On Tuesday morning a package arrived at the Studio. Inside lay Duncan Speakman’s latest work ‘short films for you.’ For the next six weeks we are the library, and these films are for you.

‘short films for you’ is a series of six linked experiences, each lasting around ten minutes. A mixture of audio, text and images, the work incased within the book takes you on a journey; a walk at dawn, a coffee shop, a ride on a bus.    

Duncan Speakman is an artist who creates work that physicaly and emotionally engages audiences in public spaces. This project developed at Timelab was a chance to create smaller, more intricate individual works. ‘This was always going to be an experiment, and a risk.’

Each work is a collaboration, the result of a short intensive development period working with an artist of a different discipline. Writer and Studio resident Tom Abba brings a sense of 20th century gothic literature in Six Shots, while Reinout Hiel’s photography contrasts the movement in A Rigid Body of Reference. Els Viaene field recordings echo through soft boundary and Yoko Ishiguro creates an intimate dance in A Watch Enveloped In Cotton.

For me, it started like this:

[ opening ] A Brilliant Sun.

I press play on Track one. Walk around the streets.  I stop. I’m the only one here. I should be moving but I can’t. I stand. Alone. Listening, watching and waiting.
The world wakes up around me. 

Six Shots - a miniature gothic horror

Track two. A coffee, alone. I find him, and watch. Careful he doesn’t catch my glances. I press play. I strain to hear the words. Her mother, his mother. I’m confused, muddled. The voices, desperate ring around my head. The gun fires. Images, I can’t stop. Words I can’t take in.
I think of my mother.

A Rigid Body of Reference

The engine starts, I press play, track three begins. I open the envelope, look out of the window.   Faces are blurred. Smudged across the photograph. They could be anywhere. My city, or theirs. It doesn’t matter.
I watch them pass by.

The book is ours temporarily before it travels on.
We’re loaning it out for up to 24 hour periods and we would like to lend it to you.
It can be collected and returned from the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed between 9.30-5.30 Monday to Friday.
You’ll need to leave a credit card and some proof of identity with us. 

If you’d like to experience 'short films for you' please email hannah.ww@watershed.co.uk