Kerry Baldry. The programme includes an eclectic range of techniques, media and processes including stop frame, video, Super8 and 16mm, split screen, superimposition, animation, digital and live action all constrained by a time limited of 60 seconds.

This touring programme has already screened at Artspace in Sheffield, Meinblau in Berlin and The Big Screens in the UK amoung many other places internationally.

One Minute Volume 4 is an hour length screening taking place on Saturday 5th February from 12-5pm at The Museum of Club Culture.

Nick Jordan's How the Air Feels to the Birds

Dates: 26 October -12 November 2009 5pm | Location: Foyer Gallery Space, Hull School of Art and Design

The third volume of One Minute brings together an array of artists whose work encompasses stop frame, video, film, Super8 and 16mm, split screen, superimposition, animation, digital and live action. All have one thing in common; they have been edited within the time limit of 60 seconds.  Curated by Kerry Baldry, One Minute Volume 3 will be screening from October 26 to November 12 in the Hull School of Art and Design’s Foyer Gallery Space, and  includes work by  Marty St.James, Louisa Minkin, Martin Pickles, Eva Rudlinger, Emily Richardson, Gordon Dawson, Nick Jordan and Alex Pearl among others. A special preview screening will take place on Monday 26 October at 5pm. More information can be found here, and be sure to check out Kerry’s interview with APEngine about the One Minute project.

How the air feels to the birds, Nick Jordan

They act as if they had never heard the question before. The what? they say. The air? What about it? We smile and rephrase the question: What does the air feel like to you, you being a bird, able to fly and all? Finally they seem to understand, and they meditate on this awhile. And then they begin: the air to us is a brother, a sister. We are intrigued, and lean in closer. The air, they continue, now quieter. We lean in yet farther. They peck us in the eye and laugh wickedly. Birds are bastards, every one of them.
Written by Dave Eggers, taken from One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box published by McSweeney’s.

Nick Jordan: I used the Eggers story because I found it suitably deadpan and short. And it involves birds, which has become a perennial subject for me. The film has myself and fellow collaborator Jacob Cartwright as the tree climbing/bird spotting protagonists.  It’s a basic split-screen slapstick portrait of a tupelo gum tree, filmed on a frozen Horseshoe Lake in southern Illinois – a remnant of a large bend in the Mississippi River, when we were there filming the last in our trilogy of John James Audubon films. The voice is generated from an automated text-to-speech software programme. The film was put together specially for Kerry Baldry’s One Minute programme and follows on from last year’s One Minute offering How the Cutter Works.

Credits
A film by Nick Jordan
Words by Dave Eggers

How the air feels to the birds by Manchester-based artist Nick Jordan features in the One Minute project initiated by Kerry Baldry. For more about One Minute take a look at APEngine’s interview with Kerry.

Dance, Alex Pearl

Alex Pearl: Dance was my first film. I was so unsure of what I was doing that I was blushing while I made it. Essentially I was recording while playing with an electric toothbrush, a Barbie skirt, string and a red trolley. Without a plan when I started, Dance turned out to be the first of a few films documenting moments in the lives of a series of simple automata. Each has their own character and this one has been described in terms of loneliness, disappointment and futility. On the whole though it is meant to be funny.

Credits:
A film by Alex Pearl

Dance by UK artist Alex Pearl features in the One Minute project initiated by Kerry Baldry. For more about One Minute take a look at APEngine’s interview with Kerry.

Dance, Alex Pearl

APEngine talks to artist and curator Kerry Baldry about the One Minute project programmes of sixty-second artists’ films, now showing around the world, and including works by Tony Hill, Tina Keane, Katherine Meynell, Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore, Dave Griffiths, and many others. One Minute films by Alex Pearl and Nick Jordan can be seen in the Engine Showcase.

Why and how did the One Minute project start?

I was working in a group of artists’ studios which had a large and infrequently used gallery space, and which was available to me. This was an opportunity too good to miss and exactly what I had been looking for a while! I set about contacting some artists whose work I was familiar with, to see if they would like to be involved in a group screening called One Minute and got a great response. From this, I was invited by Steven Ball to show One Minute Volume 1 at one of his Cogcollective events in London and the programme gained momentum from there. There are now three compilations: One Minute Volume 1, Volume 2 and 3 and I will soon be compiling Volume 4.

It’s a lot of work, and a lot of artists represented – how did you find it/them – did people make things specially, or did they already exist?

So far well over 50 national and international artists have been represented in One Minute across the three volumes. Generally I contact each artist individually and invite them to send some work – I’m usually already aware of their work – some I know personally, sometimes I go on recommendations. I am however, thinking an open call might be good to do. Some artists make pieces specifically for the programmes and others send existing work.

It’s a very eclectic range of people and work…

That was the intention and there are so many ways the artists have responded to the challenge of working within the limited time frame of 60 seconds.

You’re on Volume 3 now – people must be responding well to the project?

Yes – I have had a good response to the compilations, and the programmes have been screened nationally and internationally at various galleries and cinemas. The Directors Lounge in Berlin have showcased it at Contemporary Art Ruhr and regularly screen the work, as do Hull Film and Nod Gallery in Prague. Most recently Volumes 2 and 3 were screened on all the outdoor BBC Big Screens across the UK. Cogcollective (now recently started up in Australia) also have been very supportive. Last year David Gryn from Artprojx screened Volume 2 during the month of December in his gallery in Kensington. But I am always looking for new spaces for screenings.

You’re a curator and an artist – how do you see/manage those two things – are they separate, or integrated?

For me, being a curator and an artist are both integrated and separate activities. As a visual artist I have my own set of concerns and personal visual language but also my creative process involves editing and selecting visual imagery. As a curator or compiler I select and sequence short films by both established and emerging artists that I feel are appropriate for inclusion in the One Minute programme. I look for originality and highly creative moving image works which are successfully paced for 60 seconds.