VMAC Article

Alternative Image-making Education and Collectives in the UK

Text: Ngo Chun Phoenix Tse

LUX is a London-based not-for-profit arts organisation founded in 2002, with predecessors (London Filmmakers Co-operative, London Video Arts and the Lux Centre) dating back to the 1960s. LUX is dedicated to promoting the moving image through a range of activities including exhibitions, screenings, workshops, talks and courses. Since 2013, LUX’s Critical Forum has been a discussion group among moving image artists to talk about ideas and practice in a mutually supportive environment.

British artist Aliaskar Abarkas recently interviewed Benjamin Cook, director of LUX, on his podcast “On Alternative Education” to discuss alternative arts education in the UK. Benjamin started by talking about the origins of LUX. In 1966 a group of artists, including Stephen Dwoskin, inspired by the creation of the Film-Makers’ Co-operative by the New York-based artist Jonas Mekas, founded the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative (LFMC). Indeed, the creation of the LFMC was also a product of the 1960s counter-cultural movement in Britain. The main difference between the two co-operatives is that the LFMC is an egalitarian co-operative that not only helps with distribution and promotion, but also supports artists’ production. In the 1960s and ’70s, camcorders were shared to create video works that explored what was then an uncertain field.

In Hong Kong, we have witnessed a similar situation. From the Phoenix Cine Club’s promotion of Super 8mm experimental film in the 1970s to the founding of Videotage in the mid-1980s, we can see the benefits of collectives. Artists need an organisation that serves as a platform for the promotion of art and education, pooling resources and knowledge. Only then will they be able to live in a world of limited resources and inadequate information flow.

Some 40 years after its inception, the artist Ian White (1971-2013) organised the LUX Associate Artists programme at LUX from 2007 to 2013. This post-academic artist development initiative aimed to support young artists; beneficiaries of the programme include James Richards, Ed Atkins, and Laure Prouvost, to name but a few. Similar programmes for early career artists are widespread in the UK. Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship, for example, is currently one of the most important initiatives supporting moving image artists. (Film London worked with Videotage last year on the Pave Your Path project). In addition, relatively well-known artist development programmes in the UK that are not limited to moving image artists include UP Projects’ Constellations and Wysing Arts Centre’s The Syllabus. These programmes have rigorous selection processes and support the development of early and mid-career artists.

The UK programmes mentioned above are career-oriented and therefore have relatively high thresholds. Instead of selection, LUX director Cook decided to host the LUX Critical Forum in 2013 by emphasising ‘randomness’, moving from a top-down approach to an artist-led mode, allowing artists of all levels and backgrounds to explore possibilities without a specific goal or plan. This concept is closely linked to alternative education, which has become a trend in Europe and the UK in recent years. For example, the SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED in Croydon, London, has abandoned any selection process for its 2022 intake. The SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED also abandoned curriculum planning and instead gave responsibility to the students as a learning cohort to think about what they want to achieve in the year. Tracing the development of contemporary art education from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College, and then to the learning model developed by British artist Lawrence Gowing as head of Chelsea College of Arts in the 1950s and 60s, and currently used by many art institutions in the UK–the integration of practice and theory, to alternative education, which reflects the top-down structure of art learning, with students leading the process and outcomes, and tutors becoming facilitators. Does alternative education hold the potential to shape the future of art education?

Undoubtedly, economics is one of the driving forces behind the rise of alternative education. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government in 2010 that drastically increased university tuition fees from £3,000 to £9,000 in higher education in the UK, further exacerbating the already significant barriers to arts education. A 2018 report commissioned by Create London and conducted by Arts Emergency found that only 18.2% of people working in the visual and performing arts industry are from working-class backgrounds, with ethnic minorities even more under-represented, with only 4.8% of black and minority ethnic people working in the arts industry. Statistics aside, my own experience of studying undergraduate and postgraduate art courses at various UK art schools has shown that, apart from international students from Asia, there are very few ethnic minority students from the UK studying art at university. Free study groups such as the LUX Critical Forum or the SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED provide a channel for people from different economic and racial backgrounds to explore the possibilities of studying art.

It is important to note that there are two alternative training groups in London that focus on ethnic minorities and moving image making. These are the Other Cinemas Film School, founded in 2022 by independent film producers Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa, and the Radical Film School (formerly the South London Gallery Film School), founded in 2015 by independent film director Saeed Taji Farouky. Both alternative film schools have a strong political stance and place significant emphasis on the relationship between image-making and activism. While the Radical Film School runs a month-long intensive workshop with an emphasis on creative ‘collective’ thinking among members, reminiscent of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective and the Black Audio and Film Collective of the 1980s, The Other Cinemas Film School is a year-long learning group that aims at long-term community building.

As Benjamin mentioned in Alisakar’s podcast, “randomness” and “anti-selection” are double-edged. Some members often struggle to adapt to a mode that offers too much freedom, resulting in a lacklustre performance. The SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED also experienced this situation in 2022, when over a hundred people initially gathered, but gradually many quietly disappeared from the group. This is a recurring problem in many online communities. Admittedly, alternative education is still in its infancy. Will they eventually evolve, become the next Black Mountain College, transform “alternative” into a new paradigm, or even become mainstream? Whether it’s LUX or Videotage, the existence and historical development of art institutions reminds us that the relationship between artists and institutions is interdependent, that contemporary image-making is inextricably linked to its collective nature, and that both artists and art institutions must remain open. Can the ecology of moving image-making in Hong Kong benefit from other cities’ experiences, resulting in greater collective thinking and development in creation?

(Image courtesy of the author. Photography: Tanvi Ranjan)

(The views and opinions expressed in this article published are those of the author/s. They do not necessarily represent the views of VMAC.)

 

 

Staff Pick

Report on Videotage’s “Experimental Intermedia” workshop, SCMP Young Post, 2002

A search of Videotage’s news clippings files revealed that a series of workshops and lectures entitled ‘Experimental Intermedia’ took place between June and November 2002, with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) as the main co-organiser.

The workshops introduced young people to the basics of video editing and digital video construction, while the lectures explored the new world of digital technology and the Internet, and how they have influenced art creation and critique.

With a plethora of videos available on platforms such as YouTube, tutorials on video editing and animation software are still highly sought after today. However, news reports at the time highlighted the possibilities of digital video, with the SCMP article for the workshops started by asking interested teenagers “How many things could you say in 60 seconds?”.

In 2002, the answer to that question might still depend on workshops and even training camps. Now, however, with various social media platforms promoting short videos, teenagers may find themselves saying thousands of words, comically accelerated, with the flick of a finger.

 

 

Video Review

Chen Ting Jung: Tigers Gathers (On-Road), 2020
Review by Anber Lee Uen Ting (Intern)

Tigers Gathers (on-road) | 群虎路上

Tigers Gathers (On-Road) is a documentary of the performance “Tigers Gathers.” Taiwanese artist Chen Ting-yung rides a cargo bike through the streets of the German-speaking neighbourhood, repeatedly shouting “exotic for sale”, selling homemade recordings to passers-by, and exporting her version of Orientalism.

Since the imperialist era, the West has had a distorted perception of the East, arrogantly seeing itself as the centre of the world. In this work, the Eastern artist does not shy away from the representation of Orientalism, but transforms it into something else. Using online sound material, she creates tapes with a Taiwanese flavour and invites her clients to listen and use their imagination and personal experiences to construct a fictional image of the East. The work seeks to reverse the power dynamics in the post-colonial era: cultural export is no longer a Western monopoly, and Far Eastern culture can also have an impact in the German-speaking world. Today’s capitalist society objectifies and quantifies cultural preferences in transactions through prices and sales volumes. The work is a contemporary microcosm of globalisation and cultural capitalisation.

The documentary genre also leads to a reflection on power relations. When the creators select and edit the footage, they filter the events they see. The audience can only passively accept the indoctrination of authority. In the film, however, we can see that the artist has given the participants a high degree of freedom. When the artist invites them to share their thoughts on Taiwan’s soundscape, she goes beyond telling them the original meanings and encourages them to expand their associations, thus allowing an exchange with them. In this way, different perspectives are presented. This reflects the moderate position of East Asian forces in the cultural tug-of-war. In this game of cultural trade, the Eastern artist builds a new form of contemporary culture through exchange and interpretation.

 

 

About VMAC Newsletter

VMAC, Videotage’s collection of video and media arts, is a witness to the development of video and media culture in Hong Kong over the past 35 years. Featuring artists from varied backgrounds, VMAC covers diverse genres including shorts, video essays, experimental films and animations. VMAC Newsletter, published on a bi-monthly basis, provides an up-to-date conversation on media arts and their preservation while highlighting the collection and its contextual materials.