This Middlesex University research project is interested in exploring how film can evoke a character’s internal state of mind. The project is very much engaged in exploring and pushing the boundaries of what we might consider as both dance on screen and experimental fiction filmmaking. The work is inspired by Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table and more recent works by Crystal Pite including The Statement and Assembly Hall. Alongside the dancers' expressive movements, there is also a desire to achieve naturalistic performances with the actors' voices, inspired by the work of Konstantin Stansislavski and more recently Judith Weston and Katie Mitchell, juxtaposing these two aspects of performance with an interest in the construction of film.
12 minutes, continually looping video installation.
Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019
Winner of the Earth Photo 2018 Moving Image Award Forestry Commission England and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter was shot between March 2017 and February 2018 in Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, a community garden in the centre of Lambeth’s Brockwell Park. The charity champions diversity and inclusivity running a garden volunteering scheme, school visits, family events, courses and workshops.
Vron Harris’ practice is interested in the construction of film, the representation of time and the materiality of different media. There’s an interest in the possibility of using still images to create a sense of movement and moving images to create a sense of stillness.
This sense of a still image: of a moment that 'was now’ but has since past, and the possibility of the moving image to re-animate these stills into the appearance of life, allows an exploration of both the materiality and the illusion of the moving image and how these oppositions and tensions might relate and interact with one another.
Thus, the film explores the passing of time, the changing of the seasons and the cycles of life in this precious, green oasis in the heart of south London.
Thanks to Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, Middlesex University, Family and Friends
3 minutes - 4:3 - 2009
A visceral exploration of ideas around the self. The film explores the use of sound and still images to create a sense of movement.
2 hours 58 minutes 52 seconds 21 frames. (3 mins 11 frames excerpt)
Taking a vase of tulips as a still life on the kitchen table, this film documents them for a month with a daily time-lapse capturing the sun dawning on the flowers, sweeping around the walls and exiting the frame; thus the piece has a sense of a diary documenting the sun and the tulips with slight traces of people passing through. It is interested in the materiality of film and how it might be able to represent these ideas through the passing of time. The film expands and contracts the representation of time as it experiments and foregrounds it’s own construction.
2 minutes 33 seconds
Taking a vase of tulips as a still life next to my kitchen window, the film documents them with a daily time-lapse of the sun dawning on the flowers for the four weeks around the Summer Solstice. The work is interested in the materiality of film and it’s ability to study a “still” life over time. There’s an interest in the representation of time and how the same source material can be used in different ways to construct multiple viewpoints.
32 seconds - 2014
La Festa degli Sposi is interested in exploring film form and narrative structure. It gives a sense of travelling from London to Bournemouth to Pescara to Rigopiano as a family travels from Britain to Italy to celebrate a wedding.
The film has an impression of being structured linearly in chronological order yet it is also a mosaic of 9 images as a collection of moments assembled in a somewhat non-linear fashion. There's an interest in the visual qualities of each image and how they interact with one another.
1 hour 4 minutes 51 seconds 17 frames - 4:3 - 2008
Toe Job is a piece that references the work of Andy Warhol as an examination of the passing of time and the materiality of film and video. It is interested in duration and the power of off screen space.
6 minutes 30 seconds - 2020
This piece documents the passing of time as a response to the Covid-19 situation. Laid out as a calendar with a frame for each day, the film starts before ‘lockdown’ and depicts the daily events on my staircase with additional still frames capturing the mood and feeling of my limited world outside. It is shot in a Covid safer manner and based in Brixton in south London, which is of particular interest in these times. My intention is to capture the conflicted feelings of this period with both the anxiety and the hope in my surroundings, reflecting the political situation and the impact on our community, while at the same time contemplating the construction of cinematic time.
References:
'Total number of COVID-19 associated UK deaths by date reported. 46,119 - 31 July 2020.'
UK Government (2020) Coronavirus (Covid-19) in the UK. Available at: coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ (Accessed: 1 August 2020)
