Still from promo for NATO

This is one from the archives. A 35 second promo for the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive, to be used at screenings and events (obviously, or quacking for details may be somewhat less effective). NATO was a collective in Manchester who did various subversive and situationist-influenced performances and other artworks, including the March for Capitalism and a spoof tourist guide to Manchester for the Commonwealth Games (2002), directing tourists to the alternative Blitz Festival of international grassroots underground culture, in the form exhibitions, street theatre, outdoor music, film nights and presentations.

From NATO’s website:

NATO is a Manchester-based grassroots art collective. Our work as a collective, or through collaborative projects, aims to bring grassroots and underground art dealing with current social and environmental issues out of the confines of its more typical contexts, exposing it to a more diverse and mainstream audience.

We believe art and culture can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not just a diversion from it.

True art and imagination can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not a diversion from it. Art can be at its most inspired when it fosters awareness of the power each individual has to act for themselves, to make their own art, to believe in their own ideas, take control of their lives and change them.

Link to the subsequent Fundamental international art show exploring totalitarian religion here.

John Maloney in Free Jazz (photo by Florence Holmes)

This is the first short I made at film school earlier this year, dedicated to my dear little H. I made it for his birthday, but then I gave him a fishing rod, which will no doubt give him more pleasure than this film ;{)

Update: Cutest quotes ever from H after watching the film “I love you and I hope you come back to you again, I loved the movie, Maisey plays the trumpet, I’m thirsty, I love all the bits that have Hunter in them, I want you to guess, I think it was, uh, love how you make movies, goodnight.” However, I can also confirm that the fishing rod still managed to trump it.

Many thanks go to the crew, especially Laura Rinaldi (D.O.P.), John Maloney (playing the role of Emile Ouiseau), Eva Destruction (costume), Kathy Helme (script editing) and the talents and patience of Marian Prickett and Bec Kingma who made the musical notes.

Shooting in Prague for Undercurrents

This is a video produced by Undercurrents (directed by Paul O’Connor), the video activist production company where I worked in 2000-2001, of the IMF / World Bank protests in Prague, 2000. I was a camera operator for the event, following the pink and silver march, with my camera buddy, Flo.

It was quite an experience, being part of a huge mass of people from all over Europe and the world, converging to protest the policies of these institutions who put economic restructuring ahead of people and the environment, demanding that governments privatise basic services, build infrastructure such as dams without regard for environmental and social destruction and more in exchange for their development loans. Undercurrents was part of the independent media who came together around the prague.indymedia.org project to tell a broader story of the protest than the narrow, conflict-based news coverage in the mainstream press.

Climate Camp in Newcastle

Climate On The Line (1min 53sec, 2008) is a brief clip showing brave young protestors laying themselves on the line (literally – the train line), as part of a series of peaceful direct action blocking the coal trains in Newcastle. Many groups of activists prevented the coal trains from running all day, in one of Australia’s biggest displays of direct action against the destructive export of coal which is fueling climate change.

I was in Newcastle recently for Climate Camp Australia 2008. It was an inspiring few days of workshops, info sessions, movement building skillsharing stuff and actions to stop coal trains from running to Port Waratah all day, in one of Australia’s biggest displays of direct action against exports from the world’s biggest coal port, one of Australia’s biggest contributions to destructive climate change.

It was also a convergence for some young folk who were covering the event independent media style. I was helping out organising the media space and doing a spot of filming/editing too.

Check out this video on EngageMedia of activists locked on to the coal trains on Sunday 13th July:

You can find more coverage of the camp and associated actions here on EngageMedia.

Still from Subvertising at the OK Cafe

Subvertising at the OK Cafe (4 mins 53 sec, 2002) is a short D.I.Y. video about subvertising and stencilling, which shows you how to create stencils from ordinary materials you can find at home.

I made this video about a subvertising and stencil graffiti workshop at the OK Cafe in Manchester in 2002. The OK Cafe was the name of an ongoing squatted social centre that moved from squat to squat over the years, run by different collectives. Workshops, parties and meetings etc. were held in this incarnation of the OK Cafe – an old pub near Deansgate.

Memorably, at one squat party (scene of my first ever dj set) there was only one toilet that worked upstairs, so another was constucted using an old-style red phonebooth and a bucket. Partygoers had to pop into the phonebooth just off the dancefloor to relieve themselves during the night. The party was really fun, my friend Alex pulled out a drumkit into the middle of the dancefloor for my set and drummed along to the tunes (a mixture of punk, riot grrl, electroclash and rnb as I recall). It was an all-girl d.j. night, my friend Hazel also played an amazing set the highlight of which was the crowd going wild to Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and Jo Banana played a steamy set of northern soul.

Anyways, I digress, the workshop was by a couple of excellent local graphic and stencil artists who were also responsible for great political posters and whatnot. This video was made for BeyondTV, the video distro site I was working on at the time, played in the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2003.

For now you can view the video here.

A 10-second video produced/directed by me and Robbie MacEwan for a project run by the Tape Projects artist run initiative in 2008. Videos by various video artists are printed out as flipbooks to go with a 12″ record of locked grooves created by various sound artists.

Sound is by DJ Rainbow Ejaculation (Rank Sinatra / Victime de Mode / 7U? etc.) – “Carpet Cleaning Professionals”.

The Lock Groove Flip Book set was exhibited at the This Is Not Art festival in Sept/Oct 2008. Read a review by Dan MacKinlay of this amongst other shows, over at RealTime.

Lock Groove Flip Book Exhibition at TINA. Photo by Torunn Higgins

This screened recently as part of the excellent Esky video program in the Schmigloo at the Nextwave 2008 festival.

I was an avid videomaker in high school, from age 13 when my folks got a Handycam. This isn’t my first production (that would be too embarrassing) but I made it when I was 17 (1995) for final year art class. It was selected for ArtExpress and screened at the Gallery of NSW before touring regional galleries. In some ways its still my favourite piece, made before I thunk too much

Sex Wars the Musical Workshop at Camp Betty

Sex Wars: The Musical or… Which Side Story (work-in-progress performance/ rehearsal/ audition/ history lesson) In the 1980s and 90s, lesbian communities grappled with a whole heap of arguments around sex and power. What is feminist sex? Does pornography cause rape? And what about consensual violence, where did that fit in? As sex-positive lesbians faced off against radical feminists and anti-pornography activists things got vicious and new lines were drawn: which side are you on? The Lesbian Sex Mafia! Dastardly alliances with Christians! Daggy leather vests! Now what better material could you have for a musical? Drawing on writings from those involved in the sex wars in the US, England and Australia the writers want to bring to life those heady days and investigate the legacies of the time – in song!

At the “Sex Wars – The Musical” workshop at Cloud City in Melbourne for Camp Betty (a weekend of radical sex and politics) Tanya and Esther introduced key debates of the time and the major players. We were given an exclusive sneak preview of the musical – this is a clip of Sammy singing “Nancy” her composition and impromptu performance.

Poster for Camp Betty

Queer film is not just about re-interpreting straight storylines to accommodate ‘gay’ characters – it’s an excuse to play with more than gender and sexuality… super 8, chroma key, sci-fi storylines about aliens and androgynous bisexual nymphomaniac fashion models and remaking Soviet propaganda into a transgender revolution were all examples in the Camp Betty Cinema film programme of how queer film can play with you, and cinema too.

Camp Betty (a weekend of radical sex and politics in June 2007) crowds came along for queer shorts, a performance by Gaylourdes invoking the film theory spectre of vagina dentata in song and dance, 2 minutes of infamy for queer film makers and a screening of the cult 80s sci-fi movie Liquid Sky.

Still from Mostar Trek

Mostar Trek (10mins, 2001) is an experimental/documentary of the PirateTV CAN-DU tour of the former Yugoslavia in 2001, produced for the Mixmasters series (Addictive TV) screened on ITV and internationally.

Mostar Trek features editing and footage from myself, Camilla Tornøe and Mark Scarratt from Headspace / Brighton ART. Music is by Matt Black of Coldcut. Perhaps because of this, or due to inheriting an editing style from freeform party vj-ing, it’s a bit of a mish-mash, but serves as documentation for our amazing 6-week trip.

We toured around with two trucks, a coach and an airstream caravan, bringing with us our own custom designed PA (check the rocket-style bass bins!), a big waterproof stage and 6 projection screens – along with the greatest number of video-mixers, laptops, cameras and other AV/VJ devices I have ever seen in one set-up.

During our tour we played at a basketball court in Lljubliana, a beach in Pula, a white marble palace in Dubrovnik, a cave in Mostar, a fortress in Belgrade, another basketball court in Banja Luca, a squat somewhere I have forgotten, and a university in Zagreb, and visited all kinds of amazing radio stations and art spaces. When I get a chance I’ll write more about our journey.