THE BRITISH AVANT-GARDE, ABSTRACT AND EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA 1960 TO THE PRESENT
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, The London Institute
The Artists’ Film & Video Study
Collection at Central St Martins
The project began with the appointment of David Curtis as the Centre's Senior
Research Fellow, based at CSM in October 2000. He is responsible for the development
of the study collection at Central St. Martins which will contain copies of
artists’ films & tapes and the paper documentation that supports this work.
The collection will be available for research use by post-graduate students,
curators and other writers on film on a limited basis from March 2001. A chronology
of artists’ films & videos made in Britain is on-line in draft form via
the Study Collection website.
This chronology in database-form, together with a database of the collection’s
holdings will become available on this site. A loan-agreement with the Arts Council of England (ACE) means that the study
collection will include tapes of many of the works funded by ACE between 1975
and 2000. Additionally, individual artists will be invited to lend copies of
their films/tapes and documentation to the collection, to ensure that it is
fully representative of the range of British work – much of which was not publicly
funded. A key aspect of this research project will be to trace and document
important ‘missing’ works from the past. It has also been agreed that there
should be a close link between this project and the Lux Centre’s ambitious plans
to digitise its collections of artists’ films/videos, and to make them available
on-line and through a publicly-accessible videotheque. In addition to artists’ films & videos, the study collection will include
documentation of installations and ‘expanded cinema’, hopefully including specially
commissioned records of re-staged works. The paper documentation will reflect
all stages in the film-making process: artists’ proposals for films - the drawings,
diagrams and storyboards that precede their works; the manifestos and statements
that help shape artists’ thinking, and the reviews and critical essays that
follow exhibition. Also in the collection will be film-stills, posters, screening-announcements
and documentation of key artist-run film/video organisations - such as the London
Film Makers Co-op, London Video Arts and Circles. The study collection will work closely with bfi Collections to ensure that
artists’ original film/video materials that are at risk are preserved for future
generations and restored where necessary; and to make neglected works from the
past available to study. From the outset, the study collection will encourage and support the publication
of monographs and collections of documentation in paper and on-line form, and
to organise film-programmes and exhibitions based on its research programmes.
Contact:
David Curtis
British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Southampton Row
London WC1B 4AP
020 7514 8159
info@studycollection.org.uk