SIGN | LANGUAGE ...a hands-on way of doing

SIGN | LANGUAGE …a hands-on way of doing, is an audio infinivid work, wherein drawn line gives way to flickering form – moving hands – signing and signifying, time, space and STUFF, shifting traces shapes and colour, and sound emanating as noun, adjective, adverb, descriptive of object or substance, strangely familiar, but not...

The imagery stems from captured footage of the artist in conversation about the practice of painting and whilst being illustrative and evocative can simultaneously be enigmatic and obscure. It is a bi-partite piece wherein hands are talking about stuff, gesticulating and ultimately forging the visual space. The audio is authentic but edited to allow only significant wording of stuff to seep through. The piece is about looking and listening, giving the time to look and listen but more importantly, allowing time for reflection. Simultaneous slow and rapid motion underlines our sense of urgency ‘to move on to the next’ without really acknowledging what we have just witnessed whilst contributing to a contemplative space. SIGN | LANGUAGE functions as an ongoing visual experience within which the viewer can create their own narrative using any moment of visual encounter. Through appropriation, and re-choreographing this work tells a different story.

  • Angela Eames
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short, Web / New Media
  • Genres:
    Experimental, Art, Infinivid
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 18 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 31, 2021
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Angela Eames

Angela studied BA Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art, MA Experimental Fine Art at The Slade School of Art, Computing in Art and Design at Middlesex University (CASCAAD) and gained her Doctorate in Drawing in relation to Technology through Wimbledon School of Art and Surrey University.

She produces both series and independent still and moving image works and has exhibited continuously both nationally and abroad. In 2021 she won the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize and was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize for a second time with her submission; Flux | Meltdown ...no time to spare. She was a finalist in the Marshwood Arts Awards 2019 and four of her video-works were selected for Art-Gene's Digital U Extreme Views Exhibition 2020, by curator Alejandro Ball. In addition, Flux | Meltdown ...no time to spare was selected for several film festivals during 2021 and 2022; Still Voices Short Film Festival Ireland, Hastings Rocks Film Festival, London Rocks Film Festival, Brighton Rocks Festival, Rome Independent Prisma Awards, Best Shorts California and Kiez Film Festival, Berlin. Monolith | Totem ...under the yolk was selected for FESTIVAL ANGAELICA California and Walthamstow International Film Festival. Abracadabra ...the illusion of change, was selected for the Alternative Film Festival Toronto, Ontario. Most recently TIP-TOE …pas de deux has been a Semi-finalist, in the Rome International Short, Sydney Indie Short, London International Filmmakers and Cleveland Arthouse Film Festivals and an Award Winner in the Depth of Field International Film Festival.

She initiated and directed both the BA Hons in Drawing (the first drawing dedicated course in the UK) and the MA in Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts (University of the Arts, London). As a Research Fellow, she was Content Co-ordinator for the ground-breaking, BAFTA nominated DVD, entitled ‘Seeing Drawing’, a project involving five major university partners across the UK, which launched in 2001.

Angela lives and works in East Sussex.

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Director Statement

My moving image works (Infinivids) reflect on anthropocentric factors, our culpability for environmental imbalance and our ever-readiness to believe that we are in control. Aspects of the familiar (time/place/space/object) are extracted and transformed via photographic/filmic/hand-drawn means to fabricate outcomes which unsettle in their refusal for classification. Visual interventions through colour, placement, size, scale, light and timing forge a re-choreographed world wherein the viewer can experience moments of either lucidity or confusion. They can come and go, look and leave, encounter sameness and difference, experience coherence and disruption. With the constraints of operant conditioning removed, objective visual deliberation and reflection are enabled. What exactly is happening here?

These works are intentionally removed from what we have come to expect from video, I.e. moving image that tells a story. They make no demand on the viewer with regard to watching in linear time, from start to finish, suggesting that there are other ways of viewing the world. In essence they are about looking, giving the time to look and to reflect. They consistently explore the ambivalent nature of our experience of reality, commenting on time past, in relation to time present, anticipating time future. The focus is on membrane, particularly membrane as mediator between two viewing aspects; in front of and behind, revealed and hidden, seen and unseen, known and unknown. They exist in a time-frame but can play forever. They are drawings in time, drawings which exist in the present continuous, drawings which may be viewed in entirety or not… Utilising concepts of duality as intrinsic to the visual world and opposition as vital to innovation these works propose that we come to realise and perhaps retrieve something unknown as opposed to relying on conditioning, opinion, taste or habit.