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.

Image from An Experiment in Leisure

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.

Image from Evolutionary Jerks and Gradualist Creeps

Dir Duncan Marquiss
UK 2016
38min