Conditions of Creation
What are the necessary conditions for cultural production? Three artists’ films reflect on how material conditions, mental states and evolution influence the production of art.
Benjamin Cook
Total running time 81min
For Christian
For Christian is a cinematic portrait of New York School composer Christian Wolff. Challenging the limits and conventions of documentary form, this new 16mm film continues the artist’s ongoing investigations into vanguard thinkers and cultural producers.
Dir Luke Fowler
UK 2016
7min
An Experiment in Leisure
Excerpts of texts by psychoanalyst Marion Milner (1900-1998) on concentration, the body, repetition, daydreaming and open-ended time as conditions for creation are read and reflected upon by different artists. The resulting experience of time resonates with Milner’s idea of leisure: not a moment opposed to work, but a time allowing us to perceive and think freely without an immediate objective.
Dir Manon de Boer
Belgium 2016
36min
Evolutionary Jerks and Gradualist Creeps
Two evolutionary biologists, Niles Eldredge and Armand Marie Leroi consider the analogies and differences between the cultural and the biological realms, comparing the history of life within the fossil record with the evolution of pop music. Marquiss draws on Eldredge’s pattern of evolution as a cue for image-making processes and editing structures to transpose scientific enquiry into cultural production.
Dir Duncan Marquiss
UK 2016
38min
