GLASGOW.- Give Birth To Me Tomorrow, LUX Scotland’s Artists’ Moving Image Festival, has been co-programmed by artists and writers Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf. It begins this month with a series of screenings available to watch online from 21–24 January 2021, via LUX Scotland’s
website, delivered in partnership with Tramway.
Works by Isabel Barfod, De’Anne Crooks, Sharon Hayes, Kyuri Jeon and Camille Turner, and will be available to watch on the LUX Scotland website across the January festival dates, with captioning provided by Collective Text.
The programme lies in between the folds of artists’ moving image, performance documentation, protest documentary and animation, considering their strategies for interruption, to undo the formal and psychological trappings of a neo-colonial, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal cinema system.
The programme comprises:
• Sharon Hayes, 'Fingernails on a Blackboard: Bella’, 2014
• Camille Turner, 'Miss Canadiana’, 2005
• Isabel Barfod, ‘Hear Me Out’, 2018
• De'Anne Crooks, ‘LIEF’, 2019
• Kyuri Jeon, 'Born Unborn Again’, 2019
The programmers said, “These films are adjoined by their questioning of what it is to announce or articulate individual and collective presence. Moving from the demands of the voice and what it means to be heard clearly in public and then how the performance of the voice forms and shapes the body or bodies. The title relates directly to one of the films (Kyuri Jeon, 'Born Unborn Again’) and it came out really organically from watching films together and thinking together. One idea in particular of projecting forward is through making demands in the present, which feels relevant at the moment, this idea of looking ahead. Watch these works energetically and think of new ways to be with the screenings”
Following the online festival, there will be a series of screenings and events scheduled to follow the lunar calendar across the rest of 2021, connecting viewers and asking them to . Dates have been released for these events, with screening and programme details to be announced shortly.
Give Birth To Me Tomorrow extends the AMIF weekend festival for the first time across eleven months, firstly inviting audience members to see an introductory selection of works in January, before participating in a full programme of virtual screenings and events across the lunar year. It is also the first time that events have taken place fully online, allowing audiences to access the programme from wherever they might be.
By elongating the programme across a longer period, the programme allows the viewer time and space to make connections between the works, watching one work and then coming back after a period of reflection to engage once again, with renewed attention.
Tako Taal said, “Give Birth To Me Tomorrow obstinately extends what was a weekend festival across 11 months as a strategy against the frenetic fatigue of the festival format. A demand can unite and thinking together about possible futures requires time; I want to stretch this out as much as I can. The extended structure encourages each artist’s work to be considered distinctly, as an event in itself and the breaks in between a chance for renewal.”
Adam Benmakhlouf said, “Since the invitation to co-programme, the global pandemic has - in symbolic and real terms - prevented the festival from comfortably resuming. Our schedule is in some ways sparse, but energies are directed away from marathon watches of dozens of films. Can you instead watch these films closely and enunciate what they look like, what they do, bring, lack, break, bend, reinforce ...?”
Kitty Anderson, Director, LUX Scotland, said, “This programme of works marks the beginning of an exciting year of accessible online screenings, available for our audiences to see digitally, wherever they may be in the world. By reimagining the structure of the festival, and examining what artists’ moving image is, Adam and Tako have taken the Artists’ Moving Image Festival in a new direction, which feels particularly pertinent in 2021”
