Showing posts with label The Turnip Prize. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Turnip Prize. Show all posts

Friday 12 October 2012

Ronnie, gae hame!

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


13 October

There's a rather strange review / account of The Turner Prize entries in The Telegraph (at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/9578907/Turner-Prize-2012-Tate-Britain-review.html).

Strange in that, when Luke Fowler has a film 'about' R. D. Laing, the writer (Richard Dorment) takes issue with Laing himself, what he represented and advocated, and how he was discredited for his theories, and one 'wrong-headed belief' (about schizophrenia)in particular.

Dorment says not only that Laing could be 'self-aggrandising' and 'pretentious', but also 'compassionate' and 'articulate', once he has finished talking, perhaps with less knowledge than he believes, about medications such as lithium and Prozac, neither of which would have done much, if anything, for Laing's core patients.

Far be it from me to say whether one should watch Fowler's film, but Dorment leaves himself precious little space in which to make comments that might inform such a view. Such description as there is leaves one not knowing whether this is a film with an arty feel (as another Telegraph critic felt), or a work of art, nor even, whichever it is, whether it is any good. Just as well Ronnie left the stage earlier...

On which more here.


Thursday 11 October 2012

The Turnip Prize II

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


11 October

There has already been such an enormous amount of interest in the previous questions posed on these pages that I have agreed to post some further ones from readers and to see if I can find out some answers when I make it down to the show...

1. Is it true that everyone working on this part of the show wears a Ronnie Laing mask?

2. The prohibited actions didn't mention laughing - was that an oversight?

3. Is it general admission or allocated seating?

4. The prohibited actions didn't mention farting - was that an oversight?

5. Can other sorts of vegetable be taken into the screening, then?

6. I've heard that, too, about the masks, but aren't they from images from all different times in Laing's life?

7. If you watch the film twice, do you get Air Miles?

8. The prohibited actions didn't mention scratching (oneself, others or the seat) - was that an oversight?

9. I've heard that it's allocated seating, but the seat is allocated to you, depending on whether you screen for schizoid tendencies, schizophrenia, etc. Is that right?

10. Can people obtain verification, if it is needed, that, although they were at the Turner Prize show, they didn't attend a screening of All Divided Selves?

11. Can they still obtain such verification, even if they did actually attend one?

12. The prohibited actions didn't mention yawning - was that an oversight?

13. Does the death penalty still apply to anyone who mentions the word 'documentary' in connection with the film?



PS Hey! This sounds like an almost interesting approach to a film about a hisorical subject (taken from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/5307532/Luke-Fowler-stories-upside-down-and-inside-out.html) :

Your eyes have barely focused on the tousled head of the composer Cornelius Cardew, when the image on the screen dissolves into footage of winter foliage that skitters in and out of focus. Newspaper cuttings concerning Cardew's early death (in a hit-and-run accident) are presented floating in space like elements in some miniature sculptural installation.

This is documentary film-making according to Luke Fowler, one of the hottest names in contemporary British art, winner of the inaugural Derek Jarman Award for artist film-makers, whose first major retrospective has opened at the Serpentine Gallery in London. In Fowler's best-known film, Pilgrimage between Scattered Points, which tells the story of English composer Cornelius Cardew, interviews are presented deliberately out of synch, subjects appear suddenly upside down, interspersed with apparently random imagery.



Apart from the random imagery, why has the canon of invention dwindled?


Wednesday 10 October 2012

The Turnip Prize I

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


11 October

I have already seen on Tate Britain's web-site that Luke Fowler's film, All Divided Selves (2012), has published screening-times for his entry for The Turner Prize (on which the Evening Standard has given an overview).

I'm assuming that they have built a cinema-room in the show in which it will be projected, but do all (or any) of these rules apply? :


1. No latecomers admitted

2. No popcorn, fizzy drinks or noisy sweet-papers

3. Only bona fide appreciators of the genre of artists' films allowed in

4. Any screening not containing a full quota will be cancelled

5. No petting

6. Anyone found with a root-vegetable about their person will be ejected

7. No whispering to your companion when you cannot follow what is happening (or what the title means)

8. The audience is to be strapped in before the screening commences, and the central locking-release mechanism, except in the case of emergency, will only be operated at the end

9. Anyone found with closed eyes during a screening will be given The Alex Treatment

10. The audience is to be strapped in before the screening commences, and the central locking-release mechanism, even in the case of emergency, will only be operated at the end

11. Anyone who betrays any knowledge of the subject of R. D. Laing, the man, his thought and his psychiatric practice will be encouraged to believe that they really have a very busy day and cannot spend ninety-odd minutes in a screening

12. No heavy petting

13. Friends of the film-maker will not be allowed entry (on the grounds of protecting them from getting the impression that they, too, are famous artists)


NB Now that I have found out, I should acknowledge that The Turnip Prize has existed for some years - www.turnipprize.com is its web-site.


STOP PRESS - now more at http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-turnip-prize-ii.html