www.ica.org.uk/education

RosalindNashashibi10 Sept — 1 Nov 2009

Written by: Vicky Carmichael & Chloë Sylvestre

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Our dynamic, artist-led Education Programme provides opportunities for schools, families and community groups to engage in creative ways with the ICA’s exhibitions. The gallery is open for school visits between 10am and 12pm, Monday – Friday, and is five minutes walk from Charing Cross Station.

This pack is geared towards secondary school students pursuing Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. Teachers may find it useful to visit the exhibitions before bringing a group. If you would like to plan a trip to the ICA, get in touch and find out how we can meet the needs of your group.

Contact Vicky Carmichael, Education AssistantPhone: +44 (0)20 7766 1458Email: vicky.carmichael@ica.org.ukICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

For more information and to view our archive of previous learning activities, please visit:www.ica.org.uk/learning

ICA Education Programme:

What We Do:Artist Led Projects: Our programme includes artist-led workshops with schools and innovative collaborations between artists and community groups.

Teachers Packs: These are available with each exhibition and include exhi- bition notes, suggested discussion points and activities for your visit, how to prepare before attending the exhibition and proposed activities for the classroom.

Insets: The ICA offers professional development sessions for teachers as an opportunity to meet with artists and gallery staff, and discuss how best to incorporate contemporary art into young people’s education.

Schools Mailing List: Keep up to date with the exciting education projects, events and workshops happening at the ICA by signing up for our mailing list.

Teachers Previews: These private views are dedicated to education resources and offer ideas for your pupils’ visit to the ICA. Come as a teacher or as yourself to enjoy a relaxing evening in the gallery.

The Fox Reading Room: The Fox Reading Room is a resource space providing artist-selected publications and related material to accompany our visual arts programme.

ICA Learning is focused on creating opportunities for exploration and discussion, providing participants with the tools and assurance to become informed spectators, confident participators and inspired creators.

The Fox Reading Room - situated off the bar and café area and adjacent to the ICA’s lower gallery, is our new resource space providing artist-selected publications and related material to accompany our visual arts programme. Our new space also provides learning resources for teachers and educators linking our exhibitions to the national curriculum.

The Fox Reading Room was made possible by the

generous support of the Edwin Fox Foundation

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This first major survey exhibition by London-based artist Rosalind Nashashibi, presents gallery-based installations of her five 16mm films from the last four years, for which Nashashibi has since established a strong international reputation, and includes an ambitious new work alongside examples of her photographic output.

Nashashibi was last shown at the ICA in 2003, when she was the award winner in Beck’s Futures, Her work is influenced by cinematic history, including the legacy of ethnographic film, and pursues an interest in myth, voyeurism and portraiture, using intuitive and experimental filmic structures.

Born in Croydon, UK, in 1973, artist Nashashibi graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2000. Her solo exhibitions include: Presentation House, Vancouver (2008); and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2007). Her group exhibitions include: Manifesta 7, Trento (2008); Scotland & Venice, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); and Beck’s Futures, ICA, London (2003, winner). Nashashibi also has a collaborative practice with the artist Lucy Skaer. Their solo exhibitions include: Tate Britain, London (2008); and CAC Brétigny (2008). Their group exhibitions include: 5th Berlin Biennale (2008).

The exhibition has been developed by the ICA with Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, and the latter will present the exhibition in November-December 2009. It is accompanied by issue three Roland (the magazine of the ICA’s visual art programme), as well as the first retrospective publication on Nashashibi’s work, which will include texts by Dieter Roelstraete and Martin Herbert. The catalogue is being produced by the ICA and Bergen Kunsthall in collaboration with Ontario College of Art and Design, Ontario. Rosalind Nashashibi is represented by doggerfisher, Edinburgh.

Rosalind Nashashibi, Jack Straw’s Castle, 2009 production still. Photograph by Will Martin

Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

Exhibition Concept:

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The solo exhibition by London-based artist Rosalind Nashashibi is the most comprehensive presentation of her work yet, presenting 16mm films from the last four years alongside examples of her photographic output.The galleries display a large span of Nashashibi’s work dating back to her residency in New York in 2005 (Eyeballing) to her most recent work commissioned by the ICA in 2009 for this very exhibition (Jack Straw’s Castle), and displays a range of film as well as photographic work by the artist.The lower gallery has two photographic series as well as a trio of short, inter-connecting film works, including Eyeballing (2005) which juxtaposes scenes of New York policemen with the anthropomorphic faces that Nashashibi’s camera finds in the physical fabric of their city. The upper gallery screens Nashashibi’s two most recent films, including Jack Straw’s Castle (2009), her most ambitious work to date. The latter uses footage shot in and around a public park, interlacing shots from real life - including sequences shot in a cruising area - with highly theatrical scenarios involving a cast of non-actors.

Exhibits In RehearsalIn Rehearsal (2009) is a new series of over a hundred photographs taken during a rehearsal in Berlin, of a work by Tilman Hecker composed from fragments of Mozart operas, and are accompanied by a sound recording of the same event. The notion of rehearsal is very important to the artist, who is interested in what is known in the theatrical world as ‘physicalisation’ — whereby people are transformed into characters.

Although Nashashibi is best known for her films, her works on paper — which include collages as well as photographs — draw attention to ideas and images that recur within her practice, and which can appear as referring links for the viewer.

FootnoteFootnote (2008). This one-minute film is another piece involving sequences staged, but this time by the Bayrles and it is Helke Bayrle who takes centre stage. The latter is sitting up in bed, reading a magazine, and when her eyes drop to the bottom of the page — to read a footnote — the sequence is interrupted by the unexpected image of an ornamental garden frog, as if to show the viewer what Helke is possibly referring to. Like the transition from main text to footnote, this cut suggests a jump between different levels of reality — a recurring theme in Nashashibi’s work.

Bachelor Machines Part 2Bachelor Machines Part 2 (2007) is a double projection film: on one screen two of the artist’s works are projected in sequence (Eyeballing, along with Park Ambassador, 2004); the other shows excerpts from Kluge’s Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (1968) and footage of Nashashibi’s own restaging of Kluge’s scenes using the artist Thomas Bayrle and his wife Helga as her actors. Bayrle equally provides a Faustian voiceover referring to the catholic rosary as man’s first machine. In this, Nashashibi draws a parallel between this idea and the physical mechanism of the film projectors in the gallery; the work beginning to realise itself as a meditation machine. The artist’s disparate interests are drawn together in a single visual point, forming its own cyclical and poetic logic.Rosalind Nashashibi, Footnote, 2007, 16mm film. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

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EyeballingEyeballing (2005) signified a sea change in Nashashibi’s style of filmmaking. Moving away from the documentary mode of the artist’s previous film work, it indicated a turn toward the anthropomorphic, the mythic and the abstract. Finding faces within the cityscape of New York – in shop fronts, fire hydrants and floorboards – Eyeballing indicates her interest in the transformative properties of the camera ‘eye’. Interspersed with exterior shots of the New York Police Department, the faces of the off-duty cops are juxtaposed with the anthropomorphic faces of the city, creating a filmic collage portrait. Nashashibi’s ICA exhibition concentrates on this later period, in which her works have become more intuitive, and more experimental in their filmic structure.

AbbeysAbbeys (2006) A series of monumental black and white images of crumbling church interiors, inverted by the artist to reveal anthropomorphic shapes as explored in Eyeballing.

The PrisonerThe Prisoner (2008) is based on Chantal Akerman’s film La Captive (2000), and extends Nashashibi’s exploration of vision and control. In this piece Nashashibi’s camera follows a woman through an anonymous interior and out onto London’s Southbank Centre. Using a single filmstrip looped through two film projectors, the image and sound of the woman’s clicking heels are constantly out of synch, and the observer is caught in an endless, disorientating pursuit.

Jacks Straw’s CastleJacks Straw’s Castle (2009). The final film in the exhibition was specially commissioned by the ICA and Bergen Kunsthall. It is an intuitive and highly visual work interlacing shots from real life – including sequences showing men cruising – with staged scenarios involving a cast of non-professional actors. Jack Straw’s Castle articulates the dream space of cinema, in which camera and desire conspire to bring about a metamorphosis. Rosalind Nashashibi, Abbey 1, 2006 black and white photograph. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

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Themes and Activities:1. Film & Photography

FilmRosalind Nashashibi has established a strong reputation for her 16mm works, which are influenced by ethnographic film as well as by directors such as Pasolini and Kluge, pursuing an interest in myth, voyeurism and portraiture. “In the films, all I realised is the presence of an energy that I experienced,” says Nashashibi. “The task was to try to capture that energy through the medium of film.”

Nashashibi’s employment of 16mm film is an important part of her work. It is with the aesthetic qualities of this medium that the artist conveys her interest in cinematic history as well as her appreciation for all of films formal qualities such as intemporality, which emphasise amongst other aspects, her portrayal of highly staged scenarios, and fine lines between levels of reality. Equally Nashashibi is interested in the use of the filmstrip for its qualities of the repetition of images.

PhotographyAlthough Nashashibi is best known for her films, her works on paper – which include collages as well as photographs – draw attention to ideas and images that recur within her practice, and can appear as referring links for the viewer.This exhibition displays two different bodies of (black and white) photographic work by the artist: Abbeys (2005) and In Rehearsal (2009). Through use of analogue methods, the final pieces produced become conceptually more intriguing than mere narrative, where the combination of images jump out of one reality to another.

Activities• What are some of the similarities/differences in film and photography?

• What are some details about the photographs the artist has put on exhibition

in the galleries? Rosalind Nashashibi, In Rehearsal, 2009, black and white photograph.

BEFORE ExHIBITION:• Make a list of 3 photographs you like and try to describe why that is.

DURING ExHIBITION:• Identify which images in the exhibition you see more than once throughout

the different works. Make a note.

AFTER ExHIBITION:• Try and find different themes that repeat throughout the pieces in the

exhibition.

Curious specificsThe first photograph View from the Window at Le Gras was produced in 1825 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Traditional films were produced using a series of still photographs aligned on a strip and projected rapidly to give the illusion of movement.

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Themes and Activities:2. Mythology

Many of the works on display throughout the exhibition have involved elements of staging, and are all interested in the representation of human life, as well as how individuals and groups transform themselves through theatre; such as ideas of control, peoples’ place in society and society’s attempts to control the individual. Equally Nashashibi displays the transformative possibilities of ritual, she explains: “mythologising gives existence a glamour we wouldn’t want to be without.” As Nashashibi explains her film Eyeballing (2005), she says, “I used reality to show archetypal figures, authority figures, dumb players, gods, monsters, fools, and totems.” And describes her work as exploring “the essence of the totemic characters portrayed”

StagingNashashibi’s work explores the representation and exploration of human life by utilising theatrical aspects such as lighting, personification and acting. This can be strongly recognised in the artist’s latest work, Jacks Straw Castle (2009), where overtly recognisable elements of staging such as backdrops, controlled lighting and artificially set up scenes are put on display.Lines between reality and fiction are blurred by the artist and can be indiscernible at times. This element of Nashashibi’s work makes the audience become more aware of how similar documentary and fiction really can be; pushing the boundaries in such bodies of work as Bachelor Machines Part 1 (2007) where appearances of non-acting may ultimately be actual methods of acting itself.

Performance and RitualPersonifications of human life and ritual are displayed most deliberately in Nashashibi’s photographic series In Rehearsal (2009). This body of work explores the most technical aspects of staging, involving performance, repetition, and ritual. All of these elements are methodically applied in the

Rosalind Nashashibi, Jack Straw’s Castle, 2009 production still. Photograph by Will Martin.

Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

production of an Opera, which is in itself a strongly exaggerated representation of human existence. The word ‘performance’ itself is understood as an exaggeration of a natural act. Throughout Nashashibi’s work, the notion of performance is methodically utilised in such pieces as Jack Straw’s Castle (2009).

Activities• What are some key elements applied in the production of a theatre

performance?

• What are two Myths you are familiar with and why do you think they are

labelled as such?

BEFORE ExHIBITION:• Name 3 different ways you are able to discern reality from fiction.

DURING ExHIBITION:• See which of the points you outlined can be applied to recognise which pieces

in the exhibition are fiction and which are reality.

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Themes and Activities:3. Voyeurism

Voyeurism (from the French voyeur, “one who looks”) can take several forms, but its principle characteristic is that the voyeur does not normally relate directly with the subject their interest.Nashashibi’s films are often understood as documentary or anthropological in nature, with much of her work adopting themes of observation and voyeurism. Eyeballing (2005) consists of daily illegal serveillance of a New York police station show officers entering and leaving, with their unfalteringly, unsmiling faces, watching. Juxtaposed with this are the rudimentary faces that are found in all manner of places; the back of a toothbrush, holes left behind by nails in a piecs of wood, a plug socket; all looking back.A good example is 16mm film, Bachelor Machines Part 1 (2007), which is concerned with the dynamics of observation, voyeurism and representation. The narrative charts the journey of an Italian cargo ship called the Gran Bretagna and seems to progress methodically through 25 sequences. These are identified onscreen as ‘scenes’, and depict fragments of the exterior, the surrounding sea and various un-translated interactions between the crew.Very little is revealed about life onboard, however, as attention gradually shifts towards the relationship between filmmaker and subject and, ultimately,the practice of representation itself. Voyeurism and surveillance are central to our experience of Nashashibi’s films. They are hugely descriptive, and often poetic in nature. Although the world at large is her frequent subject, within the narrative the formal is implicated, so her films are equally poetic and descriptive, allusive and associative. Often the lack of activity, as in Bachelor Machines Part 1, is what is makes the films so interesting to observe.

Nb. Bachelor Machines Part 1 is being shown at the ICA Cinema on Sunday 20 September,

and Sunday 11 October 2009 Bachelor Machines Part 1 (2007) (Photograph by Antonio Olmos)

Activities

DURING ExHIBITION:• As you watch Rosalind Nashashibi’s films, make notes creating a series of ‘scenes’.

• Watch ‘The Prisoner’ in the Upper Gallery. How does this vary from the other

films being shown?

• Which of Nashashibi’s films makes you feel most voyeuristic? Why?

AT SCHOOL:• Set up a series of video cameras around your school to create an

observational picture over a period of time. Use this footage to create a film,

playing with sound.

• Document your average day by taking photographs and/or film. Try cutting this

footage together, or interjecting it with other footage you have.

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Themes and Activities:4. Portraiture

Portraiture is defined as the representation, a likeness of a person, usually done through the means of painting, drawing, photography etc. But portraits give the viewer much more than just a likeness. Historically, portraiture is a useful tool for providing a difinitive image of a specific time or place. Often portraits hold clues to the subject of the portrait, with artefacts and objects alluding to the identity of the subject; their character, profession, age, position in society and so on. Portraits come in a huge range of media making them one of the most diverse in terms of their forms and functions.

Although much information can be aquired from studying portraits, the time and means within which they were produced must be considered as they will often be a product of a particular movement, style, fashion or influence from the artist themselves. For example, in Sam Taylor-Wood’s Crying Men, famous actors such as Jude Law and Paul Newman are shown in a series of shots showing various states of emotional breakdown. The viewer is led to question the authenticity of the photographs, and the validity of the actors’ response to Taylor-Wood’s direction.

To draw a parallell with Nashashibis work, her films are rich with information on its subjects often presented as clues within the films, or layers of information gradually building, as in Bachelor Machines Part 1 (2007). In these settings, the portraiture is functional allowing the viewer to take on information at face-value; a comon trait of portraits.

Nashashibi’s portraits are her films offering us an insight into different portions of society. Her earlier films are considered to be more anthropological in nature – for example Blood and Fire (2003) and The States of Things (2000) whereas the later films have more of an obvious input from the artist, with an element of staging apparent as seen in Jack Straw’s Castle (2009).

Rosalind Nashashibi, Jack Straw’s Castle, 2009 production still

Photograph by Will Martin. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

Activities• Do you consider Nashashibi’s later films to be more or less of a portrait than

her earlier offerings? Why?

• While you watch each film in the exhibition write notes about the subject.

What information can you extract? When you get back to school, compare

your notes with others and discuss your perceptions of each film.

• How would you choose to create a portrait of your life?

• Working in groups, experiment with media and create a portrait of your lives.

• Study portraits by artists such as Holbein, Rembrant, and Van Dyck. What can

you determine about the subject of the painting?

• Research the work of contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Gary

Hume and Sam Taylor-Wood. How do these artists use portraiture?

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Themes and Activities:5. Interrelational Forms

Throughout the exhibition, links are systematically and fluidly made between each of Nashashibi’s bodies of work. Not only are the recurring themes represented in the artist’s work important but also the regular direct linking of each of her pieces remain key.

All along Nashashibi’s practice, one can uncover direct links as well as exact duplicates/extracts of previous bodies of work with preceding ones. This not only reinforces the artist’s concepts but equally serves as an element of fluid reinforcement and extension of specific precedently developed notions.

Not only are concepts, themes and exact images used as specific connections with each piece, but also particular persons/actors are reoccurring in Nashashibi’s practice.

Activities• What are 3 reoccurring themes found throughout the exhibition in

Nashashibi’s work?

• What are some ways the artist goes about expressing those specific themes in

her pieces?

DURING ExHIBITION:• See how many ways you can link each body of work with one another.

AFTER ExHIBITION:• Reflect upon how the linking of pieces in the exhibition helped form your

interpretation of the artists work.

Rosalind Nashashibi, Bachelor Machines Part 2, 2007. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

Rosalind Nashashibi, Eyeballing, 2005. Courtesy doggerfisher, Edinburgh

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Links EventsIsla Leaver-Yap Thurs 17 September 2009 – 7pm: Meet in Lower Gallery, ICA / FreeExhibition Organiser at the ICA, Isla Leaver-Yap delivers a talk on the exhibition.This talk will be signed in British Sign Language.

Rosalind Nashashibi in Conversation Sun 27 September 2009 – 3pm: Nash Room, ICA / Free/ Booking requiredRosalind Nashashibi will be in conversation with the artist Olivia Plender. The event will examine how Nashashibi’s work has evolved over the past eight years, and will explore Nashashibi’s use of symbols and signs in the films, photographs and collages featured in her ICA exhibition and also in her wider practice.

Voyage on the North Sea + Bachelor Machines Part 1 Sun 20 September 2009 – 2pm / Sun 11 October 2pm: Cinema 2, ICA / £5 Voyage on the North Sea is a silent short film by Belgian master of conceptual art, Marcel Broodthaers, and features simple depictions of ships. According to Nashashibi, the work “insists that you look repeatedly at the same clichéd images until they lose their ordinariness. The film is so simple, and yet it holds on to it’s mystery.” It is followed by Nashashibi’s Bachelor Machines Part 1, a key work in the artist’s oeuvre, set on an all-male cargo boat travelling from Naples to Sweden. [Marcel Broodthaers, Belgium 1974, 4mins, U cert. Rosalind Nashashibi, UK 2007, 31 mins, U cert.]Nb. See ICA cinema programme for a further list of screenings in relation with the Rosalind

Nashashibi exhibition at www.ica.org.uk/

Nashashibi / Skaer Sat 01 August 2009 - Sat 26 September 2009Edinburgh Art Festival, Doggerfisher GalleryRosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer have been collaborating since 2005.For their first solo exhibition in Scotland they will exhibit a new 16mm film, which takes as its starting point Paul Nash’s painting Flight of the Magnolia.

Artists/Filmmakers:Lucy Skaer & Rosalind NashashibiThomas & Helke BayrleMarcel BroodthaersChantal AkermanPier Paolo PasoliniSam Taylor-Wood

Websiteswww.doggerfisher.com/artists/artistdetail.php?id=56www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/rosalind_nashashibi/index.htmlwww.storegallery.co.uk/artists/Rosalind%20Nashashibi/www.britishcouncil.org/scotland-scotlandandvenice-rosalind-nashashibi.htmen.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_filmwww.chisenhale.org.uk/archive/exhibitions/index.php?id=10www.pantheon.org www.cindysherman.comwww.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/holbein/www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/vandyck/ www.rembrandtpainting.netwww.whitecube.com/artists/humewww.whitecube.com/artists/taylorwood/BFI: www.bfi.org.ukThe Photographers’ Gallery: www.npg.org.uk

Alexander KlugeCindy ShermanRobert BressonRoland BarthesPablo PicassoAlexander KlugeClaude Lévi-Strauss