FACTs national touring exhibition, Manual, the first two-person show of filmmakers Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller to be staged in the UK, will open in London. The exhibition features recent film works, as well as Manual (2002), a new film installation commissioned by FACT. Manual (2002) combines material filched from US television series of the 60s with the voices of several female protagonists of 40s and 50s Hollywood melodramas.
It explores our preconceptions of the future as a technological utopia, while revealing - and celebrating - televisions often crude attempts at constructing future worlds and environments.
The title, Manual, alludes to growing concerns about the remote organisation and control of our lives by technological means, and to the cultural codes that create conformity and rules in our daily lives. The exhibition also features Scratch (2000) by Christoph Girardet and Phantom (2001) by Matthias Müller.
Matthias Müller is considered one of Germanys most important experimental filmmakers, and Christoph Girardet is a specialist in found footage film. The artists first collaborated in the six-volume Phoenix Tapes (1999), commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford for the exhibition, Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock and Contemporary Art.
Their stream-of-consciousness film montages draw heavily on Hollywood clips and found footage, exploiting the cinema of the past while suggesting radical new meanings and possibilities for the mediums future.
For more than a decade FACT has operated as a pioneering agency in the exhibition, support and development of artists film and video and new media projects in the UK. From our Liverpool base we have commissioned more than 100 projects by British and international artists. Many of these projects have been showcased within the biennial VIDEO POSITIVE event and other significant exhibitions organised by FACT, introducing north-west and UK audiences to high quality projects from across the globe.
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