Blue Screen # 1: Graham Kelly

In the Blue Screen programs we dive deeper into the practice of a specific visual artist working with video or film. In conversation with the invited artist, Chloé Malcotti and Emma van der Put react on the work with a selection of short films by other filmmakers. The invited artist then proposes a next guest for the following program. In this way, the selection of the artists in focus derives from a dialogue with the previous guests and is thereby aspiring to create new encounters within different art scenes.

We open this series with the work of Graham Kelly, by screening his recent film Hello Joe (2018), that he covertly produced overnight in a series of rented Airbnb accommodations. The film is constructed entirely from elements found and filmed within a number of private homes that he accessed through the online service. Domestic spaces are merged together in this portrait of an emerging corporate territory within the declining value of privacy.

As a follow up to ‘Hello Joe’ Graham Kelly will talk about his work in progress ‘Highly Recommended’ (working title), which is an ongoing project that utilises the online freelance digital labour service Upwork. For this new work he is simultaneously taking the roles of both client and editor, commissioning Upwork users from various fields of CG audiovisual production (screenwriters, voiceover actors, sound designers, 3D modellers and animators) to produce content based on their personal memories.This delegation of digital labour across multiple continents intends to expose and analyse the complexities of the loosely-regulated globalised gig economy and the pitfalls for the individuals within it.

In dialogue with the work of Graham Kelly we screened two short films by Deborah Stratman and Corinna Schnitt.