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Necessary Journeys

Necessary Journeys Flash showcase

An interactive showcase of the Necessary Journeys project.

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Introduction
Necessary Journeys takes its cue from the British Film Institute’s Black World initiative, and explores the ways in which art connects with film and the moving image.

Discovery and transformation lie at the heart of the projects, allowing artists and audiences the opportunity to make their own personal investigations. These projects illuminate the breadth and talent of artists working across a range of artforms.



Film Score Commission
Jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine has been commissioned to write a score for Borderline, a lost classic of the British avant-garde starring Paul Robeson. This live performance will premiere at Tate Modern on Sunday 28 May 2006.

Borderline is an experimental drama exploring inter-racial love and prejudice, which displays the influence of Soviet cinema of the 1920s and has been rarely seen since it was released in 1930. The new score will accompany a DVD release of the film in late 2006.

International Travel Bursaries
Professional development bursaries were offered to artists working in digital media to make journeys motivated by a desire for adventure, renewal and reflection. Offering creative time and space, the precise nature of the journey will be defined by the artists themselves, in the context of their achievements to date and their future aspirations.

These bursaries uphold a long tradition of travel and exploration within artistic pursuits. The journeys represent a spectacular geographical spread covering terrain both known and unknown. From China to Patagonia, the journeys aim to be highly personal interactions.

Questions of identity inform the creative processes of the artists and as such, this investment is likely to make a significant tangible difference to the development of their practice.

The selected artists are Oreet Ashery, Fernando Arias, Ralph Hoyte, Margareta Kern, Dinu Li, Jiva Parthipan and Trevor Woolery.

Find out more about the
International Travel Bursary Artists

Artists in Residence
Three residencies were presented to artists, working across film, new media and poetry, to work in major moving image and photography archives: the bfi National Film and Television Archive, Media Archive for Central England, and Birmingham Central Library.

Seen as an intense engagement with the archive, each residency will span a period of up to two months. They were established to support artistic development and enable the artists to work outside their usual context, placing research and experimentation at the centre of their practice.

The residencies seek to acknowledge the archives’ importance as way of describing contemporary life – by understanding the impact of the past – and to invigorate forgotten collections.

The selected artists are Jackie Kay, Susan pui san lok, and Keith Piper.

Find out more about the
Artists in Residence

Playing in the Light Film Programme
Playing in the Light: Black Dance on Film is a specially selected film programme, organised by the Independent Cinema Office, touring nationwide, which unites some of the very best artists, choreographers, dancers and musicians working in this collaborative and experimental field of filmmaking. These include Isaac Julian, Harold Offeh, Julie Dash, Tracey Moffatt, Jonzi D and Alison Murray, David McCormick and Benedict Johnson, Michèle Magema, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Rosalind Nashashibi.

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Publication and International Symposium
Necessary Journeys is brought to life as a fully-illustrated guidebook edited by Melanie Keen and Eileen Daly. New writing by Bernardine Evaristo, Kitty Hauser, Sukhdev Sandhu and Sarah Wood captures the spirit of the various elements which make up Necessary Journeys. The book is illustrated by original artwork and visual documentation created by the participating artists. It is prefaced by Caryl Phillips’ incisive essay ‘Necessary Journeys’, from which this initiative takes its name.

In November 2005, the culmination of the Necessary Journeys initiative was an international symposium at Tate Modern which discussed the concerns facing artists working on and across the border of moving image and time-based practice. Focusing on the formation of new perspectives through a broad range of artistic journeys, the symposium brought together some projects that appeared within the Necessary Journeys arts initiative. Produced in association with Tate Modern, participants included Caryl Phillips, Kodwo Eshun, Keith Piper, susan pui san lok, Jackie Kay, Harold Offeh, Jonzi D and Tirdad Zolghadr.


Associated Regional Initiatives
As part of Black World, Arts Council England regional offices are producing a range of initiatives produced in collaboration with regional screen agencies.

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For more information, please contact: melanie.keen@artscouncil.org.uk

Necessary Journeys is produced by Arts Council England’s Visual Arts department and decibel in association with the British Film Institute.

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