ARTIST TALK & LISTENING EVENT

 19:30-23:00
 

29 JUNE

2 Cygnet SQ, SE2 9FA
Thurs - Sun: 10-5
FREE

Frances Scott and Chu-Li Shewring will be in conversation with TACO! director Mat Jenner, as part of their new film Wendy (2023), a film fan letter and response to the work of composer, electronic music innovator and polymath, Wendy Carlos.

Wendy is currently showing at TACO! as a film installation with 5:1 surround sound. Translated into a series of rehearsals, the film orbits around a duet for four hands on one piano. Together, Frances Scott and Chu-Li Shewring learn to play a transcribed version of Timesteps, an original score composed by Wendy Carlos, first imagined for Anthony Burgess’ book, A Clockwork Orange (1962), and realised for the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation a decade later.

Frances and Chu-Li will be joined by Dave Tompkins, contributor to Incantation, Wendy (2021), who will play records connected to his research around vocal synthesis, the history of the vocoder and its recent complicity with developments in AI. Dave is a writer based in New York and London, currently working on a book about Miami Bass. He recently contributed to Boogie Down Predictions (2022), edited by Roy Christopher, published by Strange Attractor/MIT Press, and his first book How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II to Hip-Hop (2010) was published by StopSmiling / Melville House.


Incantation, Wendy is published by An Endless Supply under their Bobo imprint, and forms part of the research residency and commission with TACO!. The publication is edited by Beth Bramich, and features contributions by Beth Bramich, Valentina Formenti, Stine Hebert, Juliet Jacques, Tom Richards, Chu-Li Shewring and Dave Tompkins, accompanied by hand-drawn music scores, film stills and script notes.

The book is available for a special price of £17 during the Wendy exhibition.

 
Wendy was made possible thanks to the funding support of Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust.

Frances Scott is an artist working with moving image, her work considers the narratives and histories at the periphery of cinematic production and its apparatus. Her films are informed by a collaborative and research-led process, with recent presentations at: Curzon Soho, London (2023); BFI, London; Curtocircuíto - International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin (2021/2022); ‘Mattflix’ Matt’s Gallery, London; Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester; 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; 67. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (LUX distribution programme); transmediale, HKW, Berlin; CTM Festival, Berlin; ‘Unsung Stories: Women at Columbia Computer Music Center, New York (2021); and 57th New York Film Festival (2019). She was awarded The Stuart Croft Foundation Moving Image Award (2017). Her films are distributed by LUX.

Chu-Li Shewring is a filmmaker and sound designer, and has worked for and collaborated on several projects with artist filmmakers including Anagram, Siobhan Davies, Jeremy Deller, Beatrice Gibson, Steve McQueen, Ben Rivers, and Aura Satz. Her films combine interview, archival and documentary material, with delicately crafted soundscapes to create realities that sit somewhere between fact and fiction. Her most recent film, Fawley, co-directed with Adam Gutch, won Best International Short Film at Sheffield DocFest (2022) and has screened at the ICA, London and Bertha DocHouse, Curzon Bloomsbury (2023). Working to Beat the Devil was nominated for Best Short Film at International Film Festival Rotterdam (2014). She was awarded the Jules Wright prize as part of the Jarman Award (2017), for her contribution as a sound designer in the area of artists’ moving image production.

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