During January and February S1 Artspace will host three programmes of artist film and video featuring work from the UK, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Australia and Peru, combining video formats with screenings in 16mm and Super 8. S1 / salon is curated around material selected from an open call with the intention of creating a platform for presenting artist film and video without prescribed themes or categories. Each salon features films selected by an artist working in the moving image.

This is the second season of S1 / salon. A national tour of tonight we are golden, a programme featuring fourteen films from the first season will be launched in February.

  
Esther Johnson (Hull)
Hinterland, 2002
12’
“The Holderness Coast in East Yorkshire has been retreating in the face of the North Sea for around 6,000 years. Each year an average of 1.8 metres of the cliff recedes before the relentless pounding of the waves. It is the fastest eroding stretch of British coastline and shells of houses stand as monuments to a losing struggle against the elements. ‘One county’s threat is another county’s protection”.
Simon Aeppli (London)
Eden, 2004
15’
“Eden is a changed place” where once a tiny thatched cottage stood there is now a cul-de-sac. Aeppli’s social documentary offers a study of the domestic landscape of the residents of Garden of Eden in Carrick Fergus, Northern Ireland.
Reuben Henry (Birmingham)
Weakling, 2002
4'
Deep in the forest an ancient battle is being fought as brute force is pitched against nature.
Irena Lagator & Jelena Tomasevic (Cetinje)
May I Help You?, 2004
2’ 15”
The offer of help seemed always near-to-hand at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens so to Lagator and Tomasevic it appeared the obvious place to look for answers.
Killu Sukmit and Mari Laanemets (Tallinn & Berlin)
Friend of Song, 2004
7’
The Estonian baritone Georg Ots performed in opera houses across the Soviet Union but it was his performances on radio and television that earnt him the title “People’s Artist of the USSR”. Laanemets and Sukmit revisit Ots’ cinematic appearances to explore the political context for his songs.
Stephen Sutcliffe (Glasgow)
Death in Leamington, 2003
1’ 44"
Come to the Edge 2003 1’ 47 "
Stephen Sutcliffe’s work is concerned with the notion of character conveyed through spoken word. His films are encoded with a banal Englishness, that may encounter The Smiths broadcast in deserted supermarket aisles or Kenneth Williams reading Betjeman over gothic ruins. These two recent works exemplify Sutcliffe’s interest in archival footage, audio and film.

Part 2
selected by Stephen Sutcliffe

Stephen Sutcliffe was born in Harrogate and lived in Yorkshire until moving to Scotland to attend art school at Dundee and Glasgow. His films have been screened at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery London and Arnolfini Bristol and in 2003 he participated in the Scottish representation at the Venice Biennale. For over fifteen years Sutcliffe has been recording from the TV and radio, compiling an archive that has been incorporated into his films and spoken presentations. For ennui Sutcliffe has selected a 1966 documentary on the controversial writer for stage, film and television, David Mercer from his archive.

David Mercer was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in 1928. His father was an engine driver and both his grandfathers had been coal miners. Mercer studied science at Durham University before art at Newcastle where he started to write short stories. In 1961 Mercer’s first play, Where the Difference Begins was adapted for television and throughout the 1960’s he produced a body of TV drama with its recurring themes of northern working-class values versus southern middle-class culture and alienation in society. A self-professed Marxist, Mercer’s plays frequently sparked lively political debate as he tackled the intersection of personal and political pressures in contemporary Britain. Mercer is perhaps best known for his two very different studies of madness, Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment in which an artist, Morgan Delt, artist embarks on a series of wild escapades designed to prevent his ex-wife’s impending marriage and In Two Minds, a controversial work on schizophrenia for which R.D. Laing acted as a consultant. Mercer died in 1980 and when the BBC ran a retrospective of his work in 1988 many of the leading critics admitted they had not seen the plays when they were first transmitted.