Jeff Keen

A few months ago, I had some time on my hands and I was thinking about films. I was thinking isn't it good that something like Youtube exists and there's really easily accessible digital editing and there's ways of making and using film in a personal way that didn't exist before. And that it's really good that this has come about because for so long the idea of FILM has been dominated by Hollywood with big budgets, freakishly photogenic actors, commercial gloss.

I was thinking about the films I really liked (the names Jan Svankmajer, Terry Gilliam, Jodorowsky came up) and I remembered Jeff Keen. Back in the early 80s I'd videotaped a 3 minute film of his that was shown at about one in the morning in a Channel 4 or BBC series on experimental cinema. It was a genuinely hand made film, a mad collage of flashy splashy paint and gestural pop art images and text that went BLATZ!. A while later I went along to a screening of his film at the London Filmmaker's Co-Op. Jeff Keen was there in the flesh and introduced the film by setting fire to an Action Man. There was another film in which he and his actor friends were there in the flesh doing some sort of live performance which overlapped the 24 frames per second action.



I never heard anything about Jeff Keen or his films since. So about six months ago I looked him up online and found a web site -in - process with a few press cuttings on it from but nothing to be found on Youtube (though there is now, see below) but there was the promise of a DVD release. And then a couple of weeks ago I find out that Stewart Home is to be one of the presenters of major retrospective of Keen's films at the BFI at the end of February and what's more they're releasing over 9 hours of films and videos by Jeff Keen on Blu-ray and DVD and there'll be screening around the UK. I can't wait.

In the meantime I sent off for Prisoner of Art, a DVD in a handmade collage booklet from the man himself. It's wicked.


Born in 1923, Keen is still actively creating films, artworks and experimental soundtracks. Fiercely independent and working for the most part outside of the mainstream and avant-garde circuits, Keens prolific output has embraced collage, live action, diary film and animation - often played out as expanded cinema performances where chance and accident are vital components. In 2009 the British Film Institute will tour and release a Blu-Ray retrospective of Jeff Keens work. Available Jan 2009 is 'Prisoner of Art' a limited edition self released book of collages and artworks that includes a DVD-R of shorts and new soundtracks. www.kinoblatz.com.

ideal husband ideal wife

Mr and Mrs Ayers demonstrate how a simple electronic device can enhance marital bliss.

The New Landscape - private view

17 January - 14 March 2008
Royal Cornwall Museum, River street, Truro
www.royalcornwallmuseum.org

Ecnad Larolf

Ecnad Larolf

Nigel Ayers
Ecnad Larolf (2009)

Ecnad Larolf is a multimedia work constructed around a three minute recording of Helston Town Band playing the Floral Dance, which has been digitally time-stretched so that it is more than an hour long. Emanating from artificial-looking grassy knolls , the resulting sound follows a beat that seems closer to the earth breathing, or the cycles of plants, than a traditional processional dance beat.



Installed in Royal Cornwall Museum
17 January - 14 March 2008
Royal Cornwall Museum, River street, Truro
www.royalcornwallmuseum.org

The New Landscape

‘The New Landscape’ will bring together artists working in Cornwall who have, in different ways, been inspired by the landscape. One of the distinctive features of art made in Cornwall over a number of generations has been its relationship to the landscape. In recent years in Cornwall artistic representations of the landscape have taken a large number of forms beyond traditional painting. Increasingly, newer media, like video and digital photography, have become important, often as a way of documenting interventions or performances in the landscape. This exhibition will show a wide variety of work in a range of media, which all share a relationship with the Cornish landscape.

I'm doing a sound installation for this show. The private view is on Friday 16 January 6.30 -8.30

17 January - 14 March 2008
Royal Cornwall Museum, River street, Truro
www.royalcornwallmuseum.org

Tribute to Gustav Metzger

V.A.

Tribute to Gustav Metzger

2CDs


Feat.: Anna McCarthy - Anton Kaun - Carl Oesterhelt - Catriona Shaw - Cobra Killer – Dennis Graef -
Dompteur Mooner - Eva Weinmayr - Frau Kraushaar & Nova Huta Lee Holden - Max Müller -
Melissa Logan - Michaela Melián - Mosh Mosh - POLLYester - Rhythm King and her friends -
Schwestern Brüll feat. Raumschiff Engelmayr - Stewart Home / Nigel Ayers -
Ted Gaier / Mense Reents - Wolfgang Müller - Yoko Ono


We wrote letters but received no replies. One of us pushed a note under the door of his flat in London. Then we were able to speak to him. But the tape recorder had to stay off.

He was born in Nürnberg. His parents, orthodox Jews, and nearly all his other relatives were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. When the Refugee Children Movement saved him in 1939 and brought him to England, he was twelve. Twenty years later he gave his first individual exhibition entitled Three Paintings by G. Metzger in a London café.
Half a century ago he published his first manifesto, in which he defined his notion of Auto-Destructive Art:
Auto-destructive art is primarily a form of public art for industrial societies.

At his South Bank Demonstration in London in 1961 he presented Auto-Destructive Art for the first time in a public space with acid action painting. A few years later he developed Auto-Creative Art. He was a founder member of the Committee of 100, which was dedicated to opposing nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction, he took part in demonstrations and was sent to prison in Staffordshire for a one month sentence. He performed his Liquid Crystal Projections in the 1960s at concerts of the bands The Cream and The Move in London. His lectures inspired Pete Townshend to smash his guitar on stage. In 1966 he initiated and organised the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London, in which numerous artists took part, including Bob Cobbing, Henri Chopin, Ivor Davies, Al Hansen, Juan Hidalgo, Kurt Kren, John Latham, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Otto Mühl, Ralph Ortiz, Yoko Ono, Robin Page, Wolf Vostell and Peter Weibel.

Years without Art: In the 1970s he called an Art Strike which was supposed to last for three years, but at that time no-one wanted to take part. In contrast, in response to our invitation to contribute to the project Tribute to Gustav Metzger the acceptance letters were soon flooding in. Demonstrations, manifestos, concepts, exhibitions – it is an unsettling, radical lifework which gives a subjective, appropriate response to the destructive mechanisms of the twentieth century and the present, and which invites people to contradict it, comment on it and refer to it. In Justin Hoffmann, who has long concerned himself with the subject of Destruction Art, we found the right man to act as curator of the Tribute project.

Katarina Agathos / Herbert Kapfer



Designing a Tribute to Gustav Metzger is a challenge in every respect. Not only because there is a fundamental difficulty in transferring the production and thought of a fine artist to radio and CD, i.e. onto an acoustic level, but also because Metzger's oeuvre itself is bulky enough to cause complications when handling it. I am therefore all the more grateful to all involved who were not afraid to take the risk.
An invitation to take part in this project was issued to fine artists who are currently friends of Metzger (Eva Weinmayr, Lee Holden) or who were previously in communication with him (Yoko Ono). Others are from the field of music, e.g. Cobra Killer, Ted Gaier / Mense Reents or Carl Oesterhelt. But most work in both domains and combine music and art in a wide variety of ways in their cultural practice. The compilation of the tribute tracks is as discriminating as it is varied. It cannot necessarily be characterised in terms of the relevant cultural origin. Some contributions are based more on the word and others produce sound collages without text. A not inconsiderable number have created songs. Some of the lyrics quote Metzger directly and others reflect on him. Various work groups and strategies of Gustav Metzger are appreciated on the CD – the references go in various directions. The majority of the tracks relate to his notion of Auto-Destructive Art, but some also to his notion of Auto-Creative Art with its components of accident and variance. Michaela Melián refers to Metzger's call in the 70s to rock the art system and transform it with a three-year art strike. On Melián's track one can also hear Gustav Metzger's voice, which is looped and thereby determines the rhythm.
All those involved, and not least Bayerischer Rundfunk, share the wish to appreciate with this work the unique oeuvre of Gustav Metzger. We hope he likes this present.

Justin Hoffmann, Wolfsburg, 1.9.2008


intermedium rec. 036
ISBN 978-3-939444-63-3
http://www.intermedium-rec.com/recordse/cd036.html