Hanging Out, is the title of the Artist Moving Image Festival, programmed by artists Emmie McLuskey, Ima-Abasi Okon and Kimberley O’Neill. As part of their ongoing conversation, the programmers continually returned to what it means to ‘hang outside’ typical moving image conventions and social structures. The work included in the festival explored themes of repetition, memorial, outside-ness and gesture. The themes listed attempt to articulate a praxis whereby an operation of hanging out is evidenced in film as a network of elements.
Hanging Out programme considered the power of the aural and optic languages, foregrounding relationships between people, their environments and the position of the camera. The works in the programme looked to what is happening ‘outside’ both practically and metaphorically, seeking to question how we resist, remember, relate, move, speak and learn. In the reclaiming of space, be that a street corner or a film edit, we see the language of gesture holding a complexity, which words fail to articulate. The function of repetition enacts rather than describes. Slowing down or speeding up becomes an embodied politic, reworking existing language in order to highlight or disturb. The works in the programme considered filmmaking as a way of mediating relationships and technical knowledge exchanged and passed through informal networks. In the selected works we saw the apparatus of film being brought into question and ‘hanging out-side’ became a site of production.
Featuring contributions by Peggy Ahwesh, Basma Alsharif, Ain Bailey, Eric Baudelaire, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, Jude Browning, Abigail Child, Tony Cokes, Julie Dash, Noski Deville & Rif Sharif, Adam Farah, Aslan Gaisumov, Seamus Harahan, Jess Higgins, Joe Howe, Steffani Jemison, Annika Kampmann, Cait McKinney & Hazel Meyer, Ekta Mittal & Yashaswini Raghunandan, Babette Mongolte, Rory Pilgrim, Ulysses Jenkins, Lauren La Rose, Carolyn Lazard, Kalup Linzy, Jimmy Robert, Cauleen Smith, Rhea Storr, Joyce Wieland and Steina & Woody Vasulka.
'Hanging Out', Artists Moving Image Festival 2019 was conceived, organised and curated by Emmie McLuskey, Ima Abasi-Okon and Kimberley O'Neill. The festival consisted of screening events in Tramway's main theatre and an exhibition in the smaller T4 theatre space. The two day festival was sold out. The ticketed attendance for the festival was 750 people over the two days, as well as an additional footfall of 300 people to the free gallery exhibition, which was unticketed to accompany the festival.
AMIF attracts a specialist art audience from across the UK as it is one of the few artists moving image festivals. The festival provided live captions for hard of hearing audiences, British Sign Language for performance and interpretation, as well as hearing loops, subspaces and audio description. There was also a roaming BSL interpreter to support audience members. Making the artists moving image works and performances accessible to audience members with disabilities meant that the festival attracted a broader demographic. The accessibility of the programme was supported by Film Hub Scotlands Access Fund and Collective Text.
