Formal Experiment (MiniDVD Recorded); short film based on a sequence of poems that utilise the "Eight Views" theme and approach predominant in 11th Century Chinese (and latterly Japanese) poetry.
"Eight Views: First Variation" is based on the first variation on this "Eight Views" theme, written by the filmmaker, and quoted in full below:
Eights Views: First Variation
return home from a distant city – travel along a shore road
October mist hides a large wall
wild birds ascend from sheltered trees
a night fire is lit – smoke rises
the sound of a nearby stream
descent from mountain to a fishing village – it rains – an unfamiliar bell chimes
the Autumn moon glows
the sea rolls forward – a memory of a thousand boats.
Formal Experiment (iPhone 13 recorded; dialogue created entirely by participants Jérémie C. Wenger & Iris Colomb) inspired by thoughts of continental European gardens & streets, English houses, summer conversational strolls and spatial epistemology (2024, Video (HD), 10'39").
Available to watch here
Video Triptych of 3 Chapters - Part 3 of 3
"I gave them...my English translation of "Ariosto", which I got at Dublin; which their teachers took very thankfully, and soon after shewed it to the earl, who call'd to see it openly, and would needs hear some part of it read. I turn'd (as it had been by chance) to the beginning of the 45th Canto, and some other passages of the book, which he seemed to like so well, that he solemnly swore his boys should read all the book over to him".
REPORT OF A JOURNEY INTO THE NORTH OF IRELAND, Written to Justice Carey, by Sir John Harington, 1599.
The final film in the CRYPTOGRAPH trilogy brings historical obsession into the awkward present, and illustrates the power of transcending history alongside the knowledge and understanding of it.
Available here
Video Triptych of 3 Chapters - Part 1 of 3
A paean to synecdochism, the immersion of the "I" into nature.
Text emerging through recomposition of a sentence written by the most synecdochal figures of the English Renaissance, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in a letter to Elizabeth I :
"I will not fall like a star, but be consumed like a vapour by the same sun that drew me up to such a height."
Available here
Video & Text Work inspired by the important role of darkness in early Irish Literary technique :
"The deliberate use of enigmatic speech, too, is very well attested. In early Irish literature, the poetic rhetoric is described as having the qualities duibhe ('blackness' in the sense of obscurity), dorchatu ('darkness' in the sense of being mysterious) and dlúithe ('compactness'). The darkness of the poets' language is particularly stressed, and one early text poses the question 'where is poetry?' and then gives the answer 'in darkness' (i ndorchaidhéta)."
From, The Sacred Isle: Belief & Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland, Dáithí Ó hÓgáin
Available to view here
Available to watch here
Developed as part of the Forms of Ownership (FOO) collective EMARE/EMAP 2020 Residency at m-cult (Helsinki); exhibited also at Antre Peaux (FR), 2020; Werkleitz (GER), 2021; NeMe (CYP) 2023; Klub Solitaire (GER) 2023.
Available to watch here
A Film Essay/Hallucination - the languid fantasies of an imaginary British Paratrooper stationed in a military Sangar in South Armagh, Ireland.
Available to watch here