AGITATE:21C

Kino Klub Split, Croatia

2019-09-07T00:02:00.000+01:00

Kino Klub Split is a film society in Croatia, holding weekly screenings of experimental, underground, alternative and independent cinema from around the world, including features and shorts, contemporary and historical. It is a non-profit organisation founded in 1952. More than six decades of life for an organisation like this seems rare in global film culture.

The head of film programming is Darko Duilo, also a member of Agitate:21C. He has recently invited some fellow group members - David King (Australia), Nikola Gocić (Serbia) and Marie Craven (Australia) - to co-select some sessions, including films by several A:21C film-makers.

The programs coming up in the next couple of weeks...

13 SEPTEMBER 2019

Ivan Li - Finding Uranus

19:15 SHORT(S) PETTING (powered by Agitate:21C)

Usama Alshaibi - The Flowering (USA; 2017) 04:25
David King - Lost in a Borgesian Labyrinth (Australia; 2018) 07:01
Takatoshi Arai - Color Sex Death/Quantity Amount Quality/Night Mother Scent (Japan; 2017) 25:50
Matt T Helme - Under the Sea (USA; 2018) 03:11
Matt T Helme - Intersect (USA; 2019) 01:35
Matt T Helme - A Dance In The Dark (USA; 2018) 03:25
Ivan Li - Finding Uranus (Canada/Hong Kong; 2019) 06:56
Jeff Zorilla - The Impossible Flowers (Argentina; 2019) 08:21

Program duration: 60:44
Co-selector: David King (Portarlington; Australia)

René Clair - Entr’acte

20:30 CINEMA PUR ARCHIVE

Henri Chomette - Five Minutes of Pure Cinema (1925) 04:40
Walter Ruttmann - Lichtspiel Opus I-IV (1921-1925) 18:02
Viking Eggeling - Symphonie diaganale (1924) 07:29
René Clair - Entr’acte (1924) 20:08
Hans Richter - Vormittagsspuk (1928) 08:45
Hans Richter - Everyday (1929) 16:33

Program Duration: 75:37
Web introduction: Nikola Gocić (Niš; Serbia); see his review of this program

20 SEPTEMBER 2019

Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian - Alphonso’s Jaw

19:15 SHORT(S) PETTING (powered by Agitate:21C)

Marie Craven - Rodeo Days (Australia; 2019) 03:40
Donna Kuhn - Make America Great Again (USA; 2019) 03:26
Salomé Lamas - Extraction: The Raft Of The Medusa (Portugal/Switzerland/Italy; 2019) 07:28
Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian - Alphonso’s Jaw (Beauty And The Silver Mask) (Scotland; 2019) 07:59
Camelia Mirescu - Nacre Fields (Italy; 2018) 04:15
Camelia Mirescu - Wings from Somewhere (Italy; 2018) 03:08
Camelia Mirescu - Promised Clouds (Italy; 2019) 02:44
Susanne Wiegner - The Light - The Shade (Germany; 2017) 07:07
Laura Huertas Millán - El Laberinto (France/Colombia/USA; 2018) 21:06

Duration: 60:53
Co-selectors: Nikola Gocić (Niš; Serbia) and Marie Craven (Queensland, Australia)

Rouzbeh Rashidi - Phantom Islands

20:30 ROUZBEH RASHIDI – PHANTOM ISLANDS (2018)

A Pictorial Film By Rouzbeh Rashidi
Produced by Experimental Film Society 2018
Funded By The Arts Council Of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon under the Reel Art scheme

Duration: 86 minutes / Country: Ireland / Language: English
Web introduction: Rouzbeh Rashidi (Dublin; Ireland)

Darko Duilo, Head of Film Programming, Kino Klub Split

Born in 1973 in Split. During the late 80s he attended amateur film, photography and IT workshops in the Video and IT Club Varoš in his home town, followed by probing the activities of Kino Klub Split, while at the same time independently working on experimental amateur movies shot using VHS (Panasonic 2000) and Super 8 cameras. He left Split to pursue university studies in Zadar and Zagreb and spent some time in the 90s abroad, all the while remaining a devoted cinephile. He successfully completed his studies in Sociology and Philosophy (postponing the PhD), followed by a stint as a journalist for several daily newspapers (Slobodna Dalnacija, Jutarnji List, Dan), also writing occasional essays in the field of humanities and teaching in high school. With the start of the new century, he joined Kino Klub Split as a permanent member, completing the film school course and attending all basic workshops. Sometimes he worked on film productions, performing various tasks. Member of the editorial board of “Split Film School – 60 Years of Kino Klub Split” and author of the educational publication “Avant-garde Film – 10 years of film screenings 2008-2018”. He is continually curating and managing educational film screenings programme held every Friday. Also involved in preparing and teaching courses at maritime colleges and freelancing as a translator.

Kino Klub Split program 2019-2020

Experimental Film Interview: Walter Ungerer

2019-08-12T10:38:00.001+01:00

Interview by Avant Kinema.

Born in New York City in 1935, Walter Ungerer has produced a vast and eclectic body of avant garde films since the mid 1960s when he first experimented with 16mm on shorts such as Meet Me Jesus, which gained him attention at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. As the available technology has progressed through the decades, Ungerer has shown great passion in exploring the possibilities of each new mode of production.

Walter Ungerer

We encountered his work through screenings of his later shorts at Scotland's Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival and have kept in touch since first making contact on Twitter in 2014.

This year we were blown away by the colour, vibrancy and energy of a recent short: I Just Don't Get It - It's My Russian Soul (2016).

Avant Kinema: Hello, Walter. Where are you and what kind of a day are you having?

Walter Ungerer: Hi Sarahjane. Hi Roger. I am in my editing room in the lower level of our house. The window in front of me looks out at a grassy slope. In the distance is Rockland harbor, nearby islands and the Atlantic Ocean. We live in Rockland, Maine, USA.

Almost every day is an interesting day.

AK: The Light Cone website says that you were “born in New York City in 1935 of German immigrants”. In what ways has this displaced European background - a distinctively German background - influenced who you have been as an American living in the 20th and 21st centuries? More specifically, how has this background informed you as an artist working with the Modernist medium of moving image?

WU: Being of German heritage has made me a bit more alert to things German than other cultures. Maybe there’s a residue of learned national pride, be it German or American. Today, that attitude doesn’t work for me. I think of myself as member of the planet. I’m aware that my life experiences have affected me. When I am working, I don’t dwell on such thoughts. I am not a psychologist.

AK: What route did you take from studying art and architecture at the Pratt Institute in the late 1950s to becoming a filmmaker in the '60s?

WU: When I was eighteen and starting college, I was eased into art school because I did well in art in public school. I did well in math, too. I think the public school teachers with whom I was in contact thought architecture would satisfy my interests in art and math. At that time I never showed any special interest in film. I loved going to the movies. So did everyone else. Film, as a profession, was out of the realm of consideration, or possibility; at least at the public schools I attended, or was familiar with.

After undergraduate college, Pratt Institute, where I studied art (drawing, painting, sculpture), I went on to Columbia University, still studying art. Because of my interest in movies, a friend of mine suggested I look for work in the film industry, if I wanted to learn more about film. The two centers of film in the U.S. at that time were Los Angeles and New York City. So I looked for work on film productions in New York. I worked on Shirley Clarke’s feature, The Cool World, then on a doc about Buckminster Fuller and Edward Teller for Foland Productions, then on an animated film called The Beginning for the United Church of Christ. There were other films, too. They were all free-lance jobs that lasted a few days to a few months. I was hired for a particular assignment: camera operator, sound recordist, animation stand operator, or negative cutter. That’s how I learned about film production.

AK: You've said that you were interviewed by a major film studio when you were a young man. They wanted you as a graphic artist but that was not what you wanted to do. You wanted to make films and it seems that it was experimental films you particularly wanted to make. What drew you towards the avant garde? What does experimental work offer us that mainstream cinema can't?

WU: I went to Los Angeles to check out the West Coast film scene, as I free lanced in New York. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, or what was available. Because of my art background Bueno Vista Studios (Walt Disney Productions) was willing to hire me to work on what I call their animation assembly line, very specific and limited in scope drawing and inking on cel drawings. That wasn’t for me. I began to realize I wanted to do my own thing, and run the show. So I came back to New York, got together with several other aspiring artists, and produced a short 16mm film called A Lion's Tale. At the same time Columbia University gave me the opportunity to teach film production in their graduate film program. It was just a beginning production course. I had access to discarded film, both unused short ends from the networks’ production teams, as well as copies of television films. I used that material to make another short film called Meet Me, Jesus. It made the rounds of film festivals that were cropping up, especially at colleges. It won some awards, gave me some recognition, and was the impetus to keep going in that direction of experimental film. “Underground film” is what I heard more often at that time, 1950’s, 1960’s, than “experimental film”.

The avant garde seems to offer me freedom to do whatever I want to do. I have found business people that offer me financial support, usually want to impose their views on me. In a business environment there is an obvious inevitable relationship between the employer and employee where the employer tells the employee what to do. In my environment the public sometimes also tells me what to do, or what I should do, or suggests how I can improve my work. There is no obligation on my part to follow it. In truth I have fallen into the avant garde because my work is of that nature, has a look that fits in with what is thought of as avant garde. I didn’t create my work to look like what is considered to be avant garde.

AK: Did you feel that you were working within the context of the wider counter-culture, which had simmered on the fringes in the 50s with the Beats and the art of Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Dadaists before fully exploding across America in the mid '60s? Or did you feel that you were trying to do something quite separate from this?

WU: I never consciously concerned myself with working within any context. I saw and experienced art at museums and galleries because I felt enriched from the experience, not to emulate a style, trend or individual. It took a long time for me to accept I was an artist. For the longest time I saw myself as a student of art. I am still a student: still learning.

AK: Your early work seems to have involved a gumbo approach to the craft, mixing together whichever ingredients were at hand at the time in order to add flavour and texture: whether that be found footage, scratching or painting directly onto the film, the use of startling jump cuts or more dreamlike super-imposed imagery. What were you trying to say to us with this approach? Were you attempting to show us glimpses of another more chaotic, less rational world beneath the surface?

WU: For the most part I don’t know what I was trying to say to the world. I tried to be humble, and have humility. I was a student of art, a student of the world. If my work pointed out the chaos in the world, it came through from a connection with my soul and the universal soul.

AK: When we first spoke with you on Twitter in 2014 we asked you if your Oobieland series was inspired by Alfred Jarry's absurdist King Ubu plays. You replied: “Nice guess, no. It was 1968. I was driving to California in my VW bus. We were halfway there from New York. Chicago was on fire.” We've seen the Chicago Riots in documentaries and read about the Democratic National Convention in a book by Hunter S Thompson. Can you paint a more vivid picture for us of what was going on at that time? How specifically did the climate of unrest and change influence the Oobieland project?

WU: In the summer of 1968 I remember seeing buildings burning in New York City. There were flames and smoke billowed out from apartment houses as I drove past the area on a highway into the city. Clouds of smoke passed before me as I passed through.

I had to get some equipment in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. I was warned to be careful. There was shooting going on. As I reached that area, everything was in rubble: smouldering buildings and empty lots with fires still burning. It was a wasteland, desolate. I saw few people. They all seemed to be inside the remaining structures. One knew this was a dangerous area, as there were other dangerous areas in New York; in Chicago; in Berkeley, California. In 1968 I passed through all those areas in my VW bus on a tour of the United States. There were moments I thought I was in a dream, that this was not happening.

AK: How did this influence the Oobieland project?

WU: In retrospect Part Two has references to “the American Scene” and one character answers my question about what I think of the United States. He says, “The American Scene - chaos”. The Oobieland project has five parts. Part Two, Ubi Est Terram Oobiae?, is focused on the climate of America at that time of the mid and late 1960s. Additionally, the Latin title, Ubi Est Terram Oobiae?, in translation means “where is where?” referring to a national loss of positive identity. The translation might not be exact, but that is the inference as I titled the film. The other parts of Oobieland don’t have quite the gloom of Part Two.

AK: Would you say that the current divisions in America have a similar intensity to what was going on at that time? If so - how might this influence artists working today, including yourself?

WU: In 1958-69 I was living in New York City, experiencing the turmoil that was going on there. Today I live in a rural area, more distant from densely populated areas. The intensity I feel is of nature: beauty. I have a television, radio and a computer. That pulls me away from my rural environment, into a more global realm. So – yes, today it is similar in that there are plenty of problems to be addressed, and hopefully solved: How to get along with everyone on the planet? How to be fair and concerned about the greater good for everyone, rather than the selfish “me the best” attitude?

When human beings are honest, they are tuned into the pulse of the earth. When they are artists, they create art that reflects the condition of the earth. They do it in as many ways as they are artists. My work speaks through the spirit I have placed in it, not consciously, but spiritually.

AK: In your films it seems to us that the audio is as important to you as the visual material. Would you agree with that? How have you sourced music and sound for your films throughout the years?

WU: Yes, the audio is as important in my work as the visual material. As with my eyes, my ears are always working.

With a portable recorder I record the audio around me: ambient, radio, TV. I find material, bits of sound, on audio and video tapes, records, CDs. When I start a new project I create an audio effects folder, placing all the sound bites into it. In earlier years when I shot a lot of sync sound and picture, as for my feature length films; I didn’t rely as much on wild sound or the pick-up material I just described.

AK: Do you edit to a pre-prepared audio track, or do you bring the sound in at a later stage once you have some kind of visual rhythm and structure?

WU: No to pre-prepared audio track. When I begin shooting, very quickly I will think about audio as well. It becomes a parallel process. Imagine the desktop of a computer screen. Film clips will be placed there as well as audio files. I’ll begin to move them around in different orders. With that changing arrangement film clips will affect the audio, as audio bits will affect the film clips.

AK: In a documentary we watched, Placing the Mark | Marking the Place, you speak about inhibiting the urge to jump straight into the editing so that you can get a feel for what you have shot before you set about dismantling the chronology. How important is it for you to end up with a work which is non-linear? Why is this war against chronology in your films so important and what does it mean to you?

WU: Mainly, I don’t want to jump into the editing until I have a feel for the material because I know that if I don’t follow that procedure, I’ll make decisions I will need to un-make later. In viewing my material I try to savor what I have already recorded. If I don’t savor it, it won’t be in consideration for later use in the project.

It’s not important to end up with a work that is non-linear. It is important to make creative decisions that I feel good about. Then, whatever result occurs, is good.

It’s curious to me you mention the war against chronology. My earlier works, especially my feature length films (The Animal, The House Without Steps, The Winter There Was Very Little Snow and Leaving The Harbor), all relied on narrative structure and chronological order in order to convey the story. I have moments where I think I am too “chronological order” oriented.

AK: When you edit video is your process improvisational like jazz or meticulously scored like classical music?

WU: To improvise and be spontaneous in my life and in my work, is what I strive for. I also like order. How do I resolve that? I try not to think about it. Just work!

AK: Have you managed to support yourself and your family through filmmaking and the arts throughout the years?

WU: Money and monetary things have never been very important to me as long as I could get by; and later as long as the family could get by. That’s a good approach if you don’t have much money. I have not made much money from my work. For the longest time I have thought of Vincent Van Gogh as my mentor.

I have taught some aspects of film at several colleges and universities, most of the time as a visiting artist, or adjunct professor. That has been my solution to sustainability.

AK: In the 1990s you began “a long period of exploration with the computer, using the computer to not only edit but to create the entire film without the use of a camera”. What led to this exploration of digital media and what did you learn from it?

WU: Using the computer was a cheaper method to produce a project than to use film. Film and processing costs were getting more expensive. Additionally, computer software offered many more creative options in creating effects, and doing it more quickly, than film laboratories could offer.

I learned using the computer route was quite a different method of working. The learning curve never stops when working with computer software. There are always upgrades and updates. The film age was slower. Equipment evolved. Computer equipment becomes obsolete quickly. You can physically touch film. With computers you can only touch the screen. Everything else is in hard drives.

AK: You made a feature length documentary, And All This Madness, in 2002 in response to the Twin Towers attack. Did you approach this film in new ways? What was your methodology? Did you learn anything new about the World, other people or yourself through the process of making this film?

WU: I had made documentaries before, and worked on other peoples’ documentaries before. The only difference in approach to making And All This Madness compared to my earlier documentary experience, was that I was using a digital camera and editing on a computer as opposed to a film camera and a Steenbeck or Moviola flatbed editing table. The objective with the film was to get the story out to the public and answer the question, “Why did 9/11 happen?”

There was no new approach with And All This Madness compared to earlier docs I had done. As with previous docs with which I have had experience, there needed to be a structure or plan for the film. What did the film want to say? How would that be accomplished? To a great extend the film used the interview format. Who did we want to interview? Then, would they be willing and could we arrange it? We made a list of potential interviewees. Some were unavailable. Others were unwilling to be involved for political reasons. It took over a year to make the film. When finished we had great difficulty getting it shown. Vermont television knew my experimental work. It had been well received. Initially they wanted to air And All This Madness. After seeing the trailer, they pulled it. Colleges were more willing to show the film. It was disheartening to see the lack of backbone on the parts of very established and ingrained individuals in important positions to show the film.

AK: Can you tell us a bit about the next feature you made after this, Down The Road? Whilst continuing with your experimental approach it seems that you've made a very personal, autobiographical film which covers some uncomfortable material.

WU: Down The Road was made as I was going through a divorce. A woman I was married to for 20 years no longer wanted to be married to me. We had a 13 year old daughter. I could not understand why my then wife wanted a divorce. I was clueless. The film interviews some of my friends, who I hoped would be able to give me insight to my divorce. The film was therapy for me. The production methods I used to make the film were similar to my previous film And All This Madness. I recorded probing questions. I added home movie footage of our family when my daughter was several months old, then later stages of her growth. At one point the home movie footage shows the three of us in our car waiting for a rain storm to pass by. My daughter, aged five months, is singing a song to me with my then wife’s encouragement. It was an idyllic young family moment caught on film. Very poignant, and painful to watch now.

AK: For your more recent work, you have utilized a DSLR stills camera and software to produce vivid, vibrant, colourful experimental shorts. Is this the set-up which most suits you now? Presumably it allows you to work more quickly and for less expense?

WU: Today’s set-up suits me fine.

AK: For our own films we've recently moved from working exclusively with digital equipment to experimenting with Super 8. We like the texture, the process and the excitement of uncertainty. We've even been trying our hand at home processing using the Caffenol C recipe (coffee, vitamin c and washing soda). Is there anything you miss about cine film or do you see that as purely belonging to the past?

WU: There are moments when I recall fragments from the past, for instance loading an Éclair camera or threading a Steenbeck. They are just brief memories, and there is work to be done now. Maybe I will shoot with film again. I have an 8mm Rolliflex cartridge camera and a 16mm Bolex H16 camera.

AK: Your interest in Super 8 with its qualities, seems like a good direction for you both. The excitement of uncertainty with that process coincides with my own enthusiasm for uncertainty and spontaneity.

WU: For now I am finishing question 17. Whew!

Roger and Sarahjane, thank you for researching my film history, and posing a resulting array of provocative questions to be.

AK: Thank you very much, Walter Ungerer, for taking the time to answer our questions.

Walter Ungerer's Dark Horse Films
Vimeo
Twitter
Q&A at LAFF

Everything is cool in eternity

2019-08-05T22:54:00.000+01:00

An interview with Fabrizio Federico by Sebastián Jiménez Galindo.

Before being put in a straitjacket in France in 1937, Antonin Artaud wrote scarcely about cinema, a medium he believed was born dead. He believed the novelty of film demanded a vision unlike anything ever seen or produced by the industry. Artaud did not believe in film because it was swallowed up by the mainstream as soon as it emerged. Decades after his death, during the resurgence of a new wave of underground, marginal cinema in Europe, Fabrizio Federico started making punk films and guerilla cinema in 2012, without a formal education in film and rather proud of it. For him, this meant financing extremely low budget films in any way possible, shooting without permits, on phones, children’s cameras and stolen equipment. The most important concern was to reveal a vision. His work would later be compared to ‘Rubik’s cubes of images’; blurred zones between acting and reality, often described by himself with terms such as ‘Zen filmmaking’ and ‘DJ directing.’ Federico is the author of the infamous PINK8 Manifesto starting with the affront, “Film school is poison” and closing with the call to action “Answer to one person only — yourself.” With its epileptic rhythm, it seems as if 21st century cinema still asks for the extraordinary themes and culminating states of the soul that Artaud believed it could contain, once the director assumes his role as that of the poet, the monk, or the DJ. Fabrizio Federico’s career is a vivid example of the possibilities that the present holds for young filmmakers who aim at creating work free from the restraints of film as an institution; films still committed to pushing boundaries, responding to political realities and fleeing formal categorizations.

Sebastián Jiménez Galindo: Anarchy in the UK: The New Underground Cinema documentary chronicles the UK’s Misrule Cinema Movement and the rebirth of the UK’s underground film scene from 2010 to 2016. Several organized groups of creators seem to have formed as a reaction to the abolition of the UK Film Council, which formerly provided support for young emerging filmmakers working outside of the mainstream. The abolition shed light on the autonomy of independent artists taking matters in their own hands, going into the streets and making films on their own. You finished your debut feature film, Black Biscuit, in 2012, wrote your own manifesto, independently released other short and feature films and founded the online Straight-Jacket Guerilla Film Festival in 2016, in order to represent “the cream of the Les Enfants Terribles of international cinema; a springboard for new filmmakers to create their own micro-budget epics.” It’s been eight years since the early period of the New Underground Cinema Movement, and it appears to be that punk films and underground cinema are going in a more global, international direction. What can you tell us about the current state of underground cinema stemming from the Misrule Cinema Movement and others of the like? Where has the Straight-Jacket Guerilla Film Festival taken you and other independent filmmakers?

Fabrizio Federico: I think a lot of new filmmakers understand completely the Misrule cinema and YouTube filmmaking. Because of the Internet you now have a world stage to screen your films, which completely blows away theatre film festivals and old fashioned cinemas; where only a couple of hundred people at most might see your film if you’re lucky, but there’s also a lot of filmmakers who are missing the point in a spectacular fashion! Because of organizing Straight-Jacket (which is an online film festival) I’ve realized that a lot of filmmakers for some insane reason want to keep their films private from the general public, which to me just sounds demented and insane. Why would you not want as many people as possible to watch your film, especially if you’re a new filmmaker? Just upload your full film onto YouTube or Vimeo and charge people if making money is your thing, but to keep the film private, what’s the point of even making the film? Misrule is about total freedom, D.I.Y., and war against the old cinema system. I want everyone to start releasing Misrule style films online so it over-saturates the film industry, destroys it and ultimately it will be reborn.

It has been said that the generation gap became visibly fractured during the Brexit referendum in 2016. Young people claimed their future had been stolen by the generations above who seemed to have taken the decision for them, but some polls showed high rates of absentee ballots among young voters. Pro-Brexit papers like The Daily Mail described the coming generations as “angry but distracted.” It is a generation that is increasingly interested in learning more about politics and the democratic process, but the massive easy-access to all types of biased and false information places them in a state of confusion and inaction. You were heavily critical of the social media generation in your film Pregnant (2015). How do you see the role of film, and specifically renegade, D.I.Y., aesthetically radical films, in the political positions of young people during times of crisis?

I think this Internet generation is completely gullible and has no attention span when it comes to discussing anything serious or topical relating to the future. I spent a year studying them online so I know what I’m talking about. Most of them are too hung up with their own micro-aggressions, but instead of listening to the bigger issue they just have this ridiculous self-entitled attitude to be offended by everything. It’s very distracting and boring, nothing gets solved. Brexit became a reality because the youth of Britain let us down, we could have won that vote, but instead we lost because the youth were too busy playing on their phones.

You were born and raised in an Italian family in the UK, and then moved to the United States at the age of 13. You entered school after having forgotten how to read and write in English, and had to start from zero while adapting to a different culture. After spending your formative years exposed to the underground music scene in Boston, you were deported back to the UK, where you started making films. How did those years influenced your particular stances on filmmaking? In what ways, if any, do you think your initial culture shock with the United States drove you to approach films in the way that you do?

While I lived in America I was a musician and a DJ, so other than watching a lot of cool films I was entirely wrapped up in music. In order to start a new life back in Britain I had to divorce myself from my past in order to move forward, so I decided to start making films. When I first moved to America it was a massive culture shock, I went from living in the simple countryside in Italy, which is full of hoodlums and fireworks, to being thrown into a video game! That’s what America is, it’s a karaoke, entertainment, cartoon bonanza. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it after I got used to it, but believe me, a twelve year old in Italy is a lot more street smart than a twelve year old American kid; they are more innocent and playful. I miss America very much, but their immigration system is merciless and evil. I had a good life over there before it was all robbed from me.

Pop culture is an important part of your films, or rather, specific ways of looking at pop culture through experimentation and accidental moments of strange lucidity. In your short film Who killed Vanilla Ice? you say that you can’t explain why we call certain pleasures ‘guilty pleasures’ if they are something we truly enjoy. It is almost as if the world of media, advertising, Hollywood films and Instagram ads decides what we enjoy and the ways in which we’re supposed to experience enjoyment, and then separates our likings according to the place in which we are situated in a specific society. From there on, young creators reproduce specific ways of making films and telling stories, which we have been brought up to see as the norm. Do you think experimental films, coming from their opposition to preconceived notions of what films are meant to be, as well as their radical politics of filmmaking, are a way of reappropriating the ways in which mainstream cinema has been ingrained in our personal life? Or do you think it’s just a way of autonomously creating whatever one wants to see, without politics involved?

Yes and no, because even when you get away from government politics there’s always social politics you have to face, and the notion that it’s not cool to show certain things, or to enjoy unpopular topics; for example, Vanilla Ice, etc… Everyone has guilty pleasures, but why be embarrassed about something you love? I don’t just sit around watching experimental and foreign films all day, I also watch a lot of pop movies. One day I’ll watch something hardcore like Gummo, and then the next day I might watch The Bodyguard or Dirty Dancing. You have to be brave to be a filmmaker. It’s fun to play with form and to mis-manage; to be a charlatan, to revolutionize and cause an explosion with your film; to be anti-commercial but to also connect with people in a childlike way, and to disrupt. I want artistic anarchy in the mainstream — I’m a cultural assassin.

During your time in the United States you worked as a DJ, and you have talked about your editing process as a rather experimental one; for instance, editing Black Biscuit under hypnosis, or listening to Britney Spears non-stop while working with the footage. You have also referred to your Pregnant as “a mix-tape journey into technology addiction, through a shamanic rhythm.” In which ways does your music background and sensibilities connect with the montage of your films?

Massively. I basically create films like an improvised mixtape, when I’m not shooting all I do is have constant music on in every room. Pregnant is a ‘pop symphony for film.’ I can conduct and feed the audience this magical alchemy of sugar or knives and fulfill lots of different emotions in one movie. I’m very greedy, I want it all now. But I need to know what vibe I want to capture before I start making a movie. My new one is called Teddy Bears Live Forever, and I listened to a lot of Clockwork Orange classical music, early Manic Street Preachers (when Richey was in the band), and constantly had on Nirvana. The spirit of Kurt Cobain & Richey Edwards is embodied in the film, they along with all those tragic faded ‘it girls’ such as Edie Sedgwick and Gia, were my spirit-guides. The combination of death, sex, and madness is really the ultimate artistic and cultural taboo still to this day. It’s a living work of art. In LOON I used subliminal messages. It’s cooler to not know what you’re doing, rewrite cinema, use street superstars in your films. The PINK8 manifesto has now become a myth, it’s too hardcore for most filmmakers, too big of a challenge.

You use non-actors in your films (‘street superstars’); often people you stumble upon, marginal characters willing to tell their story to the camera. You don’t write scripts and your scenes are not formally staged, but rather portray the process of real life happening as it is in the moment. Despite the fact that your feature films Black Biscuit and Pregnant are not documentaries, the rawness of their spontaneous construction places them in a very ambiguous zone within the imaginary spectrum of fiction and nonfiction. Your documentaries, Anarchy in the UK and The Evolution of the Earth Angel were actually made by your alter ego, Jett Hollywood, whom a lot of people believed to be a ‘real person’, and an investigation happened after his suicide note went viral online. How do you see the way in which the categories of genre, fiction and nonfiction interact in the medium of film, and in the creation of your films in particular?

I guess the movies have a very unique identity. You can’t categorize them, maybe they are ahead of their time. To me, imperfect is perfect. The films are so open ended and nonlinear that they have confused and angered film critics. They have taken the challenge personally, which says a lot. I think that challenge is heroic in an outlaw sort of way. I wanted to create an alter-ego filmmaker and Jett Hollywood is my version of a legendary Ziggy Stardust character, but as a filmmaker from Mars, the ultimate film director who created two inspiring films and then commited suicide and became a folk hero madman, an Anti-Eastwood filmmaker. I can see why there have been riots and confrontations at my film screenings. It’s a very sexual feeling being in a riot. I’d rather have that happen instead of having a bunch of film goes sitting there quietly in the dark eating popcorn.

To tie back together this interview with the issues we addressed at the beginning, it seems that global culture in 2018 is rapidly becoming as schizophrenic, combustible, and psychedelic as you predicted cinema would become in your London Filmmakers. The point of reference for the new generations of filmmakers will be more inclined towards Internet content as opposed to television: populist and radical politics, violence and disinformation, the involuntary self-satire of the political circus and the banality of social media will all blend in a strange brew out of which daring experimentation seems to be an inevitable corollary, at least for those who pick the path of self-reliant, visionary and innovative films. How do you see the future of cinema as we approach the second decade of the 21st century?

Because I had a near death experience at such a young age, I see the world in a very freeform way because I understand that life is a game, a beautiful game. I have a vision and can predict patterns in a Fibonacci sequence-like way. In the future there will be a very blurred punk threat between what’s ugly and beautiful, garbage and gold. But being a pioneer has it’s disadvantages, just look at Van Gogh. Maybe I will be remembered as a dictator because I have very focused ideas but I think that’s just self-belief and confidence. In the distant future I think cinema won’t exist anymore, it will mutate into either the second coming of Christ; where films will be shown in the sky, or, cinema will become completely and utterly worthless, because we will live in a virtual reality and no one will have an attention span longer than five minutes.

All of Fabrizio Federico’s films are available online through fabriziofederico.co.uk. The second edition of the Straight-Jacket Guerilla Film Festival will take place online between August 15 and 21 of 2018 at straightjacketguerrillafilmfestival.com.

Sebastián Jiménez Galindo was born in Mexico City in 1995. He is the author of the poetry chapbook EXPERIMENTAL GARDENING MANUAL: Create your own habit in thirty-something easy steps, translated by Naomi Washer and published in toad press; and the audio poetry collection VORACIOUS BLUE LOBSTERS. His writings have been published on different sites online and in print in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain and Taiwan. He has worked on devised theater, sound poetry, film and video art. He is currently pursuing a BFA in Literature and Creative Writing at Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm.

This interview was first published in Full Stop, 11 July 2018.

Scotland locus

2019-07-29T15:04:00.002+01:00

AGITATE:21C was initiated by Michael Woods in Los Angeles, USA, on 25 June 2019. In only a month the project has has become a kind of online happening, spontaneously gathering over 300 members: film-makers, artists, writers, musicians, curators, organisers, and other lovers of alternative arts from around the world.

From the start the aim has been to expand activities into physical spaces internationally. Now a collection of members and their supporters have formed a locus of group energy in Scotland. Their first creation is a 30-second video introducing our world-wide project via that medium. It was made by the Scottish duo of Sarahjane Swan and Roger Simian, aka Avant Kinema.

Stay tuned for more spontaneous manifestations of A21C.

Where do you find inspiration?

2019-07-13T15:19:00.000+01:00

For our first article as the newly-formed AGITATE:21C, we asked creatives around the world to respond in any language to the question, Where do you find inspiration?

MARC ZEGANS

I find inspiration in moments when I am alert and receptive to what presents. As these presentations are often unexpected, to find inspiration I must be allow myself to see them as offers; to have the courage to say yes, even if my mind, energy and operating premises had been elsewhere, and then to act. Inspiration arrives when I release the prior premise and allow my lungs to be filled.

My response to this query illustrates. I was just responding to a note from a creative collaborator, when Marie Craven’s note flew in. Though I had prior plans, on reading her prompt, I felt a rush of energy, a sense of synchronicity. I trusted these feelings, accepted the offer, and began to write.

When I feel in need of inspiration, I remember that the root meaning of inspiration, is to draw in the breath, and that ispirare, in Italian means to draw creative inspiration. There is no concern with the result when one is inhaling, simply the acts of: invitation, opening, expansion and reception. So when I wish to find inspiration, I go out and inhale what life has to offer.

Marc Zegans is a poet and creative development advisor. He often collaborates with filmmakers who employ his poems as source material for their projects. His latest collection, Swizzle Felt’s First Folio from the Typewriter Underground was released by Pelekinesis in March 2019. His most recent collection, The Snow Dead, is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press.

IAN GIBBINS

>> set filename=agitat*/n=21?;

>> set heading=*spir*/style=q qmode=open;

>> addmod(list)=a- con- ex- in- per- re- sus- trans-;

>> source(1)=int(ext);

>> quote writequote(1):

{ so I breathe in, breath out, taste atomic molecular

touch on, off, a world at my fingertips, eye-line

arc to arc, no flicker of certitude, incalculable chance }

;

>> quote writequote(2):

{ the voiceless surge between name and action }

;

>> trans(1) = (th vclss srg btwn nm nd ctn) • (eoieeueeeeaeaaio);

>> trans(2) = trans(1) • mod(charset1);

>> quote writequote(3):

{ aaabccdeeeeeeeeghiilmnnnnoorssstttuvw }

;

>> quote writequote(4):

{ 1112334555555557899/2/3/4/4/5/5/8/9/9//0//0//0//1//2//3 }

;

>> reset codetrigger=all;

>> reset quotesource=all;

>> reset textgen=external;

>> quote writequote(5):

{ this is my reach, my grab and run, as if feathered, scale-skinned

under salt-crust, chlorophyll, orbital eccentricity, as if time unbound

hypothetical, edged, taut with desire, incoming, incoming, the pulse }

;

>> set loop(1);

>> run(1):

>> quote writequote(6):

{ and so I do

and so I do

and so I do }

;

>> endloop;

>> set loop(x) x=f(x) x=0,x;

>> run(x).

Ian Gibbins is an Adelaide widely published poet, video artist and electronic musician working across diverse forms. He used to be a neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University.

NIKOLA GOCIĆ

The Fifth Horseman Took the Wrong Pill

In a recently released Japanese fighting game, Million Arthur Arcana Blood, which leans heavily on the Arthurian legends, one of the featured female characters bears a name that resonates strongly with me - Void Eternal Flame - because it reminds me of my favorite 2019 film so far - experimental feature Luminous Void: Docudrama. Then, there's a kawaii, mallet-wielding lycanthrope, Type II Bisclavret, and there's also a fragile, gray-haired beauty, Unique Snow White. The latter rides a bearded, one-eyed giant torso composed of seven (dwarf?) shadows (or something along these lines), and is supposed to be a replica of Grimms' heroine who still sleeps in the forest, vigilant and the fairest of them all...

Now, you're probably asking: "What the heck all this has to do with the image it accompanies?" Well, the answer is simple - I find the bizarreness of the said freewheeling concept(s) appealing, liberating and inspiring. It may not be the best excuse for having Christian eschatology subverted and clashing with 'Alice in Wonderland', but I do hope that it sheds some light on the puzzling way my brain works.

Ever striving for the expansion of the personal mythology, I find the (intuitive) amalgamation of incongruous influences essential for the creative process.

(original size: 30 x 30 cm / 11.81 x 11.81 in)

ERIC EDELMAN

Seeking/Being Found
[The following account is somewhat frustrating. It describes a process between two parties not in evident collaboration.]

----------

I am looking for something (or is something looking for me?).

Almost never do I know beforehand what it is: perhaps an image, perhaps something less perceptible.

Until I have found what I am looking for (or until it has found me & I have opened to its presence), I cannot go further. I wait for images to come speak with me.

I sit quietly & listen to the images I have found (or that have found me), to hear what they have to say to me. (I open to receive influences that reveal themselves to me. I do not automatically judge or reject anything without first sensing it; a sense somehow intermediate between seeing & listening.)

I have found evidence that suggests each of us crosses paths many times a day with potential inspirations, & perhaps also during sleep. In this view we are like fish constantly swimming through an ocean of influences. Breathing this ocean in is what I have called "receptivity." I have practiced it during 35 years of collage work.

Eric Edelman
6 July 2019

MARIE CRAVEN

A creative compulsion, and a pressing need to communicate, exist inside this body and this spirit that are transiently mine. These drives get me into trouble. They get me out of trouble. They help keep me sane, and there is madness in them.

As a psychic channels spirits other than herself, and are perhaps yet herself entirely, I marvel at the previously unknown manifestations that emerge moment by moment in my film-making, that most ethereal of forms. How bewitching I find this, how addictively inspiring!

The rational mind is a powerful part of it too. I am internally pushed, obsessively, towards precise articulation to the best of my abilities. This involves the intellect, of which I am generally mistrustful. Perfectionism has been a destructive force in my life, as well as contributing to whatever excellence I have exhibited. For years I felt as if it was the death of any joy.

Entwined beyond unravelling with its shadows and brights, I find creativity the most compelling of the great mysteries. I have also learned the hard way that life is more important than art.

SARA BONAVENTURA

I never know how to answer this question. I think I was born with this profound need of divergent expression. It is sometimes a reaction to a sense of void, of despair and frustration, other times trying to grasp the inexplicable, sometimes it is also embracing life with joy. It can be many things, being receptive and introverted at the same time. I really don't know, but ultimately it's simply life in its many forms that is inspiring.

Sara Bonaventura is an atelierista and visual artist, with an MA degree in contemporary art and gender studies, diverse experiences of teaching, didactics, curatorial, PR, archive, in several Cultural Institutions (Venice Biennale, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Giorgio Cini Foundation, Berlin Kicken Gallery, institutions based on the Reggio Emilia Approach, like the Ray of Light Atelier or Ponzano Children, by Benetton Group). She is currently based in Singapore, working as an art specialist in a IB campus of EtonHouse International Group.

THOMAS BROWN

I may find inspiration to create, maintain, and/or destroy by being / being connected to multiple concurrent conscious/subconscious internal-external dynamic continua.

These structures functions units of create maintain destroy can work together and or against each other in order to do what? To create maintain and or destroy. Not to sound too high fallutin. Hooey on the mountain. Hooey in the valley. Hooey at supper time.

Any two units structures functions can be at a front... creative algebra... advanced guard... it's all fronts.

MICHAEL WOODS

Excerpts from a long rave that can be read in full here.

Inspiration is a plague of thoughts and images and feelings and memory/dream material congealed; sometimes bobbing up and down, sometimes frantically storming and forcing me to take note. Through over a decade of thought and work linked to one large project I've gained a sort of understanding that this inspiration leads me to establish art actions, not in attempts to simulate but to make an honest effort to represent the inspiration in another communicative form. The inspiration with which I am afflicted was born of trauma, severe depression & anxiety, addiction, lack of identity...

...the Numb Spiral is the event that I walked into from the darkness of a drug-addled brain shock with self-loathing... I began to, even in total sobriety, get the notion that something wasn't right underneath the world...

...I began reading McLuhan, Baudrillard, Debord, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and I was already reading Marx, Malcolm X's autobiography, Jung, Kafka, Freud, Chomsky, and theorizing on the end of western civilization. One night I was possessed by a particularly potent wave of thoughts that I can only describe as being what Philip K Dick describes in VALIS, but pink in the shape of a spiral that dumped ideas and things in my head... they weaved a conspiracy theory around nihilism.

This conspiracy theory was focused on what causes the descent into the Dark Ages following the Expansion and Fall of the Empire. In this particular day-nightmare, the fall was due to our reliance on machines, but also the artificiality of our own existence, the devaluing of our own reality, to the point where most beings have evolved to dull their sense of physical reality...

...And so this is my inspiration, the Numb Spiral is the point in which consciousness believes more in nothing than everything and tips over, sometimes into a catastrophic psychiatric break. I think that no matter what I make at this point in our political reality, I cannot help but make the Numb Spiral as a drug to combat what I see as the biggest threat to the world - global apathy, hatred, greed, hedonism, tribalism caused by viral nihilism.

JENNIFER SHARPE

What inspires me... how to answer this question with the right words. I'd say though over time, I've come to realize that it’s very related to being a woman in the world. Abused, discarded, held back, trivialized, violated, and muted. When I was younger I always wished that no one had bodies, that we could communicate as spirits. That's only a dream. The reality of living in this world as a woman is the equivalent of a French kiss followed by a punch in the face.

XIOER LIU

Thanks for this deep question.

I'm actually writing my novel now - about my trauma and the linked stories. Trauma is one of my inspirations.

Dissimilation also - about images.

Abstract thinking.

Strange relationship with my father.

Getting raped by a stranger - a special story. In my novel I wrote it down.

Eating disorder.

Body observations.

Love and passion.

Pain.

CAMELIA MIRESCU

The passion for the world of the Symbols that live in all of us is the narrative thread of my imaginative and creative existence, condensed into a reflexive exploration then externalized by the painting, photography, video art, experimental film and love for written thought. A precious series of devout working tools that have moreover, given me the strength to emerge from the constellations of objective difficulties, to synthesize in a sensible expression, all conscious and unconscious influences, to shape the desire to create, to open up the Spirit to the unknown and the infinite. Ultimately living for the Enigma of Art, beyond the Time and the Space of a passing life.

OTHNIEL SMITH

SALISE HUGHES

My background is visual art. I first discovered world cinema while working at an art house cinema in SF while studying painting at SFAI. I wasn't exposed to experimental cinema or knew what it was till I saw Bill Morrison's Decasa. This was my inspiration to create my own experiments using transferred film and then ripped DVDs, and digitally erasing, layering and reediting into my own work. I was 50 when I began.

I drew on art history rather than film. I've never had a film class other than a workshop to learn FCP. I've never shot footage other than on my phone. I'm a bit of an outsider, but was accepted in festivals. I was thrilled when one in Belgrade, Serbia invited me for a residency. I made life long friends there, and saw that there was such a thing as a tribe of filmmakers. We all have different backgrounds and cultures, but share the same passion for cinema.

When I returned to Seattle, I started a local group of experimental filmmakers, and had programming at a local cinema. I then introduced a version of an exquisite corpse and invited filmmakers around the US and a couple from Europe. This led to a series of more ambitious international corpses. My goal as a curator was to explore this tribe under the title of The Spaces Between Cities, and The Spaces Between Countries.

I'm interested in the relation between the filmmaker and their environment, the ones who stay in one place, and those who migrate. The ambition of AGITATE:21C interests me. We have different backgrounds, cultures, etc... but we share a passion for progressive art in many forms.

JEAN DETHEUX

Does one find inspiration, or isn't it more likely that inspiration finds one?

It seems to me that there are two very different approaches (like "poles") to creative work: one is to live it as a "special" effort for special occasions, efforts separated by idle time (and often, "schmoozing" and compensating for all that hard work), working triggered by a forthcoming show or festival, akin to how so many people perform in school, working for the test/exam.

Or one lives one's work as a form of daily breathing, whether inspiration graces it or not. And the point therefore is not to "get inspired", but to practise what one's life is about, regardless, and fully.

Two things come to mind as beautiful expositions of what I am trying to say. The first one is from John Cage, talking to his (great) painter friend, Philip Guston:

"When you are in your studio, and as you start working, you are there with all your thoughts, as well as those of your friends and ennemies. As you keep on working, and if you are lucky, they start leaving, one by one. Now, if you persist, and if you are very lucky, even you leave."

I'll add that in my experience, the work starts with trying to reach that point at which "I" leave, and then the real work can begin (if I'm lucky).

The second one comes from T. S. Eliot, it is a very lucid way which deflates the notion held by so many that Art is based on knowledge (it that were to be the case, "one would never leave" as per John Cage):

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning..."

- T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Most Art schools lie, they make students believe that once they have learned all the tricks the schools teach, things will be easy forever after. This is a huge deception, if Art/inspiration materializes "when one leaves", it is essential one becomes able to work "by way of not knowing", and if that can be encouraged, it most definitely cannot be taught, at least not the way one can teach "plumbing" (be that real plumbing, or Art by way of "official" schooling).

Inspiration is what comes (or is left) when every intentional "thing" has failed, when everything seems lost, yet when one does persist with utmost care, at least with intense curiosity, and not as a form of tantrum (which often comes from a sickly need to be in control, not realizing that real work makes itself through "me", and not the other way around).

As Camus so well said: "The failure shall be the measure of success".

MARK BLICKLEY

INSPIRATION

I have been clinically diagnosed with ADHD and refuse medication, so my mind jumps around and switches tracks on me all the time. My inspiration is most often based on a plethora of ideas, kind of like jazz riffs most often triggered by the absurd humor I witness in life. My work jumps around in different genres because content dictates form---abstract pieces or linear pieces are all the same to me because they're ALWAYS in service to some sort of storytelling idea. The hardest thing for me is to stick to one idea and see it to completion. I get bored easily.

Once I get an idea for a new work that excites me, I can ALWAYS rely on research to turn that storytelling idea into a concrete product. I've learned that creativity isn't dependent on being original or one's personal genius---I've only met three truly creative geniuses--- it's about making connections. "Each generation of artists pours old wine into a new bottle." The muse will always smile on me when I use research to help me weave the threads. With writing/filmmaking, I always need three things to start a project: a working title, a beginning and an ending. All three can change by the work's completion, but I must have those jumping off points in order to turn my idea into something that others can view.

Mark Blickley

NIGEL WELLS

DAVID KING

There's this shop on the corner of two streets with no names in a place with no name, where you'll see all the ideas in the world, all arranged in alphabetical order. So if you're ever short of an idea...

COULOMBE LAROSE-SAMSON

Une image vaut mille mots...

SYLVIA TOY ST. LOUIS

I am inspired by being out in the world. I was a sedentary kid except for walking to and from school and playing unorganized outdoor games that involved a lot of running. Suddenly I was in ninth grade - no way I was going home from school on a busload of unsupervised middle-schoolers.

It only took a few months of walking home from school for me to fall in love with the incredible mix of the world: light, wind, buzzing sounds, bird sounds, rustling sounds, the rare sudden lack of sound in the way only the outdoors is quiet; the smell of a million things - the pungency of everything before and after rain, the smells of flowering plants, the smells of woody plants, the smell of being so close to birds.

Lincoln, Nebraska is not a commuter town. But New York, where I finished growing up when I was 28, had the subway - so much worse, so much better than a bus full of middle-schoolers - so many smells, so many colors and sounds.

Forty years later, when I get on a bus in San Francisco, I put away my cellphone so I won't miss a damn thing.

JOSEPH YOUNG

We aren't always so good at remembering we come from the world. It's easy to think that the boundaries of our body, and consciousness, hold us separate from the things around us. We feel our hands, fingers, heads, chests are a cloudy membrane that stands between us and the people, houses, streets, trees. Easier yet, we feel our minds as containers, the we that we are, our thoughts, as sealed vessels, even traps, that keep us distinct, and alone. We are islands.

Except, we do come from the world. It birthed us, so to speak. Our muscles, blood, bone are all molecules drawn from the air and our food, and our thoughts would not be thought if we hadn't the world to think on. If not for a lover or a loved one, or the weeds and children in the yard, what would we fix our feelings and ideas upon? What even would our ideas be without our objects of contemplation?

Our bodies and our thoughts then are only sometimes asleep, to the reality that we are of the world, that we are the world, the whole of it resting for a time inside. The world is the world, and our minds and bodies are the world entire, and all are the same world, only we forget.

Inspiration is waking, seeing people on the bus, hearing the hum of the refrigerator, reading a poem. I'm refreshed that the world is out there, beating away. That in turn shakes me to the beating world inside.

Art is the world giving back itself, a circuit: gift to gift to gift.

SEBASTIÁN JIMÉNEZ GALINDO

Excerpts from a longer piece that can be read in full here.

The image is present

A few months ago I wrote this, in relation to my own process of creation:

"I believe that making art is a unified effort for turning ourselves inside out. If there is one single aim I'm seeking, it's to paraphrase memory."

When I talk about turning ourselves inside out and paraphrasing memory, I'm referring to the same recurrent obsession: in my head there are multiple films being made, several sentences clashing together, sounds coming and going and images being born, transforming and dissipating as unexpectedly as they came. It is a pressing need for me to translate this chaotic movement into recognizable objects; to materialize this process from the inside, well aware that the result may only be some sort of approximation.

I'm interested in film because I'm interested in the experience of memory, disintegrated time and non-linear ways of making sense of the world...

...For me, both writing and filmmaking are, above all, constant reflections on the way we communicate with the unpredictable, the incommunicable, the unattainable and the deeply human; therefore, both are also unending reflections on themselves and their own mechanisms.

In the same way that words in poetry are a conduit to make language reveal itself, images in film are continually speculating on what images are and the way they exist in the world and in the mind. These questions huddle together in the form of a thousand indeterminate messages clashing within. These messages are as mysterious as they are real, and art does not seek to clarify them, only lead us in their way.

We can go further; we can go back to the image. Most of us can't get out of the world of images.

Sebastián Jiménez Galindo was born in Mexico City in 1995. He is the author of the poetry chapbook EXPERIMENTAL GARDENING MANUAL: Create your own habit in thirty-something easy steps, translated by Naomi Washer and published in toad press; and the audio poetry collection VORACIOUS BLUE LOBSTERS. His writings have been published on different sites online and in print in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain and Taiwan. He has worked on devised theater, sound poetry, film and video art. He is currently pursuing a BFA in Literature and Creative Writing at Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm.

KRASI DIMTCH

Language became my spiritual guide and my inspiration during a period of retrospection when I stopped making art and began searching for ways to disrupt the boring predictability of my pre-learned answers to a number of existential questions plaguing me.

At that time I was desperately trying to overcome preconceptions and belief systems I was thought to comply with. My constant attempts to escape my mental prison were ineffective until I decided to devote myself to the practical development of the idea that every possibly sayable thought could be found in a semantic net formed by sequences of synonymous words.

I still remember the moment of 'revelation' when I found a proof of the fascinating powers of Language in the sequence of English synonyms: death syn. event syn. result syn. results in + completeness syn. omneity.

My linguistic explorations led to the formulation of patented methods for language generation. They also made me realize that artworks in digital age should not be necessarily defined by a single mode of presentation - whether as computer codes, images, sound patterns, or texts - which gave me the idea for the creation of software that not only can generate sentences but also can transform them into different abstract pictures and sequences of sounds. Endless are the possibilities of differently representing texts as images or sounds.

But what constantly inspire me are the results of the manual transformation of sequences of English synonyms into thesauri poems. Take for example the verse: targets titter in their coffins setbacks pose as aims. Can you believe that I found it in the sequence of synonyms: target syn. chase syn. cry syn. titter in + chase syn. goal syn. focus syn. coffin syn. grave syn. death syn. setback + grave syn. pose as + goal syn. aim?

Krasi Dimtch
Member of AGITATE:21C

PAMELA FALKENBERG

The short essays on inspiration already posted on our blog frame a glimpse into the passions and thought processes of some of the members of our collective, which I have found interesting and illuminating.

I myself have nothing profound or global to offer on the subject of inspiration.

There is no what that inspires me, and no why either.

For me, inspiration is serendipity, the unpredictable coming seemingly from nowhere (or everywhere) and happening in the now, sometimes like a bolt of lightning, other times like a subtle change in the light. I can't control it or produce it on demand. It happens in its own time, not always on deadline, but sometimes in the nick of time. Yet there is no shortage of it. Don't dismiss it! Let it happen! It's neither good nor bad in itself, just freewheeling creative thought in dialectic with the world, by definition an individual perspective (but not foreclosing collaboration).

Sometimes inspiration arrives in the course of research or serious thought, which it may or may not be related to; sometimes it creeps up as the mind wanders while stuck in traffic or in the middle of mundane tasks. Other times it comes like a manic storm. Be ready! It's not always on topic, but pay attention anyway. Inspiration loves input, curiosity, and openness, but it is not immune to dark visions. Inspiration fuels my work, but doesn't compel it - alas or perhaps fortunately, there are still artistic, political, and intellectual choices to be made, where the critical mind is of more utility.

JANET LEES

Inspiration amidst devastation

Ever since I first came across it several years ago, a quote by the late Australian poet Les Murray has often ricocheted around my mind: 'I am only interested in everything'. It has always reassured me. The poetry world can be pretty narrow and rigid at times - take for example the timeworn edict that poetry should not be illustrated because it should always be able to stand alone, an edict that was hammered home on my creative writing MA course. I've since let go of these kinds of limiting commandments - a letting go that was necessary to becoming a poetry filmmaker.

Increasingly, my creative work is driven by the prospect of climate, ecological and social collapse. I recently realised that I've been grieving all my life - as a child who was painfully awake to the destruction of nature and the suffering of animals, I would pour some of this grief into stories and poems. Now, in the midst as we are of the sixth mass extinction event, my pain for the world is a constant thread running through my films. The most recent example is Huntress, which centres on a poem I wrote on a canal boat journey. It speaks to my need to bear witness in these times: to 'look with the eyes that don't look away' at all of life - at the despair, the dark wonder and the unfathomable joy; to see and feel everything that life presents.

Janet Lees