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Forma Arts

Video series commemorating 10 years of operation by arts and music producers Forma Arts.

Forma Arts

2013
Film Producer

 
Cantata Profana (2011) is the second of a series of new films by Sam Blair which celebrate some of Forma's landmark projects from the past 10 years. The film includes images from Matt Stokes 6-screen video installation Cantata Profana which was the highlight of the artist's solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany as well as interviews with Forma Artistic Director and founder, David Metcalfe and Stokes himself. Cantata Profana consisted of unedited performances by 6 vocalists from the hardcore, grind-core and death metal scenes of Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, The Netherlands and the United States. Stokes, with the British Composer, Orlando Gough worked with the vocalists to create a composition using traditional choral modes, such as European polyphony, layered with experimental techniques like staccato, noise and texture to present an immersive choral work.

Working with director Sam Blair, I produced a series of films to commemorate 10 years of operation by this organisation. We selected works from Forma's archive for re-examination by writers and critics such as Michael Bracewell and Nina Power as well as interviewing artists and curators involved.


Ryoji Ikeda's The Transfinite at Park Avenue Armory is discussed by Kristy Edmunds, Artistic Director for the Center of Performing Art at UCLA and former Consulting Artistic Director of the Armory.

Writer Michael Bracewell reminisces on Insen performed by Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto

Whispering in the Leaves is a soundscape of dawn and dusk choruses compiled by sound recordist Chris Watson. Installed in the Palm House at Kew Gardens, it had visitors looking under leaves for monkeys.

Critic, philosopher, and lecturer Nina Power discusses The Miners' Hymns, a film and music homage to the coal mining history of the north east of England by filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.


Lead image (previous page, and this page): Production still from Matt Stokes, Cantata Profana (2010). Photographer: Christian Lesemann; Ryoji Ikeda's The Transfinite at Park Avenue Armory in 2011; the Palm House at Kew Gardens by Sean Thamer; Alva Notos performs Insen; Still from Bill Morrison and Jóhann Jóhannsson's work The Miners' Hymns.