Artist and writer Simon Payne presents his new book in a special session that includes the screening of some of the films discussed, which explore structures, systems and strategies related to the interaction between light and darkness, musical composition, performance, abstraction, frame sequencing and animation. Like the book, the programme represents a dynamic, varied field that has defined some of the main concerns addressed by British artists' film and video from the late 1960s to the present.

This special programme corresponds with Simon Payne’s new book Experimental Cinema: Structures, Systems and Strategies, published by the British Film Institute and Bloomsbury. The book examines a range of creative processes and aesthetic modes that several film and video artists have developed over the last 60 years, responding to the changing medium of cinema and its technological advances, as well as taking inspiration from other art forms including painting, sculpture and music. While key figures internationally have formed part of the picture, the most thorough formal exploration of cinema can be credited to a generation of artists that began making films in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. In his book, Simon Payne analyses the work of influential artists including Peter Gidal, David Hall, Malcolm Le Grice, Annabel Nicolson, Jayne Parker and Guy Sherwin. He discusses recent and lesser-known works as well as canonical films, videos and expanded cinema. Crucially, he also pays close attention to many younger artists including Jenny Baines, Neil Henderson, Jennifer Nightingale and Samantha Rebello.

Programme:

Candle, Neil Henderson, 2017, 16mm, silent, 4'

Neil Henderson has made several candle films, any of which are perfect to start a programme. They introduce the essence of cinema as a time-based, moving-image medium. The image is in fact a polaroid photograph and hence static, but we might well see it flicker. Though Henderson filmed the polaroid photograph as it developed, the process is seen in reverse: the image is there from the beginning but slowly fades, leaving a white screen.

Dark from Light, Nick Collins, 2019, 16mm, 4', silent

Many of Nick Collins' films are a meditation on the way light and dark describe the objects and spaces that he films, which span domestic settings, urban locations, archaeological sites and landscapes. Dark from Light involves an industrial-ecological turn. It starts with a sequence of shots that link coal mining and electricity production. As it progresses, the film comes to represent a reciprocal cycle. While coal was formed by decayed plant matter that once absorbed the energy of the sun, film is also a matter harnessing light and darkness.

Projection 1, Jayne Parker, 2000, 16mm on digital, 6'

Projection 1 takes its title from a composition for cello by Morton Feldman, which Anton Lukoszevieze plays twice in the film. The sequence of shots is slightly different each time, however. The aim of Feldman's music was ‘not to “compose” but to project sounds into time’. He also described his compositions as 'time canvases'. These ideas evoke film, as does the score for Projection 1 which comprises a series of frames as units of time. Parker's film amplifies these connections but also interrogates some of the differences between cinema and music.

Traction, Jenny Baines, 2023, 16mm, 3', silent

The films of Jenny Baines involve her trying to complete a particular action in front of the camera within the timeframe determined by a 100ft roll of 16mm film. The actions often take the form of a game or challenge. In Traction Baines takes up one end of a rope in a tug of war. The shadow at the other side of the screen is all we see of her competitor. Midway through the film, when Baines has swapped ends, it appears as if she is competing against herself. This flip is representative of the artist's films more broadly, where she is constantly testing herself.

Digital Still Life, Malcolm Le Grice, 1984–1986, digital video, 8'

Malcolm Le Grice's first videos pieces (after leaving filmmaking behind) immediately embraced digital imaging and sequencing. Digital Still Life takes camcorder footage of an apple tree, fruit bowl and piano keyboard and transforms them into highly pixellated black and white or colour images. The arrangement of these images was also affected digitally, through programmed editing decisions. The same is true of the piano and electronic tone rows, which point to the aesthetics of advanced music as a means for composing in time.

Knitting Films, Jennifer Nightingale, 2016–2025, 16mm on digital, 6', silent

This selection of films derives from a body of work that translates regional knitting patterns into pre-production film scores. The stitches in each pattern become single frames. Nightingale then takes her scores into the locations – in Cornwall, the Faroe Islands, Norfolk, Yorkshire and the Aran Islands – that originally inspired the knitting patterns and points her camera in different directions that correspond with the two or three types of stitch that the patterns comprise. The results are highly structured films that vividly depict coastal towns, ports and seascapes.

Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting, Vicky Smith, 2014, 16mm, 4'

Vicky Smith's film was made by licking, dribbling and spitting along the filmstrip. In the first instance, she stained her tongue and pressed it onto the filmstrip, leaving a forty-frame gap between the first and second impression and then reducing the distance by one frame each time. Dribbling and spitting are introduced as the tongue prints begin to overlap. Despite the base and corporeal nature of Smith's film, the process of counting in frames shows that she is also a systematic artist.

not far at all, Peter Gidal, 2013, 16mm, 14'

The hazy sky and vapour trail in not far at all point back to a much earlier film by Peter Gidal entitled Clouds (1969), one of teh first works that corresponds with what he later defined as 'structural/materialist' film. The title of not far at all signals the recalcitrance of the filmmaker's position, but the content and overall form of the film are difficult to fathom. It might not be 'structural' at all, and in that regard the film tests various assumptions that viewers might have. A prominent and mysterious feature of the film is the eclipse – a perfect emblem of obscurity.

The Object Which Thinks Us: Object 1, Samantha Rebello, 2007, 16mm, 7'

Samantha Rebello's film links liquids, biology, body parts, insects and other invertebrates. It is the intense close-ups and graphic matches that bring the diverse elements together emphatically. In conjunction with the film's motifs, there is an underlying sense in which the primary object under scrutiny is cinema itself. Rebello's images continually refer back to the camera lens, the gaze of the viewer and the stream of perception that film constitutes.

Hole, Nicky Hamlyn, 1992, 16mm, 2', silent

The ostensible subject of this film is a hole in a fence, but it could also be the shallow depression in the ground that fills with water and reflects the gap in the fence above it. Hole was one of the first films of Nicky Hamlyn's that I saw, and I was immediately struck by how important it might be, for a filmmaker, to be looking at the overlooked. Continually reframing a patch of ground opens up a way of thinking about cinematic representation as inexhaustible.

Edges: Waves, Simon Payne, 2018, digital video, 6'

This piece is one of a series of videos that I have made that tests the degree to which actively moving elements could be consigned to the edges of the screen while still affecting the picture plane overall. Alternating waveforms are the elements here, running along the sides of the screen (in stereo) building up and then unfurling. (The video signal itself is a matter of waveforms.) In the process, the whole of the screen is animated.

Programme and texts by Simon Payne.

Copies of Nick Collins, Jenny Baynes, Jennifer Nightingale, Peter Gidal and Samantha Rebello courtesy of the filmmakers. Copy of Jayne Parker supplied by LUX. Copies of Malcolm Le Grice, Vicky Smith and Nicky Hamlyn supplied by Light Cone.