CIRCUIT CAST

www.circuit.org.nz

5.0 (2)
ARTS

CIRCUIT CAST

CIRCUIT CAST is a podcast produced by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image, interviewing contemporary artists about recent exhibitions and how they approach their practice. CIRCUIT is Aotearoa/New Zealand's leading distributor of artists' moving image works. www.circuit.org.nz.

6 MAY

Episode 122: Comic Release with Sean Grattan

"If I didn't laugh, I'd cry." Comic Release is a three-part podcast series hosted by artist Joe Jowitt which explores the use of humour in artists' moving image. In this conversation, Joe meets Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-born, Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Sean Grattan, whose debut feature film, Policy Wonks, explores the clash of liberal ideologies through an absurd intersection of "money, guns and yoga." Joe and Sean discuss using slogans as dialogue, working with clichés, and deprogramming problematic humour from one's own cultural upbringing.

48 min
12/10/2023

Episode 116: Sites of Connection with Hana Pera Aoake

In part 3 of the series Sites of Connection Dani McIntosh speaks to artist Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Haua, Tainui/Waikato, Ngāti Waewae, Waitaha, Kai Tahu). Often juxtaposing poetic text with handheld moving images, Hana’s video work addresses the tension between industry and sacred whenua; the presence of deep time and new parenthood. 0:00 Introduction 1:00 Hana discusses her video 'I saw the mountain erupt' (2023); working with an essay by her partner Morgan Godfery; the town of Kawerau as formerly one of NZ’s wealthiest towns and now one of the poorest, and also the town as the site of Māori pūrākau. 5:54 Dani asks; Why entwine the writing with the moving image? 8:09 Dani introduces the video work A eulogy to love (2019); Dani asks why juxtapose shots of Italian actress Monica Vitti with the landscape in Aotearoa? Hana explains the video was shot in many sites including Aotearoa, Portugal and other European locations. She discusses Vitti as an image of an “hysterical woman”, and the ongoing theme in her practice of "the tension of industry versus caring for the whenua (landscape)”. 13.08 Dani asks about the line “I will not be afraid despite the fear tumbling through my body”. 15:50 Hana on how parenthood has affected their work. Se discusses 'deep time', the relationship between the human and non-human and the whakataukī 'Ka Mua, Ka Muri' (walking backwards into the future). 20:00 Hana on David Lynch’s movie Eraserhead (1977). 23:00 Hana discusses and the writing of New Zealand author Keri Hulme (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe), which was part of her work with Ke te Pai Press (with Morgan Godfery), shown in the group exhibition Matarau 24:41 Working with musician Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu) 27:24 End

28 min
07/09/2023

Episode 115: Sites of Connection with Selina Ershadi

"Dwelling in the void space" — a conversation between Selina Ershadi and Dani McIntosh, the second part of the CIRCUIT Cast series Sites of Connection. In this podcast, artist Selina Ershadi discusses three films: Hollywood Ave (2017), Amator (2019) and The hands also look (2020), alongside a new work in progress, The Blue Dome (forthcoming). In conversation with artist Dani McIntosh, Selina reflects on navigating personal and family histories as guided by Chantal Akerman, Maya Deren and Derek Jarman; ideas of dwelling, homemaking and displacement; oral storytelling traditions and the poetic potential of decentering the visual.

43 min
18/06/2023

Episode 113: What sparks the words?

A conversation with writers Tina Makereti, Gregory Kan, and Gwynneth Porter, on the dynamic possibilities for writing to respond to art beyond the essay, chaired by Thomasin Sleigh. Recorded at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.

1h 8m
22/03/2023

Episode 111: Leala Faleseuga - Visceral Motherhood

In this pod Horowhenua-based artist Leala Faelseuga speaks to Mark Williams about her new work Vessel: Dissolution | It's in the milk. Commissioned for Masons Screen, It’s in the milk reflects on "visceral motherhood", photography and memory. Leala discusses her iterative processes, what it means to exhibit personal work in public space, and inspiration gathered from the films of MD Brown and her collective 7558.

18 min
07/09/2022

Episode 107: Legacies - May Adadol Ingawanij and Ukrit Sa-nguanhai

"What are the legacies that make us who we are?" In this pod we discuss Legacies, CIRCUIT's 2022 programme of artist cinema commissions; featuring new films by Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Ukrit Sa-nguanhai, Pati Tyrell, Sriwhana Spong. CIRCUIT Curator-at-large May Adadol Ingwanaij and Thai artist Ukrit Sa-nguanhai (Todd) speak to host Mark Williams about May's curatorial process, Ukrit's film on a Cold War-era mobile cinema propaganda unit, and the other artists works in the programme.

21 min
04/08/2020

Episode 88: Revisiting HADHAD - Part 2: Language, Technology and Totalitarianism

In Part 2 of this conversation Sean Grattan and Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió discuss language, technology and post-humanism in HADHAD. They explore the relationship between white supremacy and technology in the USA in 2020. HADHAD (41:21 mins) Part 1: Shooting the film, Horror as genre (26:07 mins) Part 3: The schism of Liberalism (17:24 mins) Catalogue Notes 00:00 (MS): Continued discussion of David Lynch as counterpoint - "… his movies speak to... the mask of normality in American suburbia...Your film is more about questions of technology, what is the human, and language itself?... What is the risk of accepting that our subjectivity may be be coded in technology?” 04:00 (SG): Language as the pre-eminent tool of communication, but also something hijacked by commercial interests. Notes aspirational commercial slogans ‘Be Yourself, ‘Choose Happiness’ 07:00 (MS): Language, technology and post-humanism. “What you’re saying is language tainted by ideology…in it’s various forms, technological, artistic, natural..." "It’s a deep engagement with the problem of the enlightenment and (the question of) in what way can be become masters of our condition?” (MS) Discusses HADHAD's ambiguous form "Is this thing a projection in their imagination? is this a physical manifestation of language itself? “Is it a concept, is it a metaphor or is it a different type of being?” 12:00 (SG): Describes the HADHAD as … this thing that disrupts but which is potentially creating a new thing…" He discusses evolution. 14:00 (SG) - On the enlightenment; "The idea of progress I find very confusing… establishment powers will manipulate that idea… it can be a very conservative…it can be a tool of oppression” 15:00 (MS) - Discussion on totalitarianism. (MS): "A mode of power where everyone is orientated to 1 way of being, 1 leader, 1 vision, 1 way of communicating." Discusses Frankfurt School philosophers claim that paradoxically the enlightenment had it’s last moment with the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, a rationality taken to an extreme. Discusses white supremacy and technology in 2020. “There is a branch of white supremacism - certainly in the US - which has to do with technological evolution, which poses a kind of transhumanism… in a way the movie was prescient…all these things were there in 2012 but since then have become more acute…the technological monopolies have become more acute…white supremacism has become more overt and more dominant” 18:00 (SG) Discusses the current political moment. Describes HADHAD’S arrival in the movie as “a metaphor for how the totalitarian system is untenable” and how the movies extreme rationality is counterpointed with an alterity (HADHAD). 22:47 (SG) Liberalism and Western-style democracy. "Cynicism needs to be resisted at all times…but what we’re living in fosters cynicism… what happened with World War 2, is this what rationality brings us? Is that what liberalism brings us?" 26:57 End of Part 2

28 min
04/08/2020

Episode 88: Revisiting HADHAD part 1: Shooting the film, Horror as genre

In Part 1 of this 3 part conversation Sean Grattan and Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió discuss the making of HADHAD, the relationship with the Horror genre and the influence of other film-makers and teachers on the making of the work. HADHAD (41:21 mins) Part 2: Language, Technology and Totalitarianism (26:07 mins) Part 3: The schism of Liberalism (17:24 mins) Catalogue Notes: 00:00 Welcome and Introduction from Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió 02:00 Background to making the work at CalArts in Los Angeles (2011/12). Shoot and location 04:36 Discussion of HADHAD’s high production values. Working on a budget with student labour whilst maintaining the film’s sense of horror and tension. Directing actors. 08:40 On the characters robotic personas. (MS) - “One of the ruses of the movie is that the characters may or may not already be Cyborgs… the tightness becomes a metaphor for the characters belief in the coming technological singularity…everything is stripped down to the bare essentials so there’s no room for human expression… technological determinism is so profound” 10:00 What is this movie about? How to describe what happens? (SG) Describes the plot and the tropes of a traditional horror movie "A group of people, they may be strangers, they’ve gone in vacation to some kind of isolated environment...normally in a horror movie there’s some kind of transgressions, the teenagers will be punished…" Discusses removing stylistic elements of horror and making the intruder “more absurd” 13:00 (MS) - Characters and dialogue. “You remove the emotion, which you could argue is the core of horror..the emotional reaction is what draws audience to this kind of movie…the emotion doesn’t disappear, it gets heightened…why did you so that and why is it so successful?” 15:30 (SG) - Influence of theatre, analytical thinking and English upbringing on the dialogue. "The challenge was using the analytical script on to some other kind of cinematic framework...The tension gets created from putting elements together that don’t work together cinematically in a conventional sense… there’s this kind of humanity that I can’t scrub out…” 18:30 (MS) - Talks about the film discarding emotion but being “saturated with emotion” 21:00 (SG) Talks about Directors, Theorists and Teachers that inpsired the work; David Lynch, James Benning, Claire Denis, Charles Gaines who "rewrote my story of art" . The need to create ”a philosophy that’s embodied”, discusses merging cinema and critical theory to understand “…who are humans, what are they doing, what is our method of living, what is the dynamic between power and subjectivity?” 26:07 End of Part 1

26 min

5

out of 5

2 Ratings

CIRCUIT CAST is a podcast produced by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image, interviewing contemporary artists about recent exhibitions and how they approach their practice. CIRCUIT is Aotearoa/New Zealand's leading distributor of artists' moving image works. www.circuit.org.nz.

Creator

www.circuit.org.nz
Years Active

2013 - 2025
Episodes

29
Rating

Clean
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CIRCUIT CAST