Kill All Kings began as a radio show during the first summer of covid-19, bringing together the sounds that kept us going through isolation: a hybrid compilation of feminist folk horror, village voice, hard techno, spoken word and pop across distances and decades.
Moving into programming artist moving image, we hold to our motivation of bringing new audiences to the work of artists who address the evolving worlds we live between with sincerity, humour and care.
KAK Collective present a programme of audio and video in response to the idea of Ecstasy as a site of recalibration, altered states of consciousness and total involvement.
Bodies and words dissolve through repetition, echoes of past movements resonate at the studio, through the air, on street corners and in the bath.
journey thru city (2021)
7.5 minutes (audio with subtitles)
journey thru city (2021) is an instructional audio walk and a description of everyday romance and city living.
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SAOIRSE WALL is an Irish artist working in performance, moving-image and text. Scale, immersive sound, and suggestive gestures are manipulated in their work to excite and discomfort. Their work has recently been screened and exhibited by LUX Scotland, TULCA Festival of Visual Art and the National Gallery of Ireland.
The artist observes the act of a person collecting visual energy, producing an image of existence by tracing invisible energy as a visible trajectory in ‘The Energy Collector’.
Baek collects visual energy and observes actions while reproducing invisible, visual energy into an image that exists in front of her. Now, people have become accustomed to a life of talking about a closed ‘space’ whose size can clearly be measured, rather than a landscape or a place. Moving from space to a space and confirming over and over again whether there is someone who may exist in it is the biggest proposition in which people currently judge a space. Does someone exist in a space? How many people are there? Is it sealed? The size of a space and the existence of someone who will occupy the inside – people don't think much about who the actual subject is rather than its existence and the importance of its existence. Ironically, just by staying where people are now, people express a tremendous presence and at the same time express a sense of extinction.
Therefore, drawing such an invisible entity in a visible form would be an essential practice step to clearly recognising one's own form in a changing era (real space–virtual space). The artist experiences an era of aura’s extinction while simultaneously producing enormous data, traversing new bodies and data materials with images.
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DARAE BAEK is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in South Korea, working across moving images, performance installations and photography. Her practice is demonstrated in the act of proving the existence that stems from her long experience of having to defend herself in the position of a stranger in a foreign country during her life studying abroad.
The Flesh of Language is a film work in progress. It is centered around the subject of an extinct genus of deer, Megaloceros Giganteus, aka the ‘Irish’ Elk and departs from an experiment conducted in the 1980’s at the National Museum of Ireland where two zoologists mimicked a battle between this animal using a pair of their fossilized deer skulls to answer whether this animal could have used their oversized animals in battle. Rice works with two dancers to think through the problems of anthropomorphism, language and translation and complications surrounding ‘understanding’ the non-human.
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AMANDA RICE is an artist based in London who makes work that investigates material histories related to ecological or geological subject matter. These extend to the politics of land use, mineralogy, ecological extraction and speculative or hidden histories embedded within landscapes or within extracted matter. Recent shows include TULCA, ‘There Nothing Here but Flesh and Bone, there Nothing More’ curated by Eoin Dara, Galway, Ireland (2021), ‘Zukunftsvisionen Festival 2021’ Görlitz, Germany (2021) and ‘Goingaway.tv’ at Arebyte Gallery, London as part of the Wrong Biennale (2020). She is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Contrapoder #1 is a video that utilizes political speech from films of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema to test the passage of time, staging scripted monologues in the present. Filmed on contentious social spaces in Chicago read aloud by activists and actors alike.
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GONZALO REYES RODRIGUEZ (b Mexico, D.F., 1987) is an artist working with photography, video, and multiscreen installation. He lives and works in New York City.
'As her confessions testify, Isobel Gowdie was a woman whose existence was constrained by the market price of beef and linen, and by the boundary dykes of a small farm hamlet in north-east Scotland. But she was also, by her own reckoning, a woman who possessed powers over life and death itself, whose imaginative journeys transcended matter and geographical space, and for whom the abstract world of the mind was as real and important as the world of flesh and soil.'
Emma Wilby, The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft & Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Sussex Academic Press, 2010)
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ROSIE DAHLSTROM is an artist and writer from Glasgow, currently based in London. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and Chelsea College of Arts, Dahlstrom's practice examines retellings of ancient mythologies, monsters and metamorphoses. From a painting background, the chosen narratives now also find expression in performance, text, film and installation.
last song for a waterbaby (2019) gesturally explores the alliances and collective experiences which form on dancefloors; kinships that breed alternative familial structures. Images of late-night rituals are sampled, remixed and fed-back; the semi-lucid bathing of two friends. Last song for a waterbaby is an articulation of both the joy and melancholy of an attempt to extend youth, an exploration of the 'stretched out adolescence’ described by queer theorist Jack Halberstam. The soundtrack was produced with musicians Cucina Povera and Sue Zuki at The Green Door Studio; a very loose cover of 'the last song'. It was originally shown in another formation at Collective Gallery Edinburgh.
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KATIE SHANNON is a Glaswegian artist whose practice moves between print, moving image and sound; lately thinking about blurred timecodes, phenomenological handbag bits and culturally colloquial music histories. Much of Shannon's practice pivots around live events; she collaboratively runs record label Domestic Exile, club night So Low alongside event series Daisies with France-lise McGurn and TLC.23 with Keira Fox. Upcoming projects include a live moving image performance with musician Cucina Povera for Sonica Glasgow and a solo presentation at Kunsthalle Ost Leipzig.
In this project we blend Fai’s cultural background and Mar’s sonic artistic practice to explore the experience of the failing human flesh vessel and the need for the spirit to transcend. We composed a soundscape that combines distorted voices and electronic sounds and effects to trigger the embodied experience of trance and surrender.
This audio piece is in relation to conjuring the presence of Allah. Using the 99 names that have a personal relation to Fai's background, we embark on a journey to explore a pleasurable experience of connecting together through the divine. Each of the 99 names embodies an attribute of the divine that the vessel requires to survive the extremities of this material plane.
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FAI & MAR are both artists currently based in the Netherlands. Coming from different backgrounds, their interests in performance art and activism brought them together. They intertwine their artistic practices to playfully explore different states of the body and expanded imagination through speech, sound, movement and memories. In their processes they dive together into the unknown, the in-between and the immaterial of the human experience.
BRIGHT FUTURE is the product of Ross-Millard’s physical research of scientific-fictions inhabiting and moving her body. Approaching choreography as an act of salvage, she rehearses her body’s knee-jerk response to apocalyptic anxieties, gleaning rituals from these otherwise automatic gestures of anticipation.
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LILLIAN ROSS-Millard is a Canadian video artist based in Scotland. Through digital video and methods adapted from her background in experimental theatre, she conducts physical research on the contemporary body and its behaviour under capitalism.
In many countries around the world, children diagnosed with critical illnesses are eligible, through wish-granting agencies, to make a wish. Each year, half of all eligible children in the U.S and Canada wish to visit Disney World. My video Watch in Awe appropriates the theme parks’ aesthetic, humour, and performance-based strategies to dissect the complex relationship between wish fulfillment, illness, disability, and capitalist constructions of fantasy. It serves as a propaganda-esque introduction into this space.
The joyful sun mascot, the primary character, radiates happiness and positivity. A prevalent idea in the culture and branding of wish-granting agencies and GKTWV, positions happiness, and wish-fulfillment as a means to conquer illness. Disney fairy tale narratives are so embedded with hope, ever-present with a "happy ending." Likewise, Lauren Berlant theorizes the concept of cruel optimism as "the condition of maintaining an attachment to a significantly problematic object...the fear is that the loss of the promising object/ scene itself will defeat the capacity to have any hope about anything." This wish-granting format, and specifically the Disney wish, ask the wisher to maintain hope and attachment to capitalism, fairy tales and Disney, in order to maintain hope about anything at all. I appropriate and replicate performative strategies of positivity to point towards the hollowness of these acts.
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HANNAH DOUCET is an artist, educator, and cultural worker based between Winnipeg, on Treaty 1 Territory and Tkaronto/Toronto. Doucet’s current work explores personal, political, theoretical, and aesthetic inquiries embedded within the themes of illness, fantasy and wish fulfillment. She explores these topics through material explorations in photography, soft sculpture, and video. She has exhibited across Canada, with solo and group exhibitions at Neutral Ground (Regina), Duplex (Vancouver), PLATFORM ( Winnipeg), The New Gallery ( Calgary) and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Doucet was the inaugural winner of PLATFORM photography award in 2017 and was longlisted for the National Gallery of Canada’s New Generation Photography award in 2019. Alongside her personal art practice, Doucet has over nine years of experience working as an artist facilitator and educator in schools, community centers, hospitals, and art galleries.
Kill All Kings presents a screening of artist video that veers and ascends, challenging normative conceptions of the weird, the grotesque and the paranormal. Bringing together local and international artists, there is a particular focus on the use of sound as a driving force for storytelling: a phone call, an orchestral motif, techno-electronica beat, a pop song, birdsong and village voice.
Will their fires keep you warm (2020)
7 minutes
A pile of sacred Hindu cow dung burns at dawn.
Smoke sways in the wind as the sound of British bird calls ascend in a dawn chorus;
the dung is reduced to embers.
The video is accompanied by a short text reflecting upon inherited trauma, and the violence of Partition, enacted during the independence of the Indian subcontinent from British colonial rule.
Despite the secular constitution established after the dissolution of the British Raj, there has been a steady call to right wing nationalism across India. The current ruling Hindu Nationalist party, the BJP, has been accused of encouraging a slew of violent acts against religious minorities, in part by the passing of bills that threaten the citizenship of those very Demographics.
Dung cakes, crafted in rural areas, are traditionally used in sacred Hindu rituals. They are now available for purchase internationally through the online retailer Amazon.
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ANIKA AHUJA (b. 1991) is a multi-disciplinary, Indo-Canadian artist originally from unceded Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, Canada). Her work has been included in group exhibitions across North America, and she is currently living and working in Glasgow, Scotland.
anikaahuja.com
GPT3 (2021)
9 mins
GPT3 is an ongoing video piece filmed at local teenage hangouts at Linn Park Cemetery in Glasgow over the past year; intermixed with footage of tech destruction, Hellraiser quotes, early video synthesizer tests, found Satanic Panic VHS tapes and broken Y2K cameras.
The first part, GRAVEN IMAGE, encompasses questions that were posed to the Open AI (or neural-network-powered language model gpt30) on what its ‘intuitions’ are about human consciousness. The resulting trapped and disembodied voice recounts the ‘answers’ it gave through remnants of the Cemetery’s shifting and trashed debris. The concluding part, WE CAME, offers up for sacrifice an artifice of pixelated queer doom; here a sick voice unfolds a childhood campfire tale of night visitations. A story that was found, archived and then anonymously deleted on Reddit in 2020.
GPT3 is placed as a moving image work that is fragmented digital dust screen, an abyssal diary of artificial laments to past bookmarked regions, haunted esoteric tech futures and queer cosmic pessimism.
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MICHELLE HANNAH is an artist, performing creature, dank sound maker, photographer, tutor and occasional curator. Currently Leo born & living in Glasgow.
@m_h_a_n_n_a_h
紅女郎傳說, The Mystery of Lady in Red (2020)
14 minutes
A woman is conducting research on a mystic female ghost haunting a coastal town. Known by the locals as ‘Lady in Red’, the female ghost always appears in a red dress, and within the shoreline where the waves can reach. Where ‘Lady in Red’ comes from and why she is trapped at the edge of the sea seems to remain a mystery. In the end, why the woman is so drawn to the enigmatic story of ‘Lady in Red’?
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HIO LAM LEI (b. 1992, China) is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, moving image, printmaking, photography and text making. She currently lives and works in Macau. She received her Master of Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in June, 2019. Lei has been interested in themes related to surveillance, self-censoring, gender norms, global warming and Ecocriticism.
hiolamlei.tumblr.com
IN EXILE (2017)
10 minutes
This work aims to express the dualities and friction between cultures and language: my Iraqi heritage and western upbringing. The body moves between the two projections portraying two poles that interact, share mutuality, give and take, and at times collide and conflict, suggesting a struggle and a sense of frustration.
The small monitor contains a poem I pieced together drawing from a selection of Iraqi poets who write about concepts of exile, displacement, struggles of war, and dictatorship, and what it means to no longer belong to or reside in one’s nation and place of birth. This recitation re-appropriates and contextualizes Iraqi poetry in the form of a collage by using symbolism as a form of expression. The use of symbolic language is commonly found in Iraqi poetry as it demonstrates censorship under dictatorship regimes.
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AYAM YALDO is a Montréal/Tiohtiá:ke based artist and recent graduate from Concordia University in the department of Intermedia. Working in a wide range of media including performance, video, sound and sculpture, her work explores narratives that shift between the personal and the political, the past and present, reality and myth. Yaldo’s current research is concerned with the formation of identity and subjectivity, and how these take shape in relation to grand historical narratives, the European tradition of archeology, artifacts, and her personal experience of war and displacement from the Middle East as a child. Focusing on the body, identity and image, Yaldo explores concepts of world building through reconstruction, transformation and ephemerality, in relation to forms of displacement.
Ayamyaldo.com @ayam_yaldo
strangely, and as strangers (2021)
10 minutes
strangely, and as strangers reflects on the impulse to consume: breaking down and reconstituting material through biological and virtual bodies. The video weaves together the ghosts of a roman poet, a fairytale thief, geophagia, nursery rhyme, second sight, folk song and youtube gnome-seeking conspiracies.
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FIONN DUFFY (b. Glasgow, 1991) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work challenges dominant ideologies of “progress” by re-framing cultural and historical material and bringing it into confrontation with current systems of production, ownership and ontological wrangling. She has exhibited across the UK and internationally and often works in collaboration with other artists, musicians, choreographers, enthusiasts and researchers.
fionnduffy.co.uk @fionn000
Allantide (2021)
5 minutes
Allantide is a festival traditionally celebrated on the night of the 31st of October. An important part of the festival was the giving of Allan apples. Large glossy red apples were polished and given to family and friends as tokens of good luck.
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GEORGIA GENDALL is an artist living and working in Helston, Cornwall. Her practice takes on many forms; ranging from ludicrously impractical human powered contraptions and snappy ‘epic fail’ videos to curious ceramic sculptures, enduring sound works and public events. Georgia runs The Allotment Club; a project space on an allotment in Penryn, Cornwall and is in the second year of running Residency in a Shed; a residency in the shed on the allotment.
She is also the instigator of Forced Collaboration; a collaborative platform that aims to forge relationships between artists from different disciplines and locations, it has been running for four years and has facilitated over 200 collaboration between artists all over the world.
@georgiagendall
Sextra Curricular Activity (2016)
14 minutes
Sextra Curricular Activity is an experimental narrative that examines power, deviance, failure & desire through the lens of the absurd and surreal.
Storied depictions make way for ruptures- both celebratory and critical- debunking outmoded societal structures regarding race, class, gender and sexuality. Sound and vision simultaneously destabilize and ground the viewer as a way to enjoy the journey of transgressions of social mores. Stereotypes are reclaimed by a cast of characters that embrace the very biases that place them in the margins, allowing a plunge into alternate pasts, presents & futures that disregard power structures and embrace the authentic self.
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HEATHER RAQUEL PHILLIPS is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator and educator living and working in Philadelphia, Pa. Phillips received her BFA from Tyler School of Art and her MFA from University of Pennsylvania where she currently lectures. Phillips is a board member at the Leather Archives & Museum, upcoming apprentice at the Fabric Workshop & Museum and a recipient of the Leeway Foundation Transformation award 2020.
heatherraquelphillips.com
On Telepathy (2019)
17 minutes
On Telepathy depicts how others standing behind a person taking a video influence the captured image.
These “telepathy” experiments were executed in three different locations around Tokyo.
Directed by Maiko Jinushi
Performed by Maiko Jinushi, Ayaka Ura, Cabbage Perm, Megumi Tsuga
Camera by Yutaro Hashiba, Ayaka Ura, Cabbage Perm, Megumi Tsuga
Sound sampled from Maurice Ravel’s Boléro (1928). Berlin Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Ferenc Fricsay, November 1956
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MAIKO JINUSHI is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Tokyo. She obtained her MFA in Painting from Tama Art University in Tokyo and further studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Her work has evolved from drawings and novels on themes of personal tales to the creation of poetic narratives that comprehensively combines elements including video, multi-channel installations, performances to emerge questions what we are and how we live in the contemporary world.
maikojinushi.com
enn moduezis (2019)
4 minutes
enn modeuzis a film about the act of stitching and working with our hands. When I am sewing, I am stitching.
I am beading.
I am learning how to quill.
I am tattooing.
When I am working with my hands, I am connecting with my family near and far.
I am nurturing those around me.
I am caring for my relations from the past and caring for those that will come to be.
I am being cared for.
Working with our hands is research.
It is understanding old ways of knowing.
Creating from tangible touch is a way of visiting and learning from others. It is understanding yourself and what you inherently already know.
This film features family, their hands are present both physically and through their art. Much of the imagery in this film comes from beadwork from my maternal and paternal lineage. enn modeuzincludes skin stitching, harvesting quills, and sewing. All of these materials are in relation to adornment and by extension, our bodies. To wear these hand stitched items is to wear our identities. In times where the handmade is overlooked and traditions are seen as forgotten, taking the time to connect with our customs is a part of our revival.
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AUDIE MURRAY is a Michif multi-disciplinary artist based in Otos-Kwunee (Calgary, Alberta; Treaty 7 territory). Her practice is informed by the process of making and visiting to explore themes of contemporary culture, embodied experiences and lived dualities. These modes of working assist with the recentering of our collective connection to body, ancestral knowledge systems, space and time.
audiemurray.com @audie.m_
Rite of Return (2021)
12 minutes
Rite of Return is a moving image work that reflects on Marianne Hirsch’s generational return and post-memory introduced in Rites of Return whilst extending The Rite of Spring – a riot-inducing ballet originally performed by the Ballet Russes. The original narrative circled around a sacrificial virgin dancing herself to death, appropriated aesthetically and thematically from Slavic folklore. In my version, the dancer awakens amidst ecological decline, drawing upon old-country aphorisms and the poetic structures of Strakh vylyvaty or pouring forth the fear, a Ukrainian healing technique to remedy anxieties, especially those related to land. In folklore globally, themes of dance, desire and death are repetitive. These connections are important for me, as I believe that folklore will survive amongst congregations not defined as culturally specific. Instead it can be enveloped by like-minded individuals interested in intersectional dialogue and education, envisioning spaces of transformation through perseverance and practice.
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AYLA DMYTERKO is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist based in Glasgow originally from the Treaty Four lands of the Plains Cree, Dakota, Denesuline, Lakota, Métis, Michif, Nakota, Ojibwe and Saulteaux Indigenous Peoples. She reactivates cultural memory in response to epistemological injustices to locate sites of transformation. Oscillating between reverence and regeneration, she collaborates with the past to understand how it is continuously modified and re-iterated to shape our social psyche and conceptions of the future. Through auto-ethnographic impulses, she works across moving image, dance, painting, sculpture, textiles and text, echoing the porous and precarious nature of diasporic imagination.
ayladmyterko.com @aylalldayla
