Thursday 1 July, 2010

Tickets will be available to purchase from the Information Desk tonight, please arrive early to avoid disappointment.


John Latham's films are radical assaults - or redefinitions - of time and space, art and science, documentation and production. Accompanying the current exhibition Anarchive, they are presented over three screenings, each accompanied by interviews and other documents and contextualised by a guest speaker, tonight with writer and curator David Toop, an early collaborator with Latham and curator of the current exhibition Blow Up: Exploding Sound and Noise (London - Brighton 1959-1969) at Flat Time House.

David Toop discusses the myths and rumours surrounding the soundtrack of Speak, including Latham's proximity to Joe Harriott and Pink Floyd in 1960s London; his personal experiences of seeing Speak during the Hornsey sit-in of 1960 and seeing Latham cutting up books at an Float, an event held at Middle Earth club in the same year; and his involvement in the filming of Encyclopaedia Brittannica and the film's relationship to Latham's use of books in his artworks.

Screening:

Britannica, UK 1971, 6'

For Skoob Tower Ceremony: National Encyclopedias (1966), Latham had constructed towers from volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and then burnt them. This film attempts, instead, a precis of the entire encyclopedia, with one frame of film for each page: the history of human knowledge becomes an illegible, strobing stream of images.

Speak, UK 1962, 11'

Is his second attack on the cinema. Not since Len Lye's films in the thirties has England produced such a brilliant example of animated abstraction. SPEAK burns its way directly into the brain. It is one of the few films about which it can truly be said, "it will live in your mind". - Ray Durgnat.



Members and concessions will be required to provide proof or ID upon collection of tickets.

Whitechapel Gallery Patrons, Associates and Exhibition Patrons can reserve up to two free tickets for public events by e-mail to supporters@whitechapelgallery.org. 

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