IN|SIGHT—Programme One
This programme pairs a selection of experimental animations by pioneering Indonesian filmmaker Gotot Prakosa with the newly restored singular silent film, Conversation in Space, by the Philippine artist and art historian Rod. Paras-Perez. Prakosa was a trained painter, and painted directly onto 16mm recycled film, while Paras-Perez extended his artistic practice and fascination with light through his student film from 1961. Together, these films are a direct crossover of film and the visual arts, utilising abstract and painterly forms with the moving image. The films also examine the relationship between visual and sound. For some of his painted films, Prakosa worked directly with musicians to develop their soundtracks. For Conversation in Space, the Gallery commissioned media artist Tad Ermitaño to present two different sonic responses. This screening will be followed by a dialogue with Ermitaño and the curators.
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Please note that digital versions of films originally on celluloid are being used in these screenings. While efforts were made to show these films in the highest resolution possible, in some cases this is lower than ideal as the original films could not be located to scan them at a higher resolution. Nevertheless, we decided to retain these works in the programme to allow audiences to view them, and also to call attention to the need to archive films in the region particularly films which are short and experimental. The state condition of the films in this programme attests to the fragility of the moving image and their unintended scarcity.
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SELF-PORTRAIT/SELF-PORTRET
By Gotot Prakosa
Indonesia | No dialogue | 1982 | 3 min | Digital video file, original format unknown | PG
In this remarkable self-portrait, this animation film builds an intermittent close-up portrait of the filmmaker’s face while integrating it with the processes involved both in painting and perception. At times it follows Picasso’s maxim that a painting should incorporate—within the same image—its subject from different points of view.
Gotot Prakosa (b. 1955, Indonesia; d. 2015, Indonesia) was a painter, filmmaker and author. For much of his adult life he was based in Jakarta, where from 2008 to 2012 he was Dean of the Faculty of Film and Television at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Gotot’s work is noted for its sensitivity, light-heartedness, perceptiveness, and often irreverent humour, making him a completely original, yet unpretentious talent. In addition to his numerous minimalist short films and books on experimental filmmaking, Gotot worked on innovative projects with other Indonesian artists, such as performance artist Sardono W. Kusumo and writer-director, Eros Djarot.
META-META
By Gotot Prakosa
Indonesia | No dialogue | 1978 | 3 min 34 sec | 16mm transferred to digital file | Exempted from classification
In Meta-Meta, a child’s dream comes to life as strange abstract ovoid forms merge and morph into each other against the erratic and arrhythmic soundscape by musician Slamet Abdul Sjukur.
Drawing from his background in the visual arts, Gotot Prakosa painted directly onto recycled 16mm film, illustrating a dream that he had when he was 12 years old. This short film reflects Prakosa’s philosophy of film pinggiran, or film from the margins.
Gotot Prakosa (b. 1955, Indonesia; d. 2015, Indonesia) was a painter, filmmaker and author. For much of his adult life he was based in Jakarta, where from 2008 to 2012 he was Dean of the Faculty of Film and Television at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Gotot’s work is noted for its sensitivity, light-heartedness, perceptiveness, and often irreverent humour, making him a completely original, yet unpretentious talent. In addition to his numerous minimalist short films and books on experimental filmmaking, Gotot worked on innovative projects with other Indonesian artists, such as performance artist Sardono W. Kusumo and writer-director, Eros Djarot.
IMPULSE/IMPULS
By Gotot Prakosa
Indonesia | No dialogue | 1977 | 3 min 4 sec | 16mm transferred to digital file | Exempted from classification
Created by painting directly onto recycled 16mm celluloid film, this experimental short immerses us in an abstract world of flickering globules and flowing bands of colour. Abandoning objective representation, the filmmaker instead presents a kinetic array of visuals set against by a rapid, drum-based soundtrack.
Gotot Prakosa (b. 1955, Indonesia; d. 2015, Indonesia) was a painter, filmmaker and author. For much of his adult life he was based in Jakarta, where from 2008 to 2012 he was Dean of the Faculty of Film and Television at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Gotot’s work is noted for its sensitivity, light-heartedness, perceptiveness, and often irreverent humour, making him a completely original, yet unpretentious talent. In addition to his numerous minimalist short films and books on experimental filmmaking, Gotot worked on innovative projects with other Indonesian artists, such as performance artist Sardono W. Kusumo and writer-director, Eros Djarot.
KUBIS
By Gotot Prakosa
Indonesia | No dialogue | 1978 | 4 min | Digital file, original format unknown | Exempted from classification
Kubis alludes to modernism in art, particularly to its capacity for abstraction. In this film, contained within the two-dimensional frame, squares and rectangles of changing dimensions and colours create an abstract flow, set to the repetitive structures of the music of Philip Glass.
Gotot Prakosa (b. 1955, Indonesia; d. 2015, Indonesia) was a painter, filmmaker and author. For much of his adult life he was based in Jakarta, where from 2008 to 2012 he was Dean of the Faculty of Film and Television at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. Gotot’s work is noted for its sensitivity, light-heartedness, perceptiveness, and often irreverent humour, making him a completely original, yet unpretentious talent. In addition to his numerous minimalist short films and books on experimental filmmaking, Gotot worked on innovative projects with other Indonesian artists, such as performance artist Sardono W. Kusumo and writer-director, Eros Djarot.
CONVERSATION IN SPACE
By Rod. Paras-Perez
Philippines | Silent | 1961 | 2 min 48 sec | 16mm transferred to digital file | Exempted from classification
World Premiere
This film by the late artist and art historian Rod. Paras-Perez is one of the earliest experimental films of the Philippines. This vivid and captivating abstract animation was created with the use of collage and paint. The repetition and variation of an image in animation became a preoccupation for Paras-Perez in his artistic practice, which was expressed through printmaking, painting and sculpture.
The film was screened at the first ASEAN film festival held in Manila in 1971. The Gallery has commissioned this 4K digital restoration from its original 16mm reversal film, which is premiering at Painting with Light. It will enter the Gallery’s collection as its earliest moving image work.
Some of Paras-Perez’s lightbox collage works are in the collection of the National Gallery Singapore and his woodcut print Dolorosa III is on display in UOB Southeast Asia Gallery 10 as part of the Gallery’s long-term exhibition, Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century.
Rod. Paras-Perez. Dolorosa III. 1970. Woodcut on handmade paper, 76 x 49.5 cm. Collection of Rodolfo Perez, Jr.
For this programme, the Gallery commissioned two different sonic responses by Tad Ermitaño, who is a key figure in media art in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, with a sphere of influence reaching as far back as the late 1980s. Considered to be one of the pioneers of sound art in the country as well as an explorer of experimental film, his artistic practice has since grown into a remarkable assertion of technology. His projects often involve the manipulation of aural and visual phenomena—something that the artist combines with an instinctive aesthetic understanding of how time-based elements interact with spatial structures.
This screening will be followed by a dialogue with Ermitaño and the curators.
Rodolfo “Rod” Paras-Perez (b. 1934, Philippines; d. 2011, Philippines) was a Philippine artist and art historian. As an artist, he was known for his work in printmaking, particularly in woodcuts. He studied BFA at the University of the Philippines, graduating cum laude in 1957. In 1961, he graduated from the University of Minnesota with an MFA in Art and a Minor in Philosophy, and a year later he graduated with a Master of Arts from the same university. After that, Paras-Perez took his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University in 1971. He received the first and second prize in Graphic Art at the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Semi-Annual Show in 1962 and won the AAP’s First Prize in Painting in 1963. He was one of the earliest artists in the Philippines to experiment with using light as a medium.
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