Film workshop

Despite only being here for just over a month, when I heard the workshop leader’s voice (he was english!!) I felt a bit nostalgic for home. I love the diversity of this place, all variety of accents, but when you suddenly hear someone speaking in an english accent in this little town it can be quite nice.

The aim of the week was to create our own short film in groups, and me and Chelsea were paired with two other girls, Julie and Heloise. We were instructed to choose a text in light of which we would structure our filming and acting around, and somehow we ended up with Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’. Some parts of the dialogue were quite humorous and involved only one or two words from each speaker so we thought it would be fun to try reading it out in both french and english.

We were given the recording equipment and sent off to try it. I chose an acting role in the film and surprisingly found it quite fun, although i hate to watch myself back afterwards. Once we had all of our footage we set about editing it on Adobe Premiere, which gave me some handy new tech knowledge

The workshop leader himself, Redmond Entwistle, gave us a presentation of some of his own films at one point during the week, excerpts of which can be found here .

Is it the year 99?

We went to zurich !!!! Beforehand i’d made notes of a couple of art galleries i wanted to check out, which turned out to be pretty far from the part of the city we’d arrived in, so after gawking at all the make up counters in Manor (the swiss alternative to Debenhams) and looking for a Primark that didn’t exist, we headed off over the river into the north-west part of the city. All the galleries were due to close at 5, and lo and behold, we came across a market/car boot sale thing which seemed endless. Of course we had to look around….

When we eventually found the galleries they weren’t what i’d expected at all. hidden away in a towering apartment type block, we found the Eva Presenhuber on floor 2 and the Peter Kilchmann on floor 4. The work exhibited, some of which i’d seen on instagram, was as interesting and amazing as I’d hoped. Kind of like seeing a famous person in real life and realising that they are actually 3d beings with skin pores and consciousness just like the rest of us.

On the walk back from the galleries, MORE galleries just started appearing out of nowhere. BolteLang, Soon-Art, and Hauser & Wirth (which sadly had no works exhibiting but we spent a good half hour in the book shop)

To end the day we went to Hooters, who are not all just about the iconic staff outfits by the way, the food is the best. And the beer 

Here are some pieces from Michael Williams at Eva Presenhuber

And Saype artiste at Soon-Art Galerie. This guy’s work was crazy good. The steamed up window effect was obviously a main theme, along with the layering effect as if you were looking through some thick window pane.

Friend opportunity

At MAXXX for the second time! This time viewing René Pulfer’s vinyl art collection ‘Revolutions per minute’. There were some really neat pieces here

He also was displaying what I believe was a limited edition copy of a book ‘Sleepwalkers’ by Doug Aitken which I researched later and turned out to be a visual diary about a film installation of the same name, which was projected onto the exterior walls of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan. René and I tried to speak about the work, with me asking if i could purchase a copy of the book myself, and from his broken english I understood that it would cost a bomb. He said there is a ‘box’ available to buy online in which you receive a vinyl, cd and dvd along with the book, but his repeating of ‘$200 - $300′ made me doubtful that i’d ever own it.

In other news, here’s some recent work i’ve been doing, i’m still very sceptical about the actual direction of my project so i have mainly been experimenting.

Lausanne: second attempt

Not much luck. It rained all day. However we did find a cool comic book shop where i managed to find something in english, and then we stumbled upon a protest against the Dublin referrals, which i later read up about here 

‘STOP WARS NOT PEOPLE’

Give me something to type about

I took a ride to town earlier to get some quick shopping, and there was something about this afternoon/evening that made it feel particularly magical… the way the sun sets leaving the town in shadow whilst the mountain tops gleam in the light, it has to be one of the, if not the best views i’ve ever seen.

We went to a project space called MAXXX in Sierre a couple of days ago, to hear a talk by two artists that had been working on a project and book based on sounds. We both ended up buying their book ‘Seismographic Sounds - Visions of a New World’.

I found this discarded mirror around the side of the Théâtre Les Halles, by the train tracks, and brought it back to Movimax. Will eventually be doing something with it

Half n half. We found the resident McDonalds and large shopping malls!

Soundfiles 2

We went to the city of Lausanne after the workshop, and Lora took us to some shops before they closed. i say “took us” i mean “she was running ahead urging us to hurry with us sweating and crawling along behind”. Huge art shop which we’re making a note of going back to. It’s so strange to see people drinking freely in the streets, everywhere. We watched the sunset from above the town with the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame behind us, an enormous gothic building which we circled twice trying to find an entrance but with no luck. We got the subway back to the main train station and then so came the two hour journey back to Sierre. it isn’t as fun when you can’t see anything out of the window. When we got back at about…. half 10? The others were having a party in the lounge but we were so tired we went to bed and conked out

On Saturday several of us from the Inn took the train to Sion, where i bought a bike and ate the second best burger I’ve ever had, at a place called Holy Cow. The first is one i had only a few weeks ago back in wales. this year is a real burger discovery year

In the evening we were given a musical performance in the living room by another inn-mate and his friend, who both play drums. It was kind of mesmerising to listen to… The drums were passed round throughout, and i found the rhythm quite easily but then keeping up with it was a different matter. needless to say i won’t be becoming a musician any time soon

Later that night we went to a nearby music venue/club/thing (there’s clubs in sierre??) where there were a variety of live acts playing all sorts of music, it was gr8. The place is called The Hacienda, apparently used to be an abattoir, and is hidden within the building below, which i’d taken a photo of a couple of days ago before knowing what it was