Screen Tests

Screen Tests DVD

A project in collaboration with Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska that evolved from British Art Show 6. The Free DVD was launched at the Anticipating the Past: Artist: Archive: Film conference on the 12th-13th May, at Tate Modern. The DVD includes three new films - edited from archive film material, with a soundtrack made from out-of-copyright records - along with the original material and source files. The material is released under a Creative Commons license, enabling anyone to use and re-use Screen Tests for future creative exchange. Screen Tests 1/4 Screen Tests The film unfolds as a series of Andy Warhol-like screen tests, slowly revealing the location and the occupation of those before the camera - students and models from the Manchester School of Art. Screen Tests 2/4 Dragline Dragline stumbles across an autonomous event, and echoing 1970's structuralist film, returns the default setting of contemporary digital practice - sampling and looping - to its industrial roots. Screen Tests 3/4 Broadcast Times: The Birth of Westward As the exhibition train leaves the platform, we are taken on a documentary journey of "a happy hunting ground for tycoons" the birth of commercial television broadcasting. Screen Tests 4/4 The Northern Region Film and Television Archive, based in Newcastle did not respond to several attempts at contact, eventually we spoke over the telephone and they declined any involvement. Arts Council England funded the production of this DVD through Grants for the arts.