The Reflex Effect, the 7th event by The Open Eye Club, took place at The Project Room, Glasgow on Sat 10th November 2007. Featuring local, national and internationally emerging artists The Reflex Effect was a tentative reflection and exploration of the relationship between 'performance' and 'video' art.

Part 1

Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth have been collaborating since 2003. Their first performance was 'Demonstration' at 'Late at Tate'. The Gentle Shepherd (22’). For this video work combining photographic stills and video, the artists constructed a home-made photography studio in advance of a debauched house toga party. Employing a photographer friend to take portrait shots of invited guests, the filmed video footage combines posed tableaux vivant with the preening and in-crowd politics of the subjects. This work explores the toga's cultural references aside from its origins in Ancient Greece and Rome, reanimating boozy 1970s theme parties and conflating house party aesthetics with the grandeur of Olympic ceremony. Playing on the excesses of the ancients and the concept of artistic arrogance within creative endeavour, The Gentle Shepherd reveals behind the scenes of the work within the work where the artists are the subject and the photographer is the calm protagonist within a whirlwind of egos.

 

Neil Bickerton, My Spinning Head

 

Part 2

Beep (Noah Dancing) (2’10’’). Mat Fleming has been making super 8 films since an artist came into his school when he was 16 and then his grandfather gave him his old camera. As a founding member of Cineside, he has been teaching himself about cinema history in its broadest terms since 2001 after having graduated in French and Politics at Edinburgh University.

Machine No6 (2’30’’). JCHerman is a Dutch artist curently based in Paris. The series Machines is an ongoing project since 2006. It shows a series of machines that stop functioning by a decision, a built-in function, or sometimes a dramatic destruction. One of the notions in designing them was the idea of making a machine in the machine (=computer). All shiny and new, those machines are not meant to survive.This series is still being developed and can be viewed at www.jcherman.org.

Catherine Ross (New York) works in video and photography, framing gestures of performances that often go unnoticed in their original context. Isolating the movements of humans and/or objects, her videos create new musical sequences that reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. Her enchanting IFO 2006 (1’13’’) recombines footage, with the original sound intact, from 1960's television shows that told stories of magic, outer space, aliens and witchcraft. www.catherineross.net

Jason Nelson Caflic School (2’45’’). “We absorb sensory experiences from our surroundings and in so doing we begin to form memories and associations. Our lives are shaped by this accumulation of past events and experiences. How we recall and recount the stories surrounding these events helps to define who we are and how we see ourselves. Through a mixture of subconscious editing and conscious recollection our identities are formed and broadcast to others through engagement.”

During the evening a video sculpture by Neil Bickerton will be on view. My Spinning Head (perpetual video loop) has been made specifically for this event. Neil Bickerton lives and works in Glasgow.

This event was funded by The Scottish Arts Council.