23.09.2021
online
Uncensored Act
Lecture programme
Adam Lockhart: Reactivating Richard Demarco’s ‘Lost’ Moving Image Documents
Thursday, September 23, 2021, 19:00
online event in English
Zoom live on Facebook
The Institute of the Present (IP) continues the lecture series in the frame of “Uncensored Act” programme in Timișoara. The lectures in 2021 start a thread dedicated to specific challenges and conditions of research inside artists’ and institutionalised archives, to existing practices and needs of structuring and digitising contents in order for these to become available for wider research. Centred on questions around (art) historical canons, artistic production, on the transfer, reception and circulation of contents, materials and ideas in a given cultural environment and geopolitical reality, the lecture series aim at opening a discussion about the afterlife of histories and the role played by artists in reshaping our understanding of a possible future.
Reactivating Richard Demarco’s ‘Lost’ Moving Image Documents
Cultural exchanges generated by Italo-Scot art impresario and provocateur Richard Demarco within Europe since WWII have been relentless and his love for the arts has been a defining feature of his life. His dialogue with Eastern Europe during the Cold War was extremely important, and exhibitions at his eponymous gallery in Edinburgh, included “Romanian Art Today” in 1971, featuring Paul Neagu and Ovidiu Maitec, or “Atelier 72” of 42 Polish Artists the following year. He also conducted extensive art pilgrimages across Europe known as “Edinburgh Arts,” where he took an international entourage to lesser-known cultural locations across Western and Eastern Europe. Demarco understood the importance of these events and exchanges, taking a stills camera wherever he went, documenting almost everything he came across. Many of these photographs were digitised and are available online at the Demarco Digital Archive (demarco-archive.ac.uk), hosted at the University of Dundee. Further to this, Demarco also commissioned and encouraged people to record these happenings on film and video. Over time, many of these moving image documents may have been forgotten, lost, or recorded on unusual obsolete video formats. This lecture will follow the progress that has been made by researchers at Duncan of Jordanstone Art and Design, University of Dundee to uncover these works, the digitisation process and their re-activation for further research and exhibition.
ADAM LOCKHART is a media artist, musician, curator and Lecturer in Media Art and Archives at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (University of Dundee). He is responsible for the media archives and collections at DJCAD as well as the Media Preservation Lab, established in 2004, set up to digitise and preserve obsolete media formats. He is a leading specialist in the conservation, restoration, and re-exhibition of artists’ video, from both a theoretical and technological perspective. Lockhart has worked on many UKRI research projects including “REWIND | Artists’ Video in the 1970s and 80s,” “Narrative Exploration in Expanded Cinema” with Central St Martins College of Art and Design, “REWIND Italia,” “European Women’s Video Art” and “Richard Demarco: The Italian Connection.” He has acted as curator and consultant for various screenings and exhibitions both nationally and internationally and he has written for many publications on media art.
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IP—The Institute of the Present is a research and an artist resource platform in the field of visual and performing culture conceived by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban, established in Bucharest. Centred on artists and their personal accounts, on time-specific encounters and forms of (self) archiving, the Institute looks at various practices and situations from the recent past until today from a transnational and transcultural perspective.
The “Uncensored Act” programme in Timișoara is initiated and directed by Ștefania Ferchedău. Project developed by The Institute of the Present in the frame of the Cultural Programme Timișoara 2023—European Capital of Culture.
The “Uncensored Act” lecture programme in 2021 Timișoara is also part of the project “Digital Parkour of Visual and Performative Works”, cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
Partners: FABER, Art Encounters, TRIADE Foundation
Photo: Paul Neagu, Going Tornado, Grampian TV, 1974. Courtesy of Demarco Digital Archive, University of Dundee
Visual: Sebastian Pren
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The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.
Cultural project included in the TM2023 RESTART priority cultural programme of the Projects’ Centre of Timișoara Municipality, undertaken with the support of Timișoara Municipality and of Timișoara Local Council. The cultural project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of Timișoara Municipality and of Timișoara Local Council. The content of the cultural project and the way in which its results may be used represent the exclusive responsibility of its authors and of the beneficiary of the funding. Timișoara Municipality and Timișoara Local Council cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which this may be used.
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Contact: ip@institutulprezentului.ro, www.institutulprezentului.ro
