September | 2013 | nick cope film & video

Cabaret Voltaire: Groovy, Laidback and Nasty

September 27, 2013 by nickcopefilm

“Above him, a huge screen fast-cuts disjointed images from three film projectors – a disorientating mixture of abstract patterns, ethnic dancing, whizzing travelscapes and faces.” – Cabaret Voltaire, live, Hacienda, Manchester; Melody Maker, June, 1990 Grainy Croatian TV footage of Cabaret Voltaire live in Zagreb in 1990 is mixed and montaged with the original show visuals to give an indication of the multi-projection live shows of this time. I moved to London in 1987 making contact once again with Paul […]

Categories: 1990s, Cabaret Voltaire, Groovy, Laidback and Nasty • Tags: Cabarte Voltaire, Groovy Laidback and Nasty

Earthdance

September 26, 2013 by nickcopefilm

Work with Mandragora came to fruition in 2004/5 with the Earthdance project. Simon Williams of Mandragora and musician Phil Thornton approached me with the prospect of putting together a taster DVD for the world music compilation album ‘Chill le Monde’ on the Blue Dot Music label, which they were mixing and producing. Five two-minute pieces were put together (below), using footage from my own archives as well as video material provided by Phil Thornton, Simon Williams and Graham Mark. Whilst […]

Categories: 2000s, Earthdance • Tags: Earthdance, Mandragora

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Digitaldrift.net / 33degrees

September 24, 2013 by nickcopefilm

“The dérive, or drift, was defined as the ‘technique of locomotion without goal’, in which ‘ one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.’ “ – Plant, S. (1992) The Most Radical Gesture. London: Routledge. http://www.digitaldrift.net was a web art project created around the turn of the millennium. It […]

Categories: 2000s, 33 Degrees • Tags: 33 degrees, digitaldrift

Mandragora

September 23, 2013 by nickcopefilm

In the late 1990s, whilst based in Southampton, I got to know Brighton based Mandragora at the time that they were working on their album Pollen. We talked about putting some visuals together for live shows, and I edited a number of videos to various tracks from the album. This material included reworking and remixing some of the visuals from Groovy, Laidback and Nasty, as well as working with some other Super 8 animations from the early 1990s, that had been processed […]

Categories: 1990s, Earthdance • Tags: earth dance, Earthdance, Mandragora

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O Yuki Conjugate

September 23, 2013 by nickcopefilm

Further opportunities for live performative audiovisual work arose in the early 1990s with old friends from Nottingham, ambient music group O Yuki Conjugate, now also based in London. Collaborating on an audio-visual accompaniment to several performances scheduled in the Netherlands in 1992 and 1993 incorporating video and slide projection, as part of the Tegentonen Festival (1992) and The Ambient Weekend, and screened on VPRO TV in Amsterdam in February 1993. My own abstract Super 8 animations were mixed with abstract […]

Categories: 1990s • Tags: ambient, OYC, oyuki conjugate

Fabricata Illuminata

September 21, 2013 by nickcopefilm

In 1985, following View From Hear and my Scratch video work, I began to concentrate predominantly on work as part of performance art group Fabricata Illuminata. Fabricata Illuminata came about originally as a collaboration between Martin King and Anthony Bennett to produce a sound piece, Fabricata, as introduction to the tape/slide presentation ‘Of Them that Slept’ by artist Roberta Graham and writer Ken Hollings. The work was presented at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, as part of ‘Violent Silence – Acts […]

Categories: 1980s, Fabricata Illuminata • Tags: Fabricata Illuminata, performance art

…Super 8

September 18, 2013 by nickcopefilm

“Super 8 became to film what the famous three chords of punk were to music” – Schmitz, M. ‘The Medium was the Message’ in Berlin Super 80, booklet accompanying the DVD ‘Berlin Super 80: Music and Film Underground West Berlin 1978-1984.'(2005) Berlin: Monitorpop. Developed in the 1960s as a home movie making format, easily accessible to the amateur filmmaker, facilitating an ease of use through the pre-packaging of film into small 3 minute roll cartridges that can be placed quickly and easily […]

Categories: 1980s, 391, Sheffield, Scratch and..., Super 8 • Tags: home movies, Sheffield, super 8

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Sheffield, Scratch and Super 8…

September 17, 2013 by nickcopefilm

“Sheffield’s punk scene was visible and varied, but interestingly many were quick to adopt more electronic modes of expression, early manifestations of bands such as the Human League and Clockdva articulating their nonconformity through modernist forms. With a drum machine, sequencer or super-8 projector, frequently cheaper or more available than a guitar amp or drum kit, access and affordability gave modernity an ironic appeal… The political and economic reality nevertheless shaped social interaction and expression… The dismantling of the steel […]

Categories: 1980s, Scratch Video, Sheffield, Scratch and... • Tags: Scratch, scratch video, Sheffield, super 8

Scratch video

September 17, 2013 by nickcopefilm

Shortly after the 1981 riots in Brixton, South London, founders of the legendary London based punk rock venue the Roxy Club, Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington opened their new club, The Fridge, located in a small club above the Iceland frozen food store in Brixton Road, “with a radical décor that included beat-up fridges, a pyramid of broken TVs showing John Maybury videos and (fake) dead cats hanging from its ceiling.”[1] The installation of 25 old television sets stacked up […]

Categories: 1980s, 391, Scratch Video, Sheffield, Scratch and... • Tags: Andy Lipman, Scratch, scratch video, video art

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391

September 15, 2013 by nickcopefilm

In 1982 I produced the first of two A5 photocopied magazines with printed card covers under the title 391 intended to be an alternative ‘to the run of the mill bands, records, gigs type fanzine’. Taking its name from Francis Picabia’s original Dadaist magazine ‘391 was a literary magazine against everyone and everything’ The first ten page 391 magazine would feature quotations from Tristan Tzara, Albert Camus, Genesis P-Orridge’s sleevenotes to ClockDVA’s album ‘Thirst’, and a quote from the nineteenth […]

Categories: 1980s, 391, 391: View From Hear, Sheffield, Scratch and..., Super 8 • Tags: 391, post-punk, Sheffield, super 8

Metamorphosis

September 13, 2013 by nickcopefilm

My audiovisual practice began during my time as a member of music group Metamorphosis in the early 1980s, informed and influenced by and engaged in the post-punk/industrial music scene and based in Nottingham and Sheffield, England. A hybrid moving image practice combining Super 8 film, off-air video recordings, 35mm slides and original sound and music recordings was engaged in both as accompaniment to live music performances; expanded cinematic, multimedia, live audio-visual performances in their own right. As a 16 year-old […]

Categories: 1980s, 391, Metamorphosis • Tags: Metamorphosis, post-punk

	nickcopefilm on Metamorphosis
	Alan Walker on Metamorphosis
	226 BenedenNAP: Groe… on O Yuki Conjugate
	Scratch Video Re-vis… on Sheffield, Scratch and Super…
	BdF on Northern Industrial Scratch

nick cope film & video

archive of work by British filmmaker and academic

Monthly Archives: September 2013

Cabaret Voltaire: Groovy, Laidback and Nasty

Earthdance

Digitaldrift.net / 33degrees

Mandragora

O Yuki Conjugate

Fabricata Illuminata

…Super 8

Sheffield, Scratch and Super 8…

Scratch video

391

Metamorphosis