Video Works
Tim Etchells
(United Kingdom)

18.01.07 – 07.02.07
Esplanade Jendela
Admission is free
www.forcedentertainment.com

A programme of short video works by Tim Etchells, artistic director of Forced Entertainment, including collaborations with the company’s long-term photographer Hugo Glendinning and composer John Avery.

 

“Etchells explores some of the themes that have obsessed and fascinated him as a director and writer over the years, from the relationship between fact and fiction, narrator and material, to identity and the uses and abuses of stories themselves.”

- Lancaster Nuffield Theater

 

Synopses of Short Films

Miles Titanic
Digital film. 1.30 minutes. Tim Etchells. With the participation of Miles Etchells.
Miles Etchells (aged 5) briefly recounts the story of the famous sinking.

Down Time
2001. Digital  film. 10 minutes. Written, performed and directed by Tim Etchells.
Down Time is an exploration of memory, the play between real and recorded time and the process of translating thought into language. In the piece (one of an on-going series) a silent image of the artist¹s own thinking face of ten minutes duration is accompanied by a commentary recorded after-the­fact in which he attempts to describe the unfolding narrative of his thoughts.

Starfucker
2001. Digital film. 12 minutes. Written and directed by Tim Etchells. Music by John Avery.
Starfucker creates an imaginary movie using only soundtrack and text on-screen. Each line of text is an ‘image’ involving a Hollywood star or celebrity in an event that is obscene, suggestive, violent, banal or strange.

Kent Beeson is a Classic & an Absolutely New Thing
2001. Digital film. 12 minutes. Written by Tim Etchells. Direction by Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning. Performed by Kent Beeson.
Kent Beeson is a Classic & an Absolutely New Thing is a spiralling comical and desperate monologue through one man’s ambitions of showbiz affluence in America, a dream that crumbles as it runs up against the limits of a flustered performance.

My Eyes Were Like the Stars
2001. Digital film. 9 minutes. Written by Tim Etchells. Direction by Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning. Performed by Cathy Naden.
Forced Entertainment actress Cathy Naden in a drunken attempt to perform a text that she has previously memorised. Concentrating on her laughter, her searching for words and her growing incoherence, the video leaves the struggle to speak as its central action.

Miles Magic
Digital film. 4 minutes. Direction by Tim Etchells.
With the participation of Miles and Seth Etchells, Miles Etchells (aged 9) performs a well-known magic trick.

So Small
2003. Digital film. 10 minutes. Written and directed by Tim Etchells. Performed by Katie Ewald. A straight-to-camera, low-key, direct and intimate description of how a young woman would like it all to be when she dies. Performed by Katie Ewald, Etchells’ comical and poignant text loops and spirals around the idea of a perfect funeral, a perfect death and a perfect reaction from friends and family.

Erasure
2003. Digital film. 15 minutes. Written and directed by Tim Etchells. Performed by Nicholas Cooke. Shot in a single unedited take, Erasure forms part of Tim Etchells' ongoing series of monologues-to-camera, which also includes So Small, in which performers speak directly to the viewer to imagine their own futures, successes, deaths or disappearances.

Supported by the British Council

 

Relationship to Art and Disability

Biography of Tim Etchells