Performance #1, #2 & #3

Performance/Video Installation
(2007-2008)

These works are a triptych of performances where the documentation of the live act appears more important than the live act itself.
For each work a meticulously detailed storyboard is made for a generic performance (in Performance #1 the artist has his tongue nailed to a table, and Performance #2 is a durational performance involving a clock and a pistol). The making of the video is performed live in a gallery, closely following the shot-by-shot directions of the storyboard, faking extreme acts and creating otherwise impossible angles in the video.

Two days after the performance the edited video, complete with dubbed sound effects, is exhibited with the storyboard.

The first live performance at the Czech Centre in Prague was 30 minutes long. The video of the performance has a duration of 1.5 minutes. The second live performance, at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, was 70 minutes long, and the resulting video is 2.5 minutes. The third performance was 40 minutes, and the video is 4 minutes.

Performance #1 was made during a residency at Futura, Prague.
Performance #2 was made as part of a solo exhibition at Castlefield Gallery, and was supported by Vivid.
Performance #3 was made at Verkligheten in Umea, Sweden, on 4th April 2008.

Installation with Storyboards and Sound (2007-2008)

A series of storyboards detail film scenes that take place in public toilets. In the toilets of the same building where the storyboards are displayed, a soundtrack to these short scenes plays on a loop, constantly building suspense, hitting its climax and slowly building up again.

The work takes advantage of a cinematic cliché; in the movies public toilets and bathrooms are frequently the scenes of suspense, contemplation, violence and grit. This cinematic genre is used as a transportation device into an imaginary world, and is part of the artists ongoing investigation into possible junctions between life and the cinematic.

With a specially commissioned score by Lukas Simonis

Manipulated Living

Intervention at The Pallasades Shopping Centre, Birmingham (2007)

Taking control of the sound system in The Pallasades Shopping Centre for one week we played a selection of film scores to the thousands of commuters who must pass through from Birmingham's main train station each day.

The music we chose is made for the purpose of inducing emotions of elevation, joy, sadness or fear in movie viewers. In contrast to the music usually playing in shopping centres, it was incredibly intense and full of suspense. By re-applying this cinematic mechanism to a day-to-day situation and treating the location as a film set, we attempted to add the hyper-real potential of the cinematic to the short journey through the shopping centre.

Commissioned by New Generation Arts

The Poets

16:9 DVD 8min Loop (2006)

Two Chinese Poets appear to ramble poetry in a destroyed film set. However, the subtitled English text, which contains snippets chosen from the poetry of T.S. Elliot, does not match what the actors actually say in Mandarin, who are merely talking through physical stage directions.

Supported by Arts Council England, Vivid and Shangrila Culture & Arts Centre, Beijing
2006

The Waiting Room

Installation with DVD 30min Loop, Storyboards and Production Video (2006)

A film set of an institutional waiting room was built during a residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall, where members of the public were invited to star in a series of videos about the unavoidable circumstance of waiting.
The relationships between the artists and the audiences who took part is now mostly hidden behind music, dubbed sound (from footsteps to horror effects), and elaborate editing, a process through which the finished product is far removed from the collaborative and live process in which it was made.
The work is installed with a production video, showing raw footage of the artists planning, shooting and creating sound effects, as well as the storyboards made for each scene, linking back to the process behind the work and to the reality behind the flights of imagination taken in the edited video.

Supported by Vivid

Within the Chaos there is CHNS
(A Demonstration of the Classic Hollywood Narrative System)

Performance (2005)

The artists wrote a script for a horror film based in St Paul's Church, where an exhibition was to take place. On the night of the opening, an electric guitarist improvised a two-hour film score to the script. Inside the church, only the guitarist could hear the guitar through his headphones. The sound was amplified through a large speaker system in the bell tower, filling the surrounding square with the guitarist's impression of the horror script.

The script closely follows the Classic Hollywood Narrative System (CHNS), a formal system used in 99% of Hollywood films to keep viewers attention, implying a symbolic control over people using the space outside the church.

Performed at The Artist with Two Brains, St Paul's Church, Birmingham, Curated by Chris Hammond
Guitarist: Joel Murphy

Supported by Arts Council England

Like A Musical

Performance/Video Documentation (2005)

Inspired by the fantastical imagery of musical cinema, the artists created two new scenes with a particular location in mind. After writing lyrics and a synopsis, they collaborated with a composer and choreographer and employed five professional actors to rehearse the scenes.
The scenes were performed live and unannounced in city centre locations. At the end of the scene, the actors dispersed anonymously into the crowd.

Commissioned by Fierce International Performance Festival, Birmingham
Presented with Ikon Gallery

Conversation Exchange*

Performance/DVD 8 min video (2005)

People passing through the ICA were given the proposal that they may have a conversation with the artist. On sitting down together a tape recorder is started, and they converse for two minutes.
They then swap seats, quickly transcribe the two-minute conversation, and begin to re-enact the conversation for camera, only that they speak each other's words. Often the conversation started with the artist explaining the purpose of the situation, resulting in the video work becoming self-explanatory.

Performed and exhibited at the ICA, London

Columbia*

DVD 90min with 6min Trailer (2003)

A film set installation was built and the public invited to take part in the making of a movie about the ill-fated NASA space shuttle Columbia. Visitors were cast as leading roles, cameramen and boom mic operators on a random basis.
During the five days of the exhibition, the entire film production was completed; including live special effects, filming and editing. On the closing night of the exhibition, the final scene was shot and the audience sat in Ground Control, Houston, where the film in which they had just starred was premiered.

By The People's Elbow
Conceived by Reuben Henry and written with Michael Grime
Springhill Institute

I am Karin Kihlberg**

Performance (2004-2005)

An actress is trained to take the role of the artist Karin Kihlberg. She appears in art events to replace a fraction of Karin Kihlberg's life.
The actress' rehearse from an illustrated script of Karin's acquaintances, learning them by sight and through descriptions of their relationships with each other. The script enables the actress to take the role of the real Karin.

This parallel life enables the real Karin Kihlberg to take a break from herself. During the performance the real Karin Kihlberg is at home relaxing, having a foot bath.

Performed at Sollentuna Art Fair, Stockholm, represented by Candyland, 2005. Actress: Anna Lundquist, and in Brain Jelly Live Art Showcase, curated by AAS, at UCE Birmingham. Actress: Julie Chapman.

Supported by Arts Council England

Shoot*

Performance (2004-2005)

On entering the room, visitors are met with the proposition from the artist that they may shoot him or be shot. A kids banger gun is revealed and alternatives and reasons are discussed, usually ending with somebody being 'shot' in the head and falling onto a crash mat.

The focus is on the conversation formed under the context of a moral dilemma. No matter the outcome, the actions and decisions of the visitors were always questioned, moving the performance into a form of alternative therapy.

Performed at Brain Jelly, UCE, Birmingham, and Konstakuten, Stockholm.

Art Video: The Definitive Critique*
with Jacques Croissant

DVD 60 min (2004)

Presented by 19th Century French Painter Jacques Croissant, this illustrated lecture categorises many common forms of single screen video art, and critically exposes an art form whose practitioners suffer from a profuse confusion between art, design, and entertainment. Demonstrating a rich critical analysis, Croissant here explains what makes good quality video art, and what is mere video craft.

This educational video essay, produced specifically for distribution to art institutions, is a reaction to and safeguard against a "Tidal wave of video art crap coming out of the art schools", and warns the artists of tomorrow how they may avoid becoming cheap video art peasants.

*Works by Reuben Henry
**Works by Karin Kihlberg