Marion Phillini | natasha sabatini art

Marion Phillini was a venture in exploring ways of collaborating. Artists Maria Fernanda Calderon, Jon Clair, Ella Phillips and Natasha Sabatini, devised a dynamic way of working free from predetermined roles to create immersive video installations. We completed three video projects as a collective.

Part one: Dirty Laundry, is set in a time-forgotten Laundromat and revels in the delights of the voyeuristic. Using live webcam feeds and the screen as a boundary and window, we acknowledge intimacy, exclusion and voyeurism as implicit in the public/private divide. The piece considers the liminal nature of the screen, whilst asking of the viewer: who is watching you?

Part two: La Tua Vita Per Me was a product of an international residency, Marion Phillini travelled from the UK to Naples to produce this work. Filmed in the apartment borrowed from a generous stranger, the work explores the setting utilising it as accommodation and exhibition venue. The piece built on our research into intimacy, exclusion and voyeurism, developing our collective visual language of subjective blurs, windows and reflections. In this piece, perceptual assumptions are challenged and you are encouraged to question what is real and what is imagined: projections, live streaming and meta-cinema contribute to this obfuscation. The central character migrates across countries and social boundaries, before encountering the divide between the real and the virtual. The interface between these two worlds converge, leaving the viewer uncertain of where the physical is located.

Within both of these works we have explored the capacity of video to slow down time, by looking at habitual everyday moments in focus and juxtaposing these moments with quick edits. This lengthening and fragmentation of time create a sense of the uncanny within the ordinary.

Part Three: we received funding to carry out research into collaboration and over a year we tested how different collaborative models effect the production of moving image work.

8 EXPERIMENTS: 8 VIDEOS – 24 DAYS - 192 HOURS

Collaborative Models:

#1 INTERNAL AFFAIRS

Evaluate: How can you collaborate alone?

Rules: Each person will work separately towards a shared goal agreed via email;

files will be shared online; editing will be done independently and then brought

together online for completion.

#2 DICTATORSHIP

Evaluate: How does an imposed hierarchy affect the making process and does the

work produced feel collaborative?

Rules: One individual instructs the rest of the group; this individual is entirely

‘hands off’ the making process and has the power to override all decisions

#3 ACES ARE WILD

Evaluate: How can chance inform collaboration?

Rules: Every decision will be made on the roll of a dice.

#4 SYSTEMATIC

Evaluate: How does task division affect the

collaborative process?

Rules: Clearly defined tasks and roles within

the group; the equal division of labour and

time; shift working.

#5 CASH, MONEY, FINANCE

Evaluate: How does a paid commission affect the outcome of collaboration?

Rules: Formulate storyboard collectively; create instructions; outsource filming

and editing to groups of UAL students – one group to be paid and one not to be.

#6 ANARCHY

Evaluate: How efficient/ beneficial can a loss of structure be?

Rules: No structure; no consultation; do as you want between the hours of 9am-

6pm each day.

#7 EXPERT/ AMATEUR

Evaluate: What is the impact of a (un)/skilled

‘outsider’ on the Marion Phillini process?

Rules: Invite a guest collaborator; have one

‘expert’ and one ‘amateur’ collaborator work

with the group.

#8 REAL TIME

Evaluate: How does a ‘singe take’ affect Marion Phillini’s decision making?

Rules: 16mm film will be an unrehearsed single take; only ‘hot editing’ allowed;

no post production.

Installation of Systematic at Lewisham Art House - Collaboration in Progress - July 2016