Private Project

The Black Tower

The Black Tower is an experimental film using crowd-sourced, aftermath photography of Grenfell Tower, in the wake of the catastrophe that befell Londoners in 2017. As a homage to John Smith’s 1987 masterpiece of the same name, we enter the world of a notional character who is preoccupied with a black tower that seems to follow them around eventually driving them to oblivion. Crucial that all aftermath images for the film were crowdsourced from the general public who had documented the aftermath, here we consider how a networked connectivity can link individual consciousness to cultural memory. This re-enactment creates an aesthetic space to join the conversation between event & representation, myth & reality and the role of viewer-witness in our digital culture. Given how voyeurism underlies an engagement with spectacles of violence, the film explores how “Art After Grenfell” is even possible by putting the traumatic image under scrutiny to perform a critique of seeing. We watched the Tower transform overnight from presence to absence - and then again ad nauseam through the prism of mainstream media. On that day, event and representation experienced a temporal collapse. An architectural and visual anomaly, the ‘monument’ became a politically and historically resonant site of trauma. As the real appears and disappears through the power of images, its monumentality hides in plain sight. The project explores (counter) memory and attempts to inspire an ethical presence with the wider complexities of this unconscionable trauma. This (award-winning) research project has a dedicated website and is accompanied by a Word Piece.

  • Mandy Eugeniou
    Director
  • Mandy Eugeniou
    Writer
  • Mandy Eugeniou
    Producer
  • Mandy Eugeniou
    Key Cast
    "Voice"
  • Lucy Chapman
    Key Cast
    "Voice"
  • Mandy Eugeniou
    Editor
  • Richard Neuberg
    Voice Production
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 30 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Flicks Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    August 1, 2019
    World
  • AESTHETICA ART PRIZE: FUTURE NOW 2021
    York
    United Kingdom
    April 29, 2021
    Long-listed to be screened/published in April
  • HIDDEN IN PLAIN SITE group exhibition at STEPHEN LAWRENCE GALLERY
    London
    United Kingdom
    March 5, 2022
  • ARTNUMBER23 Gallery
    Athens
    Greece
    April 29, 2022
  • Sea of Art, AWARD

    Norway
    Award
Director Biography - Mandy Eugeniou

A interdisciplinary artist whose work stems from an interest in how the networked body relates to socio-political structures in the public/private spheres of our visual culture.
Recent works have attempted to confront traumatic event, memory and monumentality. They consider notions of representation, politics, ethics and the relations between space, power and the body. This is to consider ways of seeing and what praxis and the body can do.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

This film is part of a research project at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project is accompanied by a Word Piece on website, includes an ongoing archive and won the Alan Little Award.

Film was long-listed for the AESTHETICA ART PRIZE: FUTURE NOW 2021 and has been selected to be in the HIDDEN IN PLAIN SITE group exhibition at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery 2022 alongside the original The Black Tower by John Smith and other well established artists.
The film won the SEA OF ART Film Festival Monthly award

It received an Honourable Mention from Athens Monthly International Film Festival and is currently being shown at LIGHTMATTER FILM FESTIVAL New York.

The project is completely self-funded and not for sale.

Please see Long Synopsis or accompanying Word Piece on dedicated website for further information and context for this project.