Flatpack Festival
Film for all the senses

Installations at Floodgate Kino

Friday 13th March, 2009

Floodgate Kino | 00:30

This year Flatpack will be making itself at home in a warehouse on Floodgate St, Digbeth. Between Thursday and Sunday you can drop in for festival info, a drink or some cake, and have a look at three ingenious devices which play with film in different ways...

Feat. Kevin Timmins; Rod MacLachlan; Phil Barber

This year Flatpack will be making itself at home in a warehouse on Floodgate St, Digbeth (a few doors up from South Birmingham College). Between Thursday and Sunday you can drop in for festival info, a drink or some cake, and have a look at three ingenious devices which play with film in different ways. There will be a little opening for the installations on Thursday 12 March at 5.30pm, just before Bozo Texino. We’d like to thank Joanna Jarvis and her students at Birmingham City University’s theatre design department for all their work on lighting and décor for the space, and Jibbering Art for letting us take the place over. Jibbering have exciting plans for this building; keep an eye on www.jibberingart.co.uk for further developments.

In ‘that balloon piece’ super 8mm film  escapes its role in the mechanics of the projector and is instead elevated and supported - in full working order - by a number of helium balloons, themselves in the shape of  ‘0’s to mimic the loop created. The product of this film, and its loop, is a flickering image at the back of a cardboard box. The entire construction, physically and conceptually, relies on its counter-parts. As the helium balloons elevate the long, unravelled loop of the film, this loop tethers the balloons and stops them from floating away.

For Paint Can, Reflecting Rod MacLachlan draws upon the elegant and arcane episcopic projection technique.  The rough and mundane is transformed through the play of light and the projected image exists in the present with no recording or re-presentation. When an object is translated into a reflection of light, detached from its context, one can look anew, unburdened by knowledge or experiences. MacLachlan is a Bristol-based artist and founder member of Blackout Arts. Recently he created live visuals and lighting for a UK tour by Murcof.

The phenakistoscope, from the Greek for ‘cheat’, is an optical device which predated the zoetrope. This elaborate version is made out of a bicycle, a cinema-seat, a mirror and a large rotating disc. From the  comfort of their throne the viewer is able to control the speed of the film (and get some exercise at the same time). Kevin Timmins is currently studying fine art at the University of Wolverhampton. He works with mimetic technology including projectors, televisions and pre-cinema gadgetry to create interactive viewing experiences.

by Phil Barber

Join our mailing list

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required