[Frameworks] Jeff Keen

[Gawthrop, Rob]

Jeff Keen
The Tanks at Tate Modern:
18 – 23 September 2012
10.00 – 18.00 (10.00 – 22.00 on 21 and 22 September)
Live performance Friday 21 September 2012 at 20.00

Jeff Keen (1923-2012) was a pioneer of experimental film whose rapid-fire animations, multiple screen projections and raucous performances redefined multimedia art in Britain.

This major installation for The Tanks at Tate Modern was conceived by Keen in response to the unique nature of the Tanks. Featuring a large, dioramic screen, the installation will demonstrate the spirit of Keen’s expanded cinema events, his early experiments in drawing, painting and animation, his fascination with surrealism and popular culture, and his radical development of multiple screen projection, cut-up soundtracks and unruly live action.

A very special live performance in the Tanks on Friday 21 September at 20.00 will feature projections and live music and action performed by Keen’s daughter Stella Starr and a range of Keen’s collaborators, including Alan Baker, Chris Blackburn, Rob Gawthrop, Mike Movie and Jason Williams as ‘Silverhead’.

Keen was a veteran of the Second World War, and his work powerfully evokes the violence, colour, speed and noise of the 20th century. He transformed cinema into a riotous collage of comics, drawings, B-movie posters, plastic toys, burning props and extravagant costumes. His early 8mm and 16mm films are built for speed, combining footage of Beat-era motifs – jazz, motorbikes and car culture – with experimental animations in which the achievements and atrocities of the 20th century seem to flash by within a few short, cacophonous seconds. A single frame could not contain the frenzied energy of Keen’s imagination, and by the mid-1960s he began to use multiple screens and live action in presentations of his work.

Keen’s films and performances emerged from the 1960s counterculture and echo the climate of literary happenings and ‘bomb culture’ at Bob Cobbing’s Better Books in Charing Cross as well as Gustav Metzger <http://www.tate.org.uk/artists/gustav-metzger> ’s 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium. Recalling American underground films by Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs and Kenneth Anger, his work also resonates with Happenings, Fluxus and Viennese Actionism. Nothing stands still in his work, it is a constant process in which images and sounds evolve in quick succession through what Keen called ‘violently disconnected and overlapping patterns’ of destruction, creation and accumulation.

Jeff Keen <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/24/jeff-keen>  passed away on 21 June 2012. The presentation of his work in the Tanks is dedicated to his visionary creative spirit.

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Shoot the Wrx: Filmmaker & Artist Jeff Keen
27 October 2012 – 25 February 2013
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
Fine Art Gallery, Prints & Drawings Gallery & South Balcony
Free admission

A career-long retrospective of filmmaker and artist Jeff Keen (1923-2012), who was one of the great figures of the British post-war avant-garde. Keen's work embodies a wild spirit of anarchic play, a fascination with surrealism and dadaism, and a love of popular culture. His life-long commitment to Brighton & Hove will be celebrated in this display featuring a selection of his films alongside his paintings, drawings, collage prints, assemblages and poetry. Best known as a filmmaker, people are only just discovering what a prolific artist Keen was - from the 1940’s right up to his death - and some of the artwork exhibited here is being shown for the first time! The Tate have recently acquired four of his early works for their collection stating he is a very important ‘missing link’ in art history.

>From a simple rural upbringing in Wiltshire and having served in WWII, Keen moved to Brighton and worked for Brighton & Hove Parks and Gardens for several years. He spent most of his artistic career in the city and used the site as a major inspiration for his work. He ignored the hierarchies of the London arts scene and the wider world of avant-garde cinema in favour of a radical commitment to locality and intimate community. Keen’s work focuses lovingly on a close-knit circle of real and imaginary friends at work and at play in and around Brighton and Hove.

Brighton’s Cine-City Film Festival and the Lighthouse Digital Culture Agency in Brighton will also be celebrating Jeff Keen this autumn.  From the 18th to the 23rd of September, Tate Modern will feature a specially designed Jeff Keen Expanded Cinema installation (with tribute performance on Fri 21 Sept) as part of their opening programme for their new underground Oil Tank exhibition space.

EVENTS:

Shoot the Wrx: Talking Jeff Keen
Saturday 17 November
Brighton Museum
£5, book in advance

1.30pm – 2.30pm
Stella Keen, actor and assistant in many of Jeff Keen’s films, introduces her father’s life and work in a special talk and slideshow presentation.

3.30pm – 5pm
A unique opportunity to hear film historians Al Rees and Duncan Reekie talk about Jeff Keen’s films and their relation to the European avant-garde and underground cinema.

For other Keen related events on Saturday, please note that a selection of Jeff Keen’s films will be screened at the Duke of York’s Cinema in the evening. A talk by Keen’s video-editor and collaborator Damian Toal on Keen’s video works and video installation will take place at the Lighthouse Digital Culture Agency.

TOURS:

Shoot the Wrx: Film-maker and Artist Jeff Keen
Saturday 3 November
Brighton Museum, Fine Art Gallery
12pm-12.45pm
Free

Join the curator in a tour of the Jeff Keen exhibition. The talk will introduce Keen’s work from the 1940s to the present and highlight Keen’s imaginative use of Brighton & Hove as inspiration for his work.

FAMILIES:

16mm film Animation Workshop
Tuesday 30 October
Brighton Museum, Art Room
1pm - 4 pm
£8, book in advance
12 years +

Hear Jeff Keen’s daughter Stella talk about her father’s work and its relation to early experimental cinema. You will have the opportunity to collaborate on an animation project by scratching and painting directly on to 16mm film.

Digital Animation
Friday 2 November
Brighton Museum, Art Room
1pm - 3 pm
£5, book in advance
7 years +

Work with Jeff Keen’s daughter Stella on digital animations inspired by her father’s works. Following Stella’s introduction to Keen’s imaginary world, you will have the opportunity to produce an exciting film featuring paper cut-outs, comic books, toy monsters and robots.

Stella Keen aka Stella Starr
Theatre of Fur Cinematic Dance Theatre Production, Vavavavoom! Cabaret & School of Burlesque, Jeff Keen Archive & Arts/Events Management
www.stellastarr.co.uk
www.theatreoffur.co.uk
www.vavavavoom.org.uk
www.yourinnervamp.co.uk
www.myspace.com/vavavavoom_burlesque
www.jeffkeen.org.uk & www.kinoblatz.com
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