Every weekend in August, Tate Film presents a selection of moving image works from the collection in the Starr Cinema. Experience these works in a cinema setting and enjoy the first public display of Lucy Raven’s China Town 2009 and Frances Stark’s My Best Thing 2011. Each work in the programme is in dialogue with a theme of the collection displays currently on view in both the Boiler House and the new Switch House extension.
Anri Sala Dammi i Colori 2003, film still.
Courtesy the artist
Frances Stark My Best Thing 2011, film still.
Courtesy the artist
Event programme
12.00
Lucy Raven China Town 2009, 52 min
A photographic animation reflecting on what it means to be ‘wired in’ by following the trail of copper processing from ore to finished product. The work shows an artist’s engagement with a material and its use in industry and society through a visual essay rather than through its direct use as an artistic medium.
In dialogue with the display Materials and Objects
13.00
Frances Stark My Best Thing 2011, 99 min
A chronicle of the artist’s intense online relationship with a chatroom user, with whom she talks sex, film and politics via cartoonish avatars and snippets of found footage. This video contains content of a sexually explicit nature and is not appropriate for young audiences.
In dialogue with the display Media Networks
15.00
Anri Sala Dammi i Colori 2003, 16 min
Dammi i Colori documents a real-life entanglement of aesthetics and politics, as applied by artists and then mayor of Tirana (and current prime minister of Albania) Edi Rama in his visionary transformation of the urban landscape through the application of multicoloured paints to the exterior of buildings.
In dialogue with the display Artist and Society
15.30
Derek Jarman Blue 1993, 79 min
Jarman’s Blue visualises the drama of a gay man affected by AIDS who, slowly losing his sense of sight, meditates on love, loss and death via a monochrome blue frame, a haunting soundtrack and a stream-of-consciousness, poem-in-prose monologue.
In dialogue with the display In the Studio
17.00
Rabih Mroué On Three Posters 2004, 18 min
Reflecting on a performance the artist had previously staged with Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, On Three Posters examines the relationship between reality and performance, what it means to ‘act’ and ‘reenact’, and how to relate to an audience.
Followed by
Andrea Fraser Museum Highlights: a Gallery Talk 1989, 29 min
The video exposes the contradictions, manipulations and class-based undertones of art museums as ‘temples of culture’. Within the context of the new Tate Modern, it is an admission to the fact that, however new, a museum has to understand its own limitations and historical baggage.
In dialogue with the Switch House displays: Art Becomes Active
