The Inoperative Community - Dan Kidner And Leslie Thornton In Conversation

Dan Kidner and Leslie Thornton in Conversation Thursday 14 January 2016, 6.30pm A screening of a selection of short films by artist Leslie Thornton will be followed by a conversation between Thornton and curator of ‘The Inoperative Community’, Dan Kidner, focusing on her work Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding (1984–2015). --- Leslie Thornton (b. 1951, USA) lives and works in New York and Providence, Rhode Island, where she is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Rhode Island. She has been working with video and digital media since the 1980s and her works have been presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, the Whitney Biennial, New York, and documenta 12, Kassel. Her first solo exhibitions, ‘Binocular’ (2011) and ‘Luna’ (2013), were held at Winkleman Gallery, New York. --- This event was presented as part of 'The Inoperative Community' at Raven Row. The Inoperative Community 3 December 2015 - 14 February 2016 ‘The Inoperative Community’ is an exhibition of experimental narrative film and video that address ideas of community and the shifting nature of social relations. It draws on work made since 1968 for cinema, television and the gallery, reflecting the overlapping and entangled histories of these sites. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Jean-Luc Nancy’s 1983 essay of the same name, and while this connection did not determine the selection of works, they all bear witness in their own way to what Nancy characterised as the ‘dissolution, the dislocation, or the conflagration of community’. Many concern the limits of political activism and the fate of left political subcultures, and all use narrative as a means to explore social and political issues. Encompassing over fifty hours of material the exhibition can be navigated by means of a printed or downloadable programme. Each visitor will only be able to see a fraction of the works on offer, but connections can be made between works on any particular course through the exhibition, which has been designed to accommodate both prolonged viewing and shorter visits. A screening room will show five daily programmes, in a more structured approach to the exhibition’s historical and political framework. These begin with an Anglo-French focus before expanding to include international filmmakers reflecting on the radical political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition focuses on a period that could be described as the long 1970s (1968-84) – all the works were either made during this time, or reflect on the radical social and political movements of the era. The defiant video installation about the Aids crisis, Journal of the Plague Year (1984) by Stuart Marshall (1949–93, UK) has been specially restored for the exhibition. Also included is a new edit – within an installation designed for the exhibition – of Peggy and Fred in Hell (1984–2015) by Leslie Thornton (b. 1951, USA), featuring footage shot whilst in residence at Raven Row; and newly available reels from the epic Five Year Diary (1981–97) by Anne Charlotte Robertson (1949–2012, USA), preserved by the Harvard Film Archive, will be screened for the first time in the UK. Curated by Dan Kidner