'Red Light', a newly commissioned project by Redmond Entwistle, reflects on the indeterminate space that Belfast finds itself in between the unfinished work of the peace-process, and the phantom promises of the market economy. The project brings together a gallery installation and three short films shown in cinemas around the city.
From 'Red Light'.
'Red Light' is presented as part of ISEA, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, a regular gathering of the international art, science and technology community. The 2009 edition is concerned with Engaged Creativity in Mobile Environments.
Redmond Entwistle (b. London, 1977) is an artist-filmmaker currently living in New York. Entwistle employs documentary and abstract modes of film-making, often investigating histories of social displacement and creating portraits of cities anchored on the invisible or the implied. Recent works include Monuments (2009), a narrative exploration of the origins of Post-Minimalist art in the economic and spatial relationship between New York and New Jersey, Skein (2007), a video portrait of migration to the towns that spread out from New York, and Paterson - Lódz (2006), a 16mm expanded film about two towns (Paterson, New Jersey, and Lódz, Poland) and their interrelated history of politics and migration in the early years of the 20th century.
For the new exhibition, twelve previously unpublished photographs from Belfast Exposed's archive are displayed in the main exhibition space at Belfast Exposed and integrated in a sound and light installation feeding live sound into the gallery from Belfast's city centre. The selected images, photographs of large crowds, both Nationalist and Unionist listening to speeches outside Belfast's City Hall, were taken in the early to mid 1990s, the years preceding the Good Friday Agreement. These photographs are now over a decade old and yet for many in Belfast it seems as if the city is still in a state of suspension. Post-conflict, the centre of town has developed as a neutral space, mainly through retail-led regeneration, but the overwhelming sense is of a space for consumption, and possibly of employment, rather than a civic or communal space where a genuine body politic might be established.
While the exhibition at Belfast Exposed reflects on the recent transformation of Belfast's city centre, three short films shown on rotation at Queen's Film Theatre, the Strand and Moviehouse Yorkgate anticipate some of the prospects and perils of the near future. Each film is a piece of a puzzle of which the three films form a whole. Taking their titles from classic mid-20th century novels of Belfast life, the films are at once a description of a film to be made, a conversation between characters in a love triangle, and a portrait of a city attempting to refashion itself for entry into a global economy. The films draw on original interviews with professionals from the film and IT industry in Belfast, two industries through which the city hopes to attract investment and establish its' position within an international pecking order of knowledge economies and creative industries. Shown before feature films, most of which will be North American, the short films hint at the promises and thwarted desires of mobility and economic participation at an international level that characterize the new economy.
Artist presentation, Thurs 27 Aug, 2:30pm ISEA 2009 -15th Symposium on Electronic Art, Waterfront Belfast, Lanyon Place. www.isea2009.org
Artist film selection at QFT: From the Clouds to the Resistance (Italy 1978) Directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet Sun 30 Aug, 6:45pm. Introduced by Redmond Entwistle. www.queensfilmtheatre.com
REDMOND ENTWISTLE, 'RED LIGHT'
14 Aug - 25 Sept 2009
Belfast Exposed Photography
The Exchange Place
23 Donegall Street
Belfast
BT1 2FF
Northern Ireland
T: +44 02890 230965
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