First Light

Sky

Snow

Monitors

Airwaves

Identity

Interlude

Liner Notes

This album takes its structure from the ancient myth of creation over seven ‘days’, and its lexicon from the archaic technology of film, television and videotape.

The First Day →

First Light

According to the Abrahamic traditions, in the beginning God created the world ex nihilo (from nothing) but human creation is always ex materia; we take existing material and transform it into something new, which we may call art. In addition, we take existing creations as the inspiration for new works. Here, I have taken the title sequence of a film by Jean Luc Godard to make a video art work, but previously I took inspiration from that same film for the creation of a video art practice.

The Second Day →

Sky

While Genesis tells the story of God creating the world via the Spirit, the gospel of John also tells us that ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God… All things came into being through him’ → This Trinitarian view is here represented by Laurence Olivier accompanied by Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser. The filmic sky into which the Air Chief Marshall gazes is clouded by the limitations of videotape, and while I could have used a pristine digital copy of the source film, in my early days as a video artist, VHS recordings were all that were available to me, and I learned the value of working in an impoverished medium.

The Third Day →

Snow

With the development of high definition digital video, it became possible to register such levels of detail as the thermal movement of the air between my camera and the subject (although in the era of 4K video, this footage now reads as lo-res). There is an obvious environmental theme to this work, which could in turn be related to contemporary theologies of creation → but I am also interested in the relation of technology to matters of faith and doubt; it is not climate denial to note that environmentalism can have a quasi-religious aspect. In any case, where we might long for the lost innocence of Eden, the telos of Christianity is not back to the garden, but forward to the City of God →

The Fourth Day →

Monitors

The light created ‘in the beginning’ was distinct from the celestial lights created ‘on the fourth day’. The first is the light that never goes out; thus the City of God ‘has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light’ → But in the meantime, ‘we see through a glass, darkly’ → and rely on images of the past (an ‘inventory of mortality’ → ) to help us imagine the things that may come. These artefacts can be magnificent or mundane, beautiful or ugly – and sometimes these come together in art.

The Fifth Day →

Airwaves

While this work ostensibly refers to the creatures of the air and sea produced ‘on the fifth day’, it also points towards the alternative creation account in Genesis 2 → starring Adam and Eve, in honour of whom I originally titled this work Royalty; in addition to the Edenic imagery I was also thinking of the music, in particular the Verve’s appropriation of the same sound sample in Bittersweet Symphony, for which they were required to pay 100% of all royalties to the Rolling Stones, even though the sampled string arrangement was written and performed by others →

The Sixth Day →

Identity

After creating the ‘beasts of the earth’, we are told that God made human beings ‘in his own image… male and female created he them’. Thus we may see our true identity in God as non-binary; and this understanding can be confirmed in the New Testament, where we read that ‘there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ → In recent times, it has more often been in and around cinema that such radical approaches to gender and identity have been theorised and performed.

The Seventh Day →

Interlude

In the early days of television, during breaks in programme schedules, the BBC would broadcast ‘interludes’ → These films, consisting of static camera shots lasting the duration of a film reel, with ambient sound or sometimes light music, were not programme content, but neither were they ‘dead air’, the absence of content. A similar format was later used by some independent film and video artists, who as an act of creative commitment gave up control over their subject matter. The statement that God ‘rested on the seventh day’ might be understood in equivalent terms.

CCLP01

New Album LP

First Light (3.13)
Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (1980) →

Sky (3.03)
Battle of Britain (1969) →
All Flowers in Time Bend Towards The Sun (Jeff Buckley & Elizabeth Fraser) →

Snow (2.03)
Planet Rock (Soul Sonic Force) →
Salad Days (Young Marble Giants) →

Monitors (1.54)
Crt problem (Vitez 2003) →
Marquee Moon (Television) →

Airwaves (3.01)
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) →
The Last Time (The Andrew Oldham Orchestra) →

Identity (2.12)
A Damsel in Distress (1937) →
Chance Meeting (Josef K) →
20th Century Studios logo →
Columbia Pictures logo →
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios logo →
RKO Radio Pictures logo →
Universal Pictures logo →

Interlude (3.33)
BBC1 ident →
Famous (The Magnetic Fields) →
Ina Boyle: Phantasy For Violin and Chamber Orchestra (Daniel Hope) →

Mark Dean