LADA Screens: Marcia Farquhar and Reynir Hutber

‘Not And I’, 2015, single-channel video
A film by Reynir Hutber
A collaboration between Marcia Farquhar and Reynir Hutber
Online 24 February – 9 March 2016

Following the eight hour screening of ‘And I’ at the White Building, we are showing a short film called ‘Not And I', online on the LADA Screens Channel, between 24 Feb and 9 March.  ‘Not And I’, is edited by Reynir Hutber and derived from the photographs, rehearsal footage and other documentation of this unique work of endurance.

‘And I’ is a collaboration between artist and experimental filmmaker, Reynir Hutber, and many-storied artist and notorious orator, Marcia Farquhar. The film which will only be shown once at the White Building is a single-channel eight-hour video of Farquhar speaking without edits of sustained pauses. Her monologue, occasionally interrupted or prompted by Hutber, is improvised and entirely unrehearsed.

“And I’ is an act of endurance for the performers and, potentially, the audience who are free to leave and enter the gallery at will. The video, which is the length of a traditional working day raises the notion of thinking, speaking and remembering as forms of unacknowledged labour. The film runs for the full period of a galleries’ opening hours and can be played only once in any one location – despite being a document it has the temporary quality of a performance.

The work draws inspiration from playwright, Samuel Beckett, and artist/filmmaker, Andy Warhol, whose durational screen tests of celebrities and ‘superstars’ disturbed the division between a film and a photographic still. As the film evolves, the line between an artist interview and a performance for camera will be blurred as different ‘personas’ and ‘voices’ emerge. The relationship between memory and fantasy, as well as theatre and reality, may be called into question. The aim of this work is to evoke a, perhaps uncomfortable, space between interview, tutorial and performance, the tone oscillating between the mundane and the theatrical and the atmosphere shifting at times from sociable and humorous to personal, exhausting and obsessive. The epic monologue may stop being about communication and become, instead, about staving off silence.

A piece of writing by Ella Finer in response to 'And I' is now available to view online.

More information on And I.

The work is based on an original idea by Hutber and draws on the long-durational live works of Farquhar. The work was produced in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency and was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.