Ashanti Harris, Doll Thomas (2019), OGR Torino, being present, 2020.

OGR Torino, being present, 2020. 

Winnie Herbstein, Studwork (2018), OGR Torino, being present, 2020. 

10-11.10.2020 
OGR, Torino (IT)

David Dale Gallery is proud to present a programme of films by Ashanti Harris, Winnie Herbstein and Stasis & Daniel Cook. All artists have previously presented films and performance at David Dale Gallery, as part of our events programme.

The building site, the shipyard, ruins of post-industrial Glasgow. The high street and the marketplace, lit by dull orange street lamps are quiet and eerie. How, as artists, can we continue making, especially through the current pandemic? We must press on, but steadily and with care. Take your time. We must be resourceful with our apparent lack, and use what we have to hand; our shared histories, our personal truths, our skilled bodies, our tired bodies, our angry bodies, our friends and chosen families.  And then how do we move through these gendered and discriminatory environments that refuse to address our needs or complexities, what use are they? How do we rework these sites, dismantle these stereotypes, and build the fragments together? Can we re-tell our ancestors stories through a contemporary lens and to who? Can we create fertile grounds for exchanging ideas, and who do we invite in? Can we create dynamic paths in a redemptive, feminist, equitable spirit? And move together, forwards and onwards.

Film Programme:

Ashanti Harris, Doll Thomas, 7 min 15 sec, HD, 2019

Doll Thomas (2019) is a document of Ashanti Harris’ research into the historical relationship between Guyana and Scotland and the hidden legacies of a female diaspora. Harris applies Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theories of translation as a methodology for speculating history and elaborating on the complex and extraordinary life of Doll Thomas from the limited archival information documenting her existence.

Winnie Herbstein, Studwork, 18 min 23 sec, HD, 2018

A study in alternative ways of learning, the cycle of the archive and a proposition for a feminist living space. Studwork depicts a community in Glasgow that has gathered around the learning of a trade. This highlighted the feminist welding collective Slaghammers, the City Building apprenticeship programme in Queenslie and the Women in Construction course at City of Glasgow College.

Narrator – Cass Ezeji
Animator – Annie Hazelwood
Camera – Safiya Dhanani
Sound Design – William Aikman
Music – Winnie Herbstein
Colourist – David Hunter
With Slaghammers, Women in Construction (Glasgow City College), City Building (Queenslie Campus).

Stasis & Daniel Cook, Faux Pas, 5 min, HD 2018

Commissioned as a music video for ‘Faux Pas’, Stasis directed, choreographed and styled the film alongside Daniel Cook. Filmed in the Barras over a single weekend, Stasis and Cook intended to capture the eeriness of the market’s open spaces at night, staging unannounced choreographed sequences in the middle of roads, lit only by street-lamps. The film plays with the format of commercial music videos to provide a counterpoint to stereotypical portrayals of ‘girls on film’.

Music – V
Co-direction, Choreography, Performance and Styling – STASIS
Director of Photography – Daniel Cook
Editing – Daniel Cook and Aniela Piasecka
Producers – Richard Phillips-Kerr and Nautilus Rising

Special thanks to Francesca Hawker, Jenny Johan Reid, Sam Barnfather, Scott McClure.

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Tramway Programme

Centering performative practices, Tramway’s programme brings together artists moving image work by Christian Noelle Charles (CC) and Urara Tsuchiya with music video’s by Glasgow based musicians LAP’s (Cass Ezeji and Alicia Matthews) and Poisonous Relationship (Jamie Crewe). The selection of work reflects the rich history of dialogue and collaboration across performance, music and visual art in Glasgow, focusing on emergent and diverse voices within the cities vibrant art scene. The programme teases out and frames overlaps and commonalities between the works; costume and dance, performance and the domestic, the low fi and the analogue, the address to camera, the voice and its absence, these ideas meld together creating a small window into the vitality and diversity of Glasgow’s art scene.  

For more information, visit OGR’s website here- https://ogrtorino.it/en/events/being-present