Alex Hetherington

It includes works by Haytham el-Wardany (The Book of Sleep and How to Disappear), extracts from the opera Now Eleanor’s Idea by the experimental American composer Robert Ashley, and characters appearing in 16mm films by Catherine Sullivan (Five Economies and The Chittendens). It also draws on notes from Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, collectively used to describe and conjure contemporary images of the complexly liminal figure of Tiresias, a blind seer who was transformed into a woman for seven years and who ‘saw’ visions in smoke, the movement of water and the behaviour of animals.

Alongside these, the Lab will explore thoughts on the absences and interruptions of sleep and to blind actions associated with shooting 16mm film through the use of masking, mattes, prisms, mirrors, double exposures and different camera gates.

About the artist

Alex Hetherington is an artist who works with 16mm film, writing and performance. Recent films includes Untitled (eclectic poison) (2020) screened to accompany the launch of Rosie Roberts’ publication portals, Talking, Counting, Blinking, Noting; 16mm film as a collaborative action (2019-2020), Anonymous Writes A Spell for the Camera (2019) screened at Anxiety & Invocation at Experiments in Cinema V.15, Albuquerque, US and Twin Eye presented at Studio Jamming, Cooper Galley, Dundee, September 2019. Recent writing includes an essay “Why can’t we see the movement of the tides in a glass of water?” to accompany artist Karen Cunningham’s new film, Mean Time, Collective, Edinburgh, October 2020.