Swandown
Sinclair, Ian and Kotting, Andrew (2012) Swandown. [Book art/Artist's book, Exhibition/show, Film, Installation, Performance]
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Swandown exists as an exhibition, a website, a bookwork, a series of performances, and a feature-length film. The work’s genesis was a series of walks I made with writer Iain Sinclair, in which we mapped out a possible route for pedalling a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings to Hackney. The project took as its starting point an earlier film I had made in 1996 called Gallivant in which I circumnavigated the coastline of the UK in a camper van with my daughter Eden and my grandmother Gladys.
Iain had initially suggested that I swim around the London Borough of Hackney and that we work together on an experimental documentary and bookwork about the voyage. We had collaborated on a short film called Offshore in which I swam the Channel and Iain provided moral support and voice-over narration. Our interests in psychogeography, mythography and confabulation as a means of storytelling cemented the relationship, and Iain was inspired by the 'spillage' of formats in my working methods. The collaboration and the variety of forms taken by the work are a part of my ongoing exploration of an 'expanded cinematic language'. Dilston Grove, through Café Gallery Projects, commissioned a deconstructed and re-presented installation work from the research material generated, and the British Library commissioned a live performance with elements from the film.
The film's development was funded by the Film Council in 2011 – now the BFI, which commissioned the feature film. Swandown has played in cinemas across the UK, and screened as part of the ACID section in Cannes 2013. The bookwork installation was shown in 2011–12 across the UK as part of the HE Creative Campus Initiative touring exhibition/catalogue within the Cultural Olympiad. The work was intended as an antidote to the hubris of the larger Olympic Art Commissions.
'Swandown' the bookwork was published by Badbloodandsibyl, 2012, ISBN: 9780956873330.
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