KEEM

Sunday, 5 January 2014

Here I stand for Five Minutes

For the project Here I Stand for Five Minutes KEEM set up a blog, and put up posters, asking occupants of the neighbouring building (5 Fleet Place) to stand in the window at a certain time in order to pose for a five-minute group portrait.

KEEM were interested in creating a dialogue between the Factory and the surrounding external world, and in exploring the act of performance involved in portraiture, and the relationship between the public and private. The outcome is a ten-minute video portrait.

Here I Stand for Five Minutes was made during a month-long residency at the Farringdon Factory.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

KEEM at the Farringdon Factory

During the month-long residency at the Farringdon Factory, KEEM have been busy working on two projects - Here I Stand for Five Minutes and Light Map. Each half of KEEM, Kate Elliott and Emma McGarry, initiated one of the two projects, both in relation to their own, independent work at the Factory.

Still from Here I Stand for Five Minutes © KEEM, 2013

Still from documention of Light Map © KEEM, 2013

Light Map 1 © KEEM, 2013

Monday, 16 December 2013

Light Map

Through creating small photographic installations made out of light-sensitive paper, in Light Map KEEM document the movement of light throughout the space. By performing certain acts and movements, they play with the subtle shifts in light, exploring if and how this can be translated from three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional forms.

Light Map was made during a month-long residency at the Farringdon Factory.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

Here I Stand for Five Minutes - coming soon

On Friday 13th December at 5pm KEEM will be shooting Here I Stand for Five Minutes. Click here for further information.

Saturday, 30 November 2013

Farringdon Factory

The Farringdon Factory is a month long residency, curated by artists Keira Greene and Natasha Cox. During this time KEEM, along with around 20 other artists, have unlimited access to a huge, disused office space on Farringdon Street. An update on our activities to follow soon...

Press Release:
20 Farringdon Street is a seven story building in the City of London. A structure that has been stripped back to its basic form, it is a soundproofed expansive space with enormous, lengthy rooms which look out over the energy of the passing city. The hum of the building's past activities echoes in this suspended space-in-waiting. 20 Farringdon Street has six L-shaped floors, identical in dimension and vacuity. Each is a blueprint of the last - like a strip of film waiting to be exposed.

From the 25th November to 19th December, this empty space will become the Farringdon Factory, a seven story open studio complex whereby the curators and resident artists will plan live events, screenings, and installations, performances and talks.

The ground floor will be transformed into a constructed cinema, a space that encourages discursive engagement. The facade is glass fronted, and passers‐by will encounter screenings and events as they filter down through the many levels of the building, and will be invited to become part of the project in this communal and public space. Resident artists, along with invited speakers, will present events that examine methods of research and production linked to both film-making and the temporality of the site. This curated programme will run during the residency and will seek to connect the studio practice upstairs with both visitors and the pedestrians on the street, locating the building itself as a unique site for observation.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

An excerpt from 'Ambient Notes: A Chain of Wooded Mountains' by Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau

Perching, posing. Again, these angles, when you start to think about the causal chains that led you to take this exact photograph it seems so unlikely that anything could ever happen at all.

Are you really closer to the shore? Or is it the camera? These aren't questions I want answering.

I've thought about shadows and about how sometimes shiny things leave shadows of light. But they aren't shadows are they? That's just a misappropriation of the term.

(I want to address this as a sensual experience. Travel, photography, writing. Photographs are sensual anyway, the depiction of light bouncing off objects. It seems obvious when you write it down. All photography is sensual, the shining skin of the world.)

In the darkness, photographs are always the product of a battle between light sources. Which one will make its mark?

There is a separation, in these, between you as a pair. To be the subject of the photograph is to be separated off from the photographer by the camera. Space split by the shutter. You travel together, but the camera keeps you apart.

(I always thought that taking a photograph of someone in a place makes it obvious that you can't experience that place in the same way at the same time. It would be wonderful to be able to somehow forget that either of you ever travelled as individuals, because once you've left a place, you aren't there any more, but the things you saw might still be.)

In bed, or under fluorescent light; carved off spaces, like petrol stations in the night. Driving past. They spin by. Windows of trains that aren't your train. You can't see your own window, or you don't think about the glass as you look out.

The above excerpt is taken from a specially commissioned text for KEEM's publication A Chain of Wooded Mountains, written by artist and writer Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau.

We are currently trying to raise funds to publish a limited edition print-run of the book - to help us do this, whilst getting your hands on a beautiful limited edition print (all proceeds go towards publishing the book), please click here. Plus you'll then be able to read the above text in full!

Thursday, 10 October 2013

Exhibition: 10x10 at Four Corners

Kate Elliott from KEEM is currently exhibiting her new work - Peter and David - as part of the 10x10 Exhibition Programme at Four Corners, Bethnal Green, London.