2019
is the tenth anniversary year of Borders based duo Sarahjane Swan and
Roger Simian's "creative collaboration across multiple
art-forms". Known initially for their Indie songs and
accompanying "low cost, high concept DIY music videos",
under the name The Bird And The Monkey, Swan and Simian began making
short no budget experimental films and fully immersive video art
installations in 2012. The pair recently rebranded themselves as
Avant Kinema to reflect this broadening of their artistic practice
into cinematic, artistic and literary realms.
The
first half of this year was mostly spent returning to music: Bird
Monkey's haunting collaboration with Prague based English bluesman,
Justin Lavash; the free download re-release of 2015 mini-album, Moon
Moth, and the limited edition CD release of the Ghost Worlds
(Animal Rites) soundtrack LP - Avant Kinema's collaboration with
hand-pan player, Undertoad. An e.p. of tracks taken from this is
still free to download courtesy of Sparks From The Mothership.
2019,
part two, is all about the films for Swan and Simian. They already
have forthcoming screenings lined up as far and wide as London,
Sweden, Croatia, Australia, the USA, Brazil and closer-to-home, in the Scottish
capital.
"Yes,
I guess we'll mostly remember 2019 as our Edinburgh year," says
Sarahjane Swan. "Back in June we had one of our hand-processed
Super 8 films included in the EIFF Walk With Us project. Basically,
what that involved was the screening of a collaboratively made film
at the Filmhouse on the closing day of the Edinburgh Film Festival."
Roger
Simian, interjects: "The editor for the project had stitched
together work by 14 filmmakers from throughout Scotland into a kind of
cinematic patchwork quilt. Each segment was quite different - I think
ours was the only one shot on analogue film - but it all joined
seamlessly together to make a unified whole because of the great
editing and the shared theme: Walk With Us."
"It
was very exciting," beams Sarahjane. "We'd previously
attended a screening at the Filmhouse as part of the festival when we
were shortlisted for the EIFF Short Film Challenge in 2016. Of course
that was splendid, but this time they awarded us with our first ever
gongs and really gave us the red carpet treatment."
"Johnny
Walker was the sponsor of the event," explains Roger, "and
so we were both handed a golden statuette of the Walking Man in the
Top-Hat and a personalized bottle of Walkers' Black Label whisky."
Perks
of being picked for EIFF's short-form strand also included: attending
the red carpet premier of Mrs Lowry & Son at the lavish Festival
Theatre, concerning the tumultuous relationship between the artist
L.S. Lowry (Timothy Spall) and his bed-ridden mother (Vanessa
Redgrave); plus an invitation to the Festival's Closing Gala Party in
the plush surroundings of the Playfair Library Hall.
Swan
and Simian also recently received notification that their latest
short film, Boy and the Sea – shot in Ayr on long-expired
Super 8 film and processed using household ingredients (Caffenol) – is to be
projected silently along Edinburgh's Portobello Promenade this month
as part of the Art Walk Porty Festival. The same film will later
screen, with the addition of full sound, at Summerhall, as part of Edinburgh Short Film
Festival, in November.
"It's
fantastic to have landed EIFF, Art Walk Porty and the Edinburgh Short
Film Festival all in the same year," says Roger Simian, "and
because we were enrolled on Playwrights' Studio Scotland's Borders
Playwriting scheme last year, in order to adapt our 2014
installation, Orphine, into a 45 minute stage-play, we ended
up also getting free tickets to a National Theatre of Scotland play,
Red Dust Road, at the Lyceum during this year's Fringe. So
this really does feel like the year we broke in Edinburgh."
"That's
not to diminish the importance of the other great festivals and
programmes around the world who have picked up our films this year,"
Sarahjane points out. "Our first ever film, In The Dark I
Sat, just had its first ever public screening since 2012 in
Glasgow at a launch party put on by the experimental lit publisher,
Hedera Felix.
We also have screenings coming up over the next few months in Sweden (Västerås Film Festival), Croatia (Kino Klub Split), Florida (Connect: International Videoarts Festival), Seattle (Semi-Finalist at Engauge Experimental Film Festival), Australia (North Bellarine Film Festival), Brazil (International Panorama: Videoart and Experimental Cinema) and hopefully also a festival in Athens, which we plan on visiting."
"And,
of course, this month we have the impending premieres at parallel
Portobellos," Roger says cryptically.
"That's
right," Sarahjane explains. "We're going to be represented
at opposite ends of the UK, pretty much simultaneously. On one of the
days that Boy and the Sea has its Art Walk Porty screening in
Portobello, Edinburgh, the Portobello Film Festival in West London will be giving
our 25 minute film, Ghost Worlds (Animal Rites), its World
Premier."
London’s
Portobello Film Festival - run by the tireless, Jonathan Barnett -
has been one of the most important platforms for the films of
Sarahjane Swan and Roger Simian through the years. This is an
international festival, but with an identity firmly rooted in the
local community of West London. Ever since its beginnings in 1996, its amazing ethos
has always been that it's free to enter films and free to attend all
screenings.
"This
will be our sixth screening at the Portobello Film Festival in seven
years," says Roger. "Hell, five of those were premieres,
including our first film, In The Dark I Sat, in 2012."
"We
were lucky enough to make it down to London for Portobello a couple
of years ago, when our film, Merzfrau, screened," says
Sarahjane, "and it was an amazing experience, which we shared
with friends and family. We even got to meet Jonathan Barnett in
person, which was great.
TEN YEARS AFTER: A Biography of Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian
TEN YEARS AFTER: A Biography of Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian
Scottish
Borders based experimental duo, Avant Kinema - aka Sarahjane Swan and
Roger Simian - have spent the decade since meeting in 2009
collaborating on interdisciplinary works spanning films, music,
writing, photography, installation art and expanded cinema.
Swan
and Simian first met ten years ago when Roger inherited the role of
Sarahjane's guitar teacher from his brother, who was travelling to
America for several months. The pair bonded over a shared interest in
Indie Music and the Modernist Avant-Garde Art Movements, such as DADA
and Surrealism.
Roger
remembers Sarahjane quizzing him on his art knowledge. "She
asked me which artist had invented Cubism. I said Picasso and she
nodded. Then I said: 'Oh, yeah, and also George Braque,' and then
she was impressed."
"I
think he was just as impressed that I'd heard of Captain Beefheart
and that I used to get my Mum to tape the John Peel Show for me whenever I went out for the evening,"
says Sarahjane.
I'd
never met a woman before who actually liked The Fall and Sonic Youth
and could reel off their song-titles at me," laughs Roger.
The duo's arthouse credentials were strong from the start. Sarahjane was
a graduate in Fine Art Sculpture from Gray’s School of Art; Roger -
a fanzine editor and indie musician, whose previous bands included
John Peel favourites, Dawn Of The Replicants. They soon began drawing
on these combined influences, working on two Sarahjane Swan solo
singles, with accompanying music videos for Shark Batter Records, the
label run by Roger and his brother, Mike Sorensen.
The
pair then embarked on an intensive three year Indie music odyssey,
writing and recording two albums' worth of left-field songs with low
budget, high concept DIY music videos. These were all created under
the name, The Bird And The Monkey. Friend, Paul Kerr, editor of the
MP3 blog,
The
Devil Has The Best Tuna,
suggested this, prompted by the surnames, Swan and Simian. Throughout
the years, Bird Monkey songs have aired frequently on BBC 6 Music
(Tom Robinson), Acacia Radio (Ian Hales), Amazing Radio (Jim
Gellatly) and the track, Moon
Moth,
was used in the soundtrack of BBC2 drama, The
Cut. 
In
2012, Swan and Simian made their first short film,
In
The Dark I Sat,
which premiered at London's Portobello Film Festival. That same year
the duo were invited by Richard Ashrowan, at the time artistic director of the
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in Hawick, to create a fully
immersive installation for the festival's fringe programme, which
they titled, Sung
To The Crows.
Swan and Simian have since gone on to create four more installations
- Orphine
(2014), Things
Fall Apart; The Centre Cannot Hold (2015),
Tibbie
Tamson Unbound
(2015), and Alphonso's
Jaw
(2016) - all involving multiple video projections, music, words and
sculptural works. The Expanded Cinema Performance, Ghost
Worlds (Animal Rites),
followed in 2018 as part of Alchemy Film & Arts' Celebrate
Super 8
event in Hawick. The support of Richard Ashrowan and the Alchemy Festival have been extremely important in Swan and Simian's development. This relationship has extended into the duo running local community workshops for Alchemy Film & Arts on Super 8 Filmmaking and Creating Installations.
Avant
Kinema's films have screened throughout the UK and Europe as well as
on US cable access show, Here
Comes Everybody, and across the Toronto Subway System.
They were shortlisted for the EIFF Short Film Challenge in 2016 and
returned to the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year as
part of the Walk
With Us
programme.
In
2018 Swan and Simian enrolled in Playwrights' Studio Scotland's
Borders Playwriting Programme and completed a full-length script, Orphine
and the Underworld,
based on one of their earlier installations.
Avant
Kinema have taken on the role of curators for the Scottish Borders
based arts organization, Sparks From The Mothership, whose primary
aim is "to promote Popular Experimentalism throughout the Arts
and Culture". Throughout 2019, SFTM has put out monthly free
download releases by several alternative acts associated with the
Borders Underground Scene, including material by The Bird And The
Monkey (both retrospective and new) and an e.p. of music taken from
Avant Kinema's Ghost
Worlds
soundtrack collaboration with hand-pan player, Undertoad.
Avant
Kinema are also amongst the founding members of a brand new
international arts group AGITATE:21C, whose playful acronym stands
for: Avant-Garde
International Team At The Epicentre of the 21st Century.
Swan and Simian proposed this monicker prior to a public vote by
members of the collective's FaceBook Group. They have since taken on
the role of setting up A:21C's "Scottish chapter", as well
as creating the movement's first video ident.
"The past ten years have been a mindblowing whirlwind of creativity and exploration," says Sarahjane Swan, "and we really feel like we're moving towards something big. Maybe the stars are finally in alignment and the time is right for us to start creating our masterpieces."Roger Simian joins in with the enthusiastic conjecture. "We want to be at the forefront of creating 21st Century artworks that are interdisciplinary, combining all the artforms - the music, the visuals, the words - works that are looking more towards the future than towards the past. It's time to put our best foot forward."
Watch this space...
FREE DOWNLOAD RELEASES: The Bird and The Monkey /
Sarahjane Swan / Roger Simian / Avant Kinema with Undertoad
Throughout September 2019, Sparks From The Mothership, are releasing a collection of free download releases made up of demos and rarities by The Bird And The Monkey, Sarahjane Swan and Roger Simian. Last month's free download, an e.p. of tracks from Avant Kinema's soundtrack collaboration with hand-pan player, Undertoad, are also still available to download.
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