1957 Chevy Apparition | Ross Little, Florrie James, Lester Alvarez Meno
Opening 17th February 6-9pm
Exhibition runs from 18th February – 12th March 2017
1957 Chevy Apparition is an exhibition of films by Ross Little, Florrie James and Lester Alvarez Meno.
Ross Little and Florrie James have collaborated on a series of three short films each presenting a variety of experiences, real and imagined, reflecting on time spent in Havana, Cuba.They use a mixture of documentary and fiction to explore the vastly differing and contradictory ways Cuban history and politics is represented. Each film brings its own language of remembered conversation, feelings, political viewpoints and daydreams. The three films experiment with home-made lenses and filters – including silk, smoke and dense foliage.
They find a way to talk about their experiences through fictional texts within the films. The first represents a slipping of consciousness of its central narrator, who travels through memories and time, grasping at a whole vision but never managing to break through the layers of truth and invention. The second is a fictional report on the state of agriculture on the island in a time of considerable economical and social change. The third is an allegorical story of a woman’s wondering through a sugar cane plantation, coming across three apparitions who embody the distant voices of post colonial writer Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Bolivian feminist activist group Mujeres Creando (Women Creating), and feminist theorist Luce Irigaray.
Ross Little and Florrie James work with Nick James on a computer programme that edits footage live in accordance with a text they wrote in response to their time in Cuba. The computer programme acts as a writing machine, taking over part of the creative process, removing the wholeness of the film as an object and replacing it with something more reactive and loose. They portray a liquid, unfixed version of ideas, culture and histories.
Lester Alvarez Meno’s film from, The Glass Bead Game (2014), is an experimental documentary showing a performance event based on Herman Hesse’s novel of the same title. This event was performed by Rafael Almanza Alonso, an artist and poet, unrecognised by the state, who presents his work to small audiences at his home in Camagüey, Cuba. The Glass Bead Game marks the start of Lester’ Alvarez Meno’s research into the presentation of unpublished, un-officialised art forms in Cuba.
Voice-over actors include Cassie Ezeji, Farah Portelo Alonso, Yahima Hernández Morales, and Agnieszka Habraschka. Sound Edit and mastering by Richard McMaster.
