Simon Pummell

What is the Piet Zwart Institute?

It’s the post-graduate institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University. It’s an English language institution, very international, all the courses are taught in English. It recruits very much around the world and has an international student population.

What department are you in?

It’s a small, new department – we started in September 2009 – Lens-Based Digital Media. We’re partnered with a course called Networked Media that’s been running for about six years, and which established quite a reputation amongst the kind of hacker/coding/internet art community, but which never planned to extend out into new kinds of image making. So now they’ve partnered a new department with it.

It comes under the Media Design Masters, and there’s a Fine Art Masters, and you yourself work as a filmmaker and animator. How does the programme sit alongside or across those things?

It’s explicitly been set up to try and address the kind of extremely fluid borders between both media and, if you like, genres.  So, for example, the fact that photography’s increasingly used in moving image and installations in various ways; or the fact that filmmakers are increasingly moving into galleries to make installations.

One of the premises of the course was that using digital media, using all kinds of digital tools to process and manipulate your images, means that the distinctions between still images, film images, and animations have just become completely defunct, basically.  It’s just a sliding scale that you can operate in…

So we’re talking about developing a terrain with a set of very simple concepts:  looking at sort of 1D, 2D, 3D, 4D as ways for people to address organising the forms they use, rather than traditional genres.

The website talks of “the continuum between techniques”, but is there a continuum in practice as well?  Is it that you’re not so much drawing individuals from different kinds of practice but that an individual can engage in a range of practice?

Absolutely – attracting people who actually want to work across those boundaries.

It seemed to me that for the last two decades there’s been a growing number of people constantly operating at the boundaries of fixed definitions, be it animation, be it low budget features films, be it fine art.

It’s a very fluid area where people can work in flexible ways, making choices about optimum ways to shape particular projects. They no longer have to define their careers by a mode of distribution.

And is that also reflected on the way the world has changed?

I think so, very much. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam showed a piece by Saskia Olde Wolbers, a Dutch artist who lives in London. The pieces were incredibly beautiful, but in the gallery, to show the work, they had basically set up a very simple pseudo-cinema. It had a single screen with a bench to watch and speakers on either side.  And you watched it absolutely as if you were in the cinema.

Now those pieces were showing in a modern art museum but in a way, that’s a distribution decision. They could’ve been at a short film festival, or an animation film festival. So it seems to me the divisions are very fluid and volatile between those things.

We’re trying to help people negotiate that conceptually, before they hit that in reality.

Ten years ago I used to teach at the National Film and Television School and from a lot of the teaching you would have thought that everyone was destined to work at Ealing Studios, or headed for a life at the BBC when they left. But all that infrastructure was already in complete chaos by then. So people were hitting the ground and they were in total shock.

Are people destined to work in a particular career now or do they have more power and choice?

Probably simultaneously more power and more choice, and more vulnerability. I think a difficulty of things being so fluid is that probably – as part of your practice – if you’re an artist coming out of a Masters Degree at the moment, is to have some strategic understanding of this shifting media landscape. But that’s very difficult to negotiate without having consciously thought about that.

When I was at film school 20 years ago, you didn’t have to do that because if you were fortunate you’d start to make work for Channel 4, or another powerful media institution, and by default it would be sort of like artist’s television or some other clear strand: documentary, fiction etc. And then there was a hugely powerful distribution mechanism that put your work in a certain place, a clear context. You could be very focussed on generating the most interest in the content that you could.

But now you actually need to make choices about where that content’s going to go.  So you do have more power – but you know, it’s also possible to experience that as sort of more unwished-for responsibility – it’s a burden as well. I’m not a great believer that we’re all inevitably, immediately, more empowered by this highly fluid digital landscape.  I’m not totally convinced by it, you know. You can put your work straight on YouTube but as to whether anyone will look it is another issue.

Break Even Concept Store, IFFR 2010

To explore some of these issues I raised in my look at how Rotterdam International Film Festival has changed, and to look at how festivals can operate now and respond to the current climate, I talked with the curator Edwin Carels who has contributed innovative programmes and exhibitions to the Rotterdam over the years. Coming from the visual arts, his projects play a fundamental role to counter-point the film focus of the festival and propose new models for how work is made, shown and disseminated. This year his project, Break Even, took the form of a pop-up store in the heart of the festival. Using this model he paralleled the festival’s various facets, from its mainstay of screenings and discussions, to his shop market, which paralleled the long running co-production market Cinemart.

How did the project come about?

Every year the festival has a big thematic programme and the central idea this year was to go online – to have a 2.0 festival with the Cinema Reloaded project to co-produce films by buying coins online as well as using YouTube as a platform. Which is relevant, obviously – it’s very topical at this moment. But what is it really about? It’s really about the economy of images, it’s about new forms of production and presentation of images and I think that is absolutely something that needs to be addressed.

So I said maybe my shop idea would work in a complimentary way to that, to present the other side. This project is resolutely off-line. I want people to come here to buy and to discover that which is peripherally in their vision and also discover other people. So I went for it. As with Kino Climates, the idea was there, but I argued that this should be part of Cinema Reloaded, as it’s another form of economic survival within a very different kind of situation. So these projects are a combination of different approaches to the central question of the festival.

How important is the location for this project – to be situated here in the centre of Rotterdam and amongst the festival venues, rather than in one of the galleries south of the centre?

As well as the online project, another inclination of our relatively new director is the desire for the marginal to be in the centre. So he was adamant about having Kino Climates in the centre at the Schouwburg, not in Lantaren/Venster. When we went looking for a site I was assuming that there would be plenty of bankrupt or empty storefronts, yet this location, which was the most central, wasn’t bankrupt! This location had been used to sell the most expensive flats in Holland, which are still to be built. I’m very happy with the location, its really key to the success.

It seems that even within this small space you’ve managed to make a parallel or replica of the whole festivals and its different sub sections?

Well for me that’s it – a shop can be sort of emblematic for the festival. We want to be on ground level, so we’re not hiding or doing elitist things. I think this festival is a non-red carpet festival, which I really like, but at the same time we don’t compromise on our tastes. If it’s all obscure names then it’s all obscure names, and you just learn to pronounce them and be excited by them.

I’ve learned my marketing terms – so my ‘bubble plan’ – which is how you organise stores – is just what I think is relevant now – in my opinion. So as a programmer, I’ve compiled shelves, rather than films in a theatre, though it’s the same principle.

I heard that Eisenstein did the same with his bookshelves and he really had an order for how to match this and that. So there is a kind of editing going on in that sense, and a reshuffle everyday. But I’ve also invited a lot of people to contribute – I said, bring your suitcase, I’ll give you some money, surprise me. And I’m amazed by what people have sent. There is this whole generosity thing going on. I used the money that I normally get to make an exhibition or film programme to develop this concept and I’ve already broken even, more or less on day one. All the rest is just a kind of bonus, as we don’t have to make a profit.

It seems like this project is very much about acknowledging the underlying presence of the market at film festivals?

Absolutely. I mean they call it the industry! Amongst ourselves, and in Cinemart, it’s nothing but economic talk, but for the public it’s just not apparent. I mean, it is for big American productions, but for art house films there are just as many economic concerns. It’s all about economy, as is the whole internet thing. That’s why getting away with the title of the store, Break Even, was already half the job done. Everyone talks about how they have to break even… it’s a purely economic term.

So it’s a concept store in the sense that I don’t mind if I sell a lot or not. I think the meeting ground is important, sharing this idea and pointing towards it is important.

Most filmmakers don’t earn a living from their work, so they have to apply for funds, etc. So this is not going to make a difference to their career apart from the fact that they want to be part of this environment. Content wise, I haven’t compromised. For very personal reasons I’m happy to change after doing so many exhibitions in the past to another location – it’s a new challenge and set of parameters. It’s fun! And also a programme of films, an exhibition, live events – they are now all in here.

Do you think that this project is also a reflection on the position of artists’ work within a festival like Rotterdam?

Well, there’s little other art in the festival this year and that unfortunately has to do with the credit crunch and sponsorship, etc. Once I got the idea and I knew I could develop it I started looking around and talking to people. It is a format, the pop-up shop is a viable format because you don’t pay rent for very long, you don’t pay staff longer than necessary. In the art world you see a lot of that, exhibitions of self-publishing, etc. I brought some of the stuff at PS1 during this big New York art book fair, there were amazing things. I mean it’s not about books there either; it’s about lots of different multiples. So this cottage industry is increasingly important.

But what do you think the status is when a cottage industry is incorporated into the institutions of art?

You could consider my role within the festival as that of a jester! I seem to be contracting the argument of Cinema Reloaded but at the same time strengthening it. I see it as a complimentary action. For instance, yesterday we had Vincent Meessen presenting his new work with 10 people and talking for two hours afterwards only about semiotics, Roland Barthes and Africa in a wonderful exchange with Kevin Jerome Everson. And if you can do that in the heart of the festival, here, between the Doelen and the Pathe, if we can talk about Barthes for two hours, that’s great, that’s generous. For me it’s a most happy experience because of the direct interaction.

Artists work often seems to challenge the structure and preconceptions that festivals have about what work is and how it can or should be presented – how do you understand the position of artists’ work at film festival?

I’m very happy about the position that I can take – maybe I don’t have a position, I don’t have a territory, I’m not [representing] Sweden, Germany, Austria and have to scout there. Every year I try out new formats, that I think are topical, of this moment – so that’s why I’ve done programmes on music, and on television, because there was a cultural relevance to the technology. It’s basically more of a Cinema Regained programme here; it’s homage to those disappearing stores. In our daily ‘trade paper’ Unfinished Business we have the story about Kim’s Video, the Mecca for New Yorkers, that is now gone, it’s in Sicily, an Italian bought it and now it’s gone. There was a shop in Brussels, Le Bonhier, The happiness, which had been there for 15 years and you went in and brought the taste of the guy, it could be chocolate, it could be DVDs, books, but also children’s toys. I like those places but they are disappearing because of the Internet, because of online stores.

The project seems to be true to the idea that the role of festivals is to propose different structures for how culture can be configured understood and produced?

Yes. I used to programme the Exploding Cinema section, but we had to explode that, and we’re trying out new formats and asking, well, is this viable? Interesting? A lot of people from a lot of festivals have seen this now, so you never know. It’s also a take on branding, there is no Tiger – the festival logo – in the store. We did tap into the house style with the Break Even logo so on many levels there’s a play with the components of the festival and that is part of the joke! It’s problematising it and at the same time trying to use and understand it. That’s why I showed Farocki’s The Creators of Shopping Worlds (2001)  on the first day so you actually get a crash course in how to do it. In the evening we had a crash course in becoming a pickpocket. So the whole give and take; theory and practice.

Depending on how deep you want to dive into the layers of the concept, you could actually just stumble in here like some police officers did and curiously look around but leave with something in your hands or you can see it as being a performance. There have been many examples before, like Vito Acconci’s bookstore for Documenta was a great one. I’m not reinventing the wheel here, that’s why I only want to do it now, within the framework of the larger theme it makes sense to do this. We had lots of lucky moments with the programming with the settling of the urban estate office and someone just brought Tati’s Playtime which is perfect!

The corporate steel and glass location is an unusual place for a screening especially the difficulty to create a blackout, for one screening here light and shadows kept coming in from the street outside…

Yes, extra shadow play! I’m happy that people are open to it and the artists are not anal about super perfect conditions, there are more important things than that. One of the best comments came from curator Mark McElhatten at the end of that night, “The setting was far from perfect but it was ideal!”

About the Author: George Clark is a curator, writer and artist. At the Independent Cinema Office between 2006 and 2008 he managed a range of touring projects including: ‘Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema‘, ‘Artists & Icons’ and ‘The Artists Cinema 2006′. Independent curatorial projects include ‘The Unstable States of…’, ‘Without Boundaries: European Artists’ Film and Video’ and the retrospective ‘The Cinema of Miklos Jancso’ [co-curated with Travis Miles]. He has written for Art Monthly, Afterall, Sight & Sound, Senses of Cinema and Vertigo Magazine among other publications. He is currently collaborating with the artist Beatrice Gibson on the script for a film commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery and Camden Council.

International Film Festival Rotterdam

Dates: 27th January – 7th February | Location: Rotterdam

APEngine is excited to be heading off to Rotterdam this weekend. As well as lots of films… we’re particularly looking forward to the Kino Climates a series screenings, discussions and performances, exploring the current and future shape of independent exhibition. And we’ll certainly be popping in a few times to the Break Even Concept Store where “it’s not commerce that’s the priority, but interaction, surprise and discussion”.

International Film Festival Rotterdam

Dates: January 27 – February 7 | Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

The International Film Festival Rotterdam offers a quality selection of worldwide independent, innovative and experimental cinema and visual arts. It holds devoted to offering a platform to and actively supporting independent filmmaking from around the globe, The International Film Festival Rotterdam is the essential hub for discovering film talent and for catching the early buzz on many world and international premieres.

During twelve festival days, hundreds of filmmakers and other artists present their work to a large and devoted audience in 24 screening venues located within central Rotterdam. Up to 3,000 press and film industry representatives visit the festival to report on its buzz or to take part in CineMart, the largest co-production market for film projects.

Thirty-one titles have been selected for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films including Sarah Wood’s ‘For Cultural Purposes Only’. For a list of the lineup visit IFFR.