Music for Solo Performer

Jenny Brady I 2022 I Ireland I 18’ I Digital I English spoken

A 1969 piece by the composer Alvin Lucier provides both the title and the conceptual starting point for Brady’s sensitively wrought exploration of technologies of care. Brady conceives of her work as a filmic “part-homage, part-sequel” to Lucier’s use of amplified brain waves to generate music.

Drawing upon sources ranging from rehearsals for a Jerry Lewis telethon to an artificially generated voice ordering pizza, the synthetic is itself resynthesised back into a very human form, with the film also serving as a reflection by Brady on the passing of her mother. The resulting swelling of emotion is one in which the disassembly of an obsolete hard drive is marked with as much poignancy as a rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

Home Invasion

Graeme Arnfield | 2023 I UK | 93’ | Digital I English spoken, English subtitles 

A nightmarish essay film on the history of the doorbell as a way to explore how technological systems of control have been shaped by fear and paranoia. This basic domestic device is traced – via D. W. Griffith and The Luddites – from its invention in 1817, through to the beginnings of home video security systems in the 1960s, and the camera doorbell as it connects with surveillance cultures in the contemporary moment.

Constructed through a mixture of materials that include cropped patent illustrations, horror film excerpts, and Ring cam footage found online. These disparate elements are drawn together with an essay as text on screen. Arnfield combines methods of investigative storytelling with experimental collage to reveal the ways in which machines that offer convenience in the 21st century, often use our fears against us. 

Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers hosted by Oliver Wright.