Toby Tatum photograph by Jo Israel
English filmmaker, Toby Tatum, creates video art works which explore those ethereal, wild landscapes of the forgotten forest and the entangled garden: places where the fantastical, the dreamlike and the sinister might reside. We were already aware of Toby and his films from reading his interview in issue three of Film Panic magazine as we sat having lunch in the Damascus Drum in Hawick, flicking through the programme for the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. We had just begun discussing the fact that the festival was to include a double-bill installation by Toby and that he would no doubt be in attendance when Sarahjane suddenly spotted him quietly eating his lunch at the back of the room. "Isn't that him right there?" she whispered. We three immediately struck up a friendship and made sure that we bumped into each other frequently throughout the duration of the festival.
We interviewed Toby by post a couple of weeks after Alchemy...
AK:
Welcome, Toby Tatum. Where might we find you at this moment in time?
TT:
The immense swollen vines that relentlessly advance on the mouldering
castle crawl inexorably closer each day. By the dim light of an
obscured sun we hack away as many of the advancing creepers as
possible, avoiding the giant perfumed flowers and their lulling
narcotic scent. At night we fall asleep exhausted while listening to
monsters rioting amid the advancing undergrowth. One night, perhaps
soon, they will be upon us.
AK:
Could you tell us about your installation at the 2018 Alchemy Film
and Moving Image Festival?
TT:
I was lucky enough to be invited to present two films at Alchemy,
both screened in an installation context. The works are both from
2017 and are called Lost
Gardens
and The
Signal.
Lost
Gardens
is a document of an abandoned out-of-control Eden, where the laws of
nature have warped improbably. The
Signal
attempts to decode a cosmic message beamed from the sky.
Lost Gardens
AK:
Could you give us a brief history of your involvement with creating
moving image works?
TT:
My uncle Simon had a junk shop and a Super-8 camera. My two sisters
and I sometimes used to stay with him during the summer holidays.
No-one seemed to visit the shop, which was piled high with unwanted,
unfashionable oddities. Often, no doubt out of boredom, uncle Simon
would encourage us to build movie sets out of broken furniture and
moth-eaten taxidermy. Occasionally one of us would take up the camera
ourselves, panning across the brimming shelves and the ruined
antiques, or spying out through the window onto the street in search
of random magic. I took a look at one of these films recently, having
visited my uncle again. The reel of film, which had lain undisturbed
in his desk draw for thirty years, was mostly too dark to make any
sense of but there amid the crepuscular gloom I could see one image
of our three childish faces peering out from beneath the unseeing
gaze of a immense stuffed owl.
AK:
What were the major influences in the arts and in life which
encouraged you to become involved with this field?
TT:
The art school where I initially studied was Shelley Park in
Boscombe, near Bournemouth. As the name suggests Shelley Park had
some association with the Shelleys, belonging originally, I think, to
Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft. I found this impressive
building, with its odd nooks and mysterious basements, intensely
atmospheric and in studying there I enjoyed proximity, however
distant, to some of the most notorious of Romantic outsiders. The two
Marys are buried in a churchyard nearby, entombed with the poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley’s heart. I’d been a fan of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
and
the legend of its creation since watching Ken Russell’s lurid 1986
film Gothic
on
TV late one night (shown on BBC2 as part of Alex Cox’s marvellous
Moviedrome series). The notion of the Romantic channelled through the
cinematic has been central to my practice ever since.
AK:
What does the word “experimental” mean to you?
TT:
My work is experimental in the Frankensteinian sense - a practice
carried on in the shadows without official sanction. The unholy union
of disparate elements stitched together into strange new forms is
central to film. The hope is that something inviolate may one day
arise from my experiments, something that ultimately transcends its
creator.
AK:
At Avant Kinema we have a particular interest in low budget, DIY or
LoFi forms of creativity. What are your thoughts on films, music,
zines or other artworks created in this way?
TT:
Better to remain free than to compromise integrity and autonomy.
AK:
What technology or processes do you favour in your work?
TT:
The equipment exists to give rise to the dream.
AK:
Do you think that analogue photography / filmmaking still has a place
in the 21st
Century?
TT:
Yes, absolutely. It might be interesting to go further back too - to
the phantasmagoria, to the séance-like atmosphere of the early magic
lantern shows or even further back to the proto-cinemas of the
prehistoric caves, where shadows danced on the walls and painted
creatures flickered on the threshold between worlds.
AK:
Could you talk us through the whole process of how you generally go
about creating a work, from the initial concepts through to the
finishing touches?
Lost Gardens
TT:
As my recent work seems to have arisen from the forest I’ve
included some reflections on this sea of green and how it informs my
films and my general outlook:
I
seem drawn to nature at its most dense, where it begins to close in,
where walls of foliage rear up to engulf me. For me the forest is
something other, something ultimately unknowable. In its green
embrace, I engage with and attempt to record this abiding mystery.
The footage gathered on these outings often lays dormant for some
time before it may or may not be worked into a film. At this point it
becomes something other, transformed during the arcane editing
process into something more reflective of my emotional or
psychological response to the world, rather than a literal document
of a specific place. I’m not drawn to the forest because of
environmental concerns (although I am sympathetic to those) or
because I see nature as healthy or elevating in a moral sense. The
age-old belief that the fertile profusion of the forest was something
to be deeply suspicious of has more of an appeal to me, as if among
the greenery broods the demonic. I often think about the Roman
soldiers confronting the sprawling, seemingly endless, German forest
and fearing it as something outside their comprehension, something
pre-civilised and untamed, housing barbarians and secret animals.
AK:
What methods do you use to generate ideas and stimulate your
creativity?
TT:
My book-filled study is enjungled with gigantic plants. Among them
lives a royal python, re-homed from the RSPCA. This mysterious
creature adds to the atmosphere of the room. To me she represents
knowledge, perhaps forbidden or secret knowledge. Also, to me, the
patience of the serpent is key - something abiding in the stillness
of the leaves - this relates to my work I think. She transports me to
the garden of Eden, where the biblical serpent lurked. For me the
snake represents art, with all its transgressions.
Lost Gardens
AK:
Could you tell us about your experiences of coming to Scotland to
attend the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival? What were your
impressions of Hawick, the Scottish Borders, Scotland? Which films,
installations and/or expanded cinema events were the highlights of
the festival for you?
TT:
The procession of the devotees to the castle on the final day seemed
a crowning moment. Stan Brakhage’s hour long 16mm film Text
Of Light
was shown in a darkened chamber in a remote Scottish castle. The
journey to the castle, first by bus and then on foot, and the majesty
of this masterwork fused together into a singular never-to-be
repeated experience. One of the things that most impresses me about
Alchemy - and I have had this impression every time I have visited it
- is the coming together of a band of enthusiasts dedicated to the
most uncompromising cinema. There is no hierarchy at Alchemy, no
prizes are awarded. Instead a sense of a collective endeavour and a
shared passion emerges. I expect that my experience at Alchemy will
help sustain me for some time to come.
AK:
How do you fund your work with Moving Images?
TT:
The dream manages to sustain itself in opposition to the crushing
pressures exerted by the outside world.
AK
- Thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions,
Toby. x
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