This communiqué, the 24th in my infrequent series of art/film newsletters, focuses on the drowned regions of the inner landscape, the imaginative zones where I tarried during lockdown, and takes time to ponder the slumbering imagery abiding there. Here I cautiously acknowledge the ongoing influence of an obscure companion that lurks outside ordinary comprehension, an otherworldly entity that dwells in the nocturnal dreamscapes of the slumbering mind. Also, I include reflections on some of the pandemic-era projects that arose to enliven the isolation. This communiqué opens with a photograph of the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, the author of the prophetic self-isolation guidebook À rebours (1884). À rebours was initially seen as the outrageous product of a fevered, overstimulated imagination. Less so now.
Huysmans, self-isolating in 1893
The Butterfly
As the door sealed on the outside world I began editing a new film which I later called The Butterfly, using material gathered over the previous few months. The finished film’s opening section depicts a world in flux, opening onto a fluid, paradoxical space where amorphous, indistinct forms writhe and intermingle in an overheated oceanic cavern. Through this expansive field of undulating colour noises of unknown origin drift, suggestive of alien transmissions sent to activate a new world. The film’s subsequent section transports us to a jungle grove, where inexplicable flowers carpet the shadowed ground and a butterfly hangs suspended in tangles of dripping, vibrant green. The appearance of the melodious song of an unseen bird seems to rouse this dormant dream-soaked world, initiating a fertile shower of prismatic water. On completing The Butterfly my initial impression was that the work gestured towards transcendence and eternal renewal. Alternatively, the persistent gloom that abides in these twilit spaces also suggests another reading, one where the butterfly might, in fact, be trapped there among the entangled greenery and that this fragile creature is hovering on the threshold of extinction. The film’s rich soundtrack is by Bafta-winning composer Abi Fry, who conjured the otherworldly score from seclusion on the Isle of Skye. The soundtrack also incorporates a nocturnal field recording contributed by another dear friend, recorded among the woods of East Sussex at midnight, where the spellbinding song of the nightingale called through the dark trees.
The Butterfly, Toby Tatum, 2020
Towards the oneiric visions of the lost unconscious
The Butterfly might also relate to what Russian writer Maria Gribova called “the oneiric regions of the lost unconscious - в сторону онейрических видений утраченного бессознательного”. Perhaps the primal zones depicted in this new film might represent brain-spaces, the submerged trenches of imagination? Gribova evoked these dream zones in a recent review of my 2013 film The Green Mind for the Cineticle Art-cinema magazine, where it featured as Film of the Week. I loved the way Gribova chose to write about the film, discussing it in the context of palimpsests and atavistic forms: “in the dim light of The Green Mind (2013), iguanas, snakes and a lonely tamarin come out of the darkness. They get confused in ferns, intertwine with flowers and disappear among palm branches, which cover them with multiple exposures of static watery frames.”
The full review, in Russian, is online, here.
The Green Mind, Toby Tatum, 2013
Among eternal foliage
Gribova was accurate when she considered The Green Mind as a vision of the atavistic dream-space. Back in 2013 when I was making the film I had a dream in which a lizard appeared to me, posing amid a scintillating grove of prismatic shimmering foliage. The reptile emerged from the uncharted recesses of the dreaming mind to impart a message, clearly indicating a direction for my future work. I’ve subsequently followed the beast’s instructions and stayed true to the dream. The creature dwelt on matters of time, encouraging me to expand my work into larger time scales. Enter, said the monster, the time of rocks and plants, tune yourself to the rhythm of reptiles. Today, the impression created by this nocturnal visitant has yet to dissipate and I suspect it still lurks there, waiting among eternal foliage, abiding beyond the conscious threshold.
The Deep Well
“Swaying mesmerically in the overheated water the immense golden petals of the giant aquatic rose held the drowned landscape spellbound. I’d journeyed far to see this, this monstrous deity blooming at the secret heart of an impossible undersea world. As I gazed into the lush recessive folds of the flower’s central core it emitted a deep-bass drone, the sound pulsing outward through the warm amniotic water, reverberating out across the sunken regions of the now collapsing dream.”
The above text is an excerpt from The Deep Well, an article I wrote reflecting on the making of my 2014 film Mental Space. The article has been published in issue two of the Moving Image Artists Journal, appearing among a collection of extended writings by artists united by a shared enthusiasm for nature and landscape. I loved the opportunity to imaginatively expound at length on the film and am grateful to the publishers for issuing such a flagrantly unrealistic text. Moving Image Artists II also includes writing by: Daniel & Clara, Scott Barley, Peter Treherne, Al Brydon, Seán Vicary, Autojektor, Karel Doing, Chris Lynn, Amy Cutler, Yvonne Salmon & James Riley, Katie Grace McFadden, Joe Banks.
Take the plunge into The Deep Well here.
Mental Space, Toby Tatum, 2014
The sensorium
Like everyone, I was unable to attend cinema screenings or arts events during lockdown. I tried to make up the loss by transforming my living space into something approximating a multi-media sensorium. From the seclusion of the in-house micro-cinema I enjoyed visiting and participating in some of the film festivals and screening events which proliferated online. Some of the currently accessible online experimental film projects I had the good fortune to visit and participate in are listed below.
Paris-based experimental film distributors Collectif Jeune Cinéma have made available nearly 300 films from their archive online to watch for free. My 2013 films A World Assembled, The Green Mind & Monsters feature as part of the stream. The full collection can be explored here.
The cine-enthusiasts at Alt/Kino have curated Human, Nature, an online streaming programme designed to be enjoyed from the “dis/comfort of self-isolation”. In his accompanying notes the programmer Ben Nicholson states that “I've long harboured a desire to curate a mini-festival about our relationships with, and perceptions of, the natural world and this can perhaps be considered a long-lead prelude inspired by being stuck in the house and largely restricted to bird-watching through the glass in my back door. I like the juxtapositions and echoes that appear when you watch shorts together in the close proximity of a programme, so I've imagined this as something that can be watched in one sitting (it's just under 70 minutes in length overall) but it's entirely up to you if any/all of it takes your fancy - feel free to dip in and out and skip as you please. Enjoy Human, Nature.” The programme includes my 2012 film The Secluded Grove, alongside outdoor-themed films by Karen Johannesen, Margaret Salmon, Jill Godmilow, Neozoon Collective, Kate Lain, Ken Jacobs, Jesse McLean, Jacques Perconte, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Amy Cutler. The programme also features a topical excerpt from an episode of Big Bang Theory. Human, Nature is online to watch here.
Film-maker Kate Lain (whose work is also included in the Human, Nature programme mentioned above) has also initiated Cabin Fever, a sprawling database of experimental film titles which are all available to watch for free. The growing archive is organised into several easy to navigate categories and can be explored here.
In May I remotely attended the Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, where my 2019 film Night on the Riverbank streamed as part of the Seeing Comes Before Words programme. Attending numerous festival screenings each day I found that the rhythm of life soon rearranged itself around the dictates of the dream stream. From the online chats that Alchemy hosted before and after each screening, as well as the commentaries about the selected films that proliferated on social media, arose the indelible impression of a geographically distant but profoundly connected community. While the Alchemy 2020 programme is no longer available to watch online I would be remiss not to acknowledge some of the brilliant work that the festival beamed forth. The films listed below are the stuff of dreams:
Karen Russo’s Junkerhaus
Murat Sayginer's The Flying Fish
Laura Bouza’s Gaia Mama
Annette Philo’s The Last Were Buried Here
The Garden, Toby Tatum, 2019
The silent gardener
The Garden, a silent video I made in early 2019, will be planted at the forthcoming Festival ECRÃ. Although based in Rio de Janeiro the festival will now migrate online and be accessible worldwide from 20th-30th August 2020. The Garden aims to open a window onto a realm of enchantment, where wraiths flicker on moss-bearded rocks, rain washes the spoor-filled air and metamorphic flowers glow with supernatural potency. The Garden is my most expansive work in terms of duration. Over the protracted fifteen-minute running time very little happens: one static scene transitions into another under the cover of encroaching darkness. If you take the time to peer closer though, you will see that among the shadowy rocks and swaying flowers teems a multitude of phosphorescing phenomena.
The Garden will beam forth via Festival ECRÃ’s Instagram account. The showing will be followed by a Live Q&A with me and curator Rian Rezende.
The screening will take place on 28/08/2020 (Friday), 15h (Brazilian Time) / 19h (UK Time), Duration 1hr.
Festival ECRÃ's programme is now online here.
The Garden, Toby Tatum, 2019
The chimeric flower
A number of influences provided the nutrients that fed The Garden. I suspect that my trips to the Musée Gustave-Moreau in Paris last year left me with a rich reservoir of imagery to draw from. The museum houses the immense body of work created by the Symbolist master Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), whose work I have pondered before in these communiqués. Returning to this quiet museum over the course of several days I was steadily drawn into Moreau’s intoxicating world of overdecorated splendour. The writer Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) was a huge fan of Moreau, devoting a section of À rebours to his work and championed him over his Impressionist contemporaries. Huysmans, in a review of one of Moreau’s undersea-themed paintings, wrote:
“The grotto is a vast jewel case where, beneath the light falling from a lapis-lazuli sky, a strange mineral flora throws out its fantastic shoots in a delicate tangled lacework of fabulous leaves. Branching coral, silver boughs and starfish, pierced like filigree and dappled with grey-browns, sprout among green stems supporting chimeric and real flowers...”
Owing to the Coronavirus the Musée Gustave-Moreau is shuttered once again and nothing disturbs the sacred stillness of this secluded sanctum.
Jupiter and Semele, Gustave Moreau, 1894–95
Three more things
Listening: I’ve been transported into cosmic realms through repeated listenings to the late Andrew Weatherall’s Music’s Not For Everyone radio shows, now archived on the NTS website. This broadcast from 02/01/20 seems designed to aid progression into the dream-state. Cross the threshold here.
Reading: My reading for the last few months has included books by the Californian author Erik Davis. His prophetic Techgnosis, originally published in the 90s and now available in a revised edition, looks at the entwining threads of magic, mysticism and emergent technologies. This strange, sprawling and thoroughly imaginative book is described by its author as “a dreambook of the technological unconscious”. Explore his world here.
Looking: Not attending exhibitions has been odd. That said, the virtually-accessible exhibition Siren Song by artist John Stezaker at The Approach was, for me, the highlight of this strange era. This small show of colour collages, which ran until 02/08/20, gave me the unmistakable charge I associate with encounters with the truly marvellous. Stezaker’s work can be seen here.
Mother Night IV, John Stezaker, 2019
Source: https://mailchi.mp/bf0499513f98/communique-024-the-dream-stream