CAROUSEL IV: Underground Fantasy
6-10:30 pm I Friday 24th January 2025
12-10:00 pm I Saturday 25th January 2025
Photo Book Café, 4 Leonard Circus, EC2A 4DQ, London
CAROUSEL IV presents an exhibition & film screening by experimental artists and filmmakers responding to the theme of Underground Fantasy on Friday 24th January & Saturday 25th January 2025 at Photo Book Cafe. Part one of Carousel’s fourth edition.
This programme of non-fiction, experimental cinema explores underground fantasies ranging from a dirt metal prophesy in Alabama, the recreation of royal death rites in Salford, a utopian wedding ceremony, a coveted secret society in Italy’s Calabrian mountains, international punk and hardcore shows, hauntological deconstructions of popular culture in Northern England, memories of names in Kreuzberg before the fall and New York’s queer scene in the 1980s.
Mark Leckey, Anna Thew, David Wojnarowicz & Jesse Hultberg, Stanley Schtinter, Andrew ‘WIZ’ Whiston, John Balance (Collection), Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Daleya Marohn, Katie Shannon, Martin Kellett, Andrew Finch, Dylan Zarate & Nora Bzheta.
Film Programme:
- Dream English Kid, 1964 – 2000 AD, dir. Mark Leckey (23:02)
- Deer Park, dir. Andrew Finch (15:31)
- Beautiful People, dir. David Wojnarowicz & Jesse Hultberg (07:02)
- You Have Failed As An Audience, dir. Andrew ‘WIZ’ Whiston (16:47)
- Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales 2.0, dir. Stanley Schtinter (13:43)
- Nymphomania dir. Tessa Hughes-Freeland (08:50)
- KUMMER, dir. Anna Thew (04:56)
- Utopian Wedding, dir. Daleya Marohn (10:30)
- La Santa – La Terra del Rimorso, dir. Martin Kellett (08:36)
- RELINQUISH, dir. Dylan Zarate (05:10)
Please note that films contain images of nudity, body mutilation, strong language and flashing images. This is an 18+ event.
Total Runtime: 112 mins
Curated by Andrew Finch
FRIDAY 24TH, OPENING SCREENING:
18:00: Exhibition opens
19:30: Dream English Kid, 1964 - 1999 AD
20:00 - 21:30: Short Films
SATURDAY 25TH, MATINEE SCREENING:
14:00: Dream English Kid, 1964 - 1999 AD
14:30 -16:00: Short Films
SATURDAY 25TH, EVENING SCREENING:
19:00: Dream English Kid, 1964 - 1999 AD
19:30 - 21:00: Short Films
EXHIBITION
Friday 24th January 18:00 - 22:30
Saturday 25th January 12:00 - 22:00
Programme details:
- Dream English Kid, 1964 – 2000 AD, 2015, dir. Mark Leckey (23:02)
Dream English Kid is a collage of what Leckey calls ‘found memories, made from sources such as adverts, TV programmes and music from the 1960s to the 1990s as well as reconstructions using props and models. He made the film after he found a recording on YouTube of a Joy Division concert in Liverpool he attended as a teenager and realised that many of our personal memories can now be found online. While acting as a form of self-portrait for the artist, the film also seeks to connect us all through shared memory and experience.
Mark Leckey is a British contemporary artist. His found object art and video pieces, which incorporate themes of nostalgia and anxiety, and draw on elements of pop culture, span several works and exhibitions. In particular, he is known for Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) and Industrial Light and Magic (2008), for which he won the 2008 Turner Prize. @mark.leckey
- Deer Park, 2024, dir. Andrew Finch (15:31)
Deer Park is a short film exploring sites of the British post-industrial group Coil. Tracing a psychogeographic lineage between East Sussex, London and Somerset through the landscapes inhabited by John Balance, the film unearths the places that underpinned the group's shadowy and alternative musical history.
Presenting unpublished letters sent from John Balance of Coil to Lee Ray Oliver, a Brightonbased fan, between 1985-86 through AI voice-cloning, the film presents a treasure map into the dark woods of British music against a backdrop of popular culture, pre-digital music fandom, mysticism, folklore, local history and ancient leylines.
Andrew Finch is a filmmaker, curator and writer based in South East London. His work explores subcultures and the memories, mythologies and counterculture narratives of space. Andrew curates Carousel at Photo Book Café. @andrewjfinch
- Beautiful People, 1988, dir. David Wojnarwowicz & Jesse Hultberg (07:02)
Beautiful People was one of the last films David Wojnarowicz made before his death. The film follows Jesse Hultberg as he makes himself up in drag and ventures out onto the streets of New York, then beyond the city limits to a quiet lakeside.
David Michael Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992. @wojfound
- You Have Failed As An Audience, 2021, dir. Andrew ‘WIZ’ Whiston (17:47)
You Have Failed As An Audience is fifteen minutes of life or death sermon. Noah Ray’s dirt metal prophecy seethes with incandescent fury and a music of punishing beauty. Through this liminal broadcast shot some fifteen years ago in Alabama and Georgia, Ray future preaches an impassioned and prescient testimony for a life without shackles and without compromise. One that in our current anaemic epoch couldn’t be timelier and more undeniable.
Andrew ‘WIZ’ Whiston trained under Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski and developed an ability to cast and elicit defiant performances within highly visual narratives, utilising technical precision and a prescient subjectivity. His work is as provocative as it is sensual, he was recently billed by the BFI as ‘one of the greatest ever British music video directors’. @wizfilmmaker
- Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales 2.0, 2019, dir. Stanley Schtinter (17:47)
Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales 2.0 is a word-for-word recreation of Princess Diana's funeral with a Mexican Mariachi band in Manchester.
Stanley Schtinter has been described as 'the witchfinder general of cultural complacency' by Sight & Sound magazine. His debut collection, Last Movies, was published by Tenement Press in November 2023. @purgeins
- Nymphomania, 1994, dir. Tessa Hughes Freeland (17:47)
Nymphomania is a film exploring the nature of sex and gender roles. Nymph, a fairy, walks and dances through a woodland before being perused and raped by Pan, an evil spirit. The original idea for this film came about as a reaction to the sense of violation experienced through a love affair gone wrong. Hoping to express the conflict between the feminine experiences of sex as a loving unifying event and it’s corruption by the male’s base instincts. The female body is not necessarily portrayed as a sexual phenomenon. It is the male who transforms the nude female form into an image of sexuality. The inclusion of nudity and penetration in the film is often perceived as pornographic, in this instance, nudity and penetration are not intended to arouse or stimulate the audience. Instead, it invites us to contemplate the relationship he or she has to his or her sexuality.
Tessa Hughes-Freeland is a British-born experimental filmmaker who was a key figure in the New York City-based underground film movement known as the Cinema of Transgression. Her work is known for being confrontational, transgressive, and poetic. Her films have screened internationally in North America, Australia and in prominent galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. @tessahughesfreeland
- KUMMER, 1986/1994, dir. Anna Thew (17:47)
A man's scarred chest flanked by graffiti of the Berlin Wall.
The centre screen 'MM', consists of a succession of almost still, repeat shots of a youth's back, half lit naked chest and body. As he moves slowly round to face the camera faint shadows of two scars show beneath his left breast. Flanking this central image to the left and right, 'KU', 'ER', by contrast, hold a dizzying run of more than six thousand single frames of graffiti, scrawls, slogans, swirls of acid colour; desperate paint spattered utterances over the concrete wall, in an alternation of rhythm, zoom, texture, hand held camera and agitated physical movement. Accompanied by Turkish music of Necla Akben, bought nearby in a Turkish only shop in Kreuzberg, Berlin.
KUMMER = trouble, sorrow
Anna Thew is a linguist, writer, painter, turned film-maker and performer, active in making and promoting film and video exhibition and education for over 25 years, working with LFMC Distribution Archive in the ‘80's, co-curating FLUX projections,'94 - 20016. Studied Italian and German at Manchester University and F.A.Painting at Chelsea School of Art, completing her first films at LFMC '80-‘82.
- La Santa – La Terra del Rimorso, 2023, dir. Martin Kellett (08:36)
The name ‘La Santa’ refers to both the Virgin Mary and the highest, most secretive level of The ‘Ndrangheta, a secret society within a secret society which links the top bosses with freemasons.
Footage of Il Rito dei Vattienti di Nocera Terinese, an Italian religious festival that happens every year in the Calabrian mountains, banned by the Church multiple times. Self-flagellation of the legs with the spugna and homemade potion, men are walked around by their sons on a leash.
Martin Kellett is an art director and designer who creates imagery for bands, brands and musicians. His clients include Alabama 3, 4FSB and Roberto Musci. @martin_kelett
Carlo Ascrizzi is a composer and sound designer known for his unnerving film scores, dystopian soundscapes and micro-detailed sound design. He performs as Nokuit, La Santa and Gin Gomma. @nokuit
- Utopian Wedding, 2024, dir. Daleya Marohn (10:30)
Utopian Wedding is an invitation to a traditional Ethiopian wedding. Smuggling herself into her mother’s past, a daughter explores their complex relationship and the cultural place of marriage.
Daleya Marohn is an Ethiopian-German artist and director based between London and Berlin. Through her film work and experimental storytelling, she explores the nuances and complexities of human emotion. @dalyeamarohn
- RELINQUISH, 2022, dir. Dylan Zarate (05:00)
RELINQUISH is a short visual collage by artist Dylan Zarate which invokes the freedom of letting go.
Dylan Zarate is a multimedia artist currently residing in the Greater Los Angeles area. His work focuses on the transience of identity and the boundaries in which one exists, oftentimes presenting these concepts through an absurdist lens. As a soundscape creator, he works under the mononym DNZ and has self-released two collections of music on his imprint, Information & Entropy, in 2021 and 2022, respectively. His video work has shown internationally, with the short film, “Everybody Dies,” playing multiple festivals across Europe and America. @dylanzarate