Super-Whip, Jordan Baseman
We are eager to present the final instalment of our five Rough Machine commissions that each premiered online this month.
Jordan Baseman has created two rough machines – 16mm films that were shot using stop-frame animation techniques. The recorded material was hand-processed (using buckets) and then professionally digitised. As the surface of the emulsion on the negative was intentionally physically punctured, torn and damaged through this most basic of developing processes, the resulting films are flecked with scratches and streaked with black scars: holes where images used to be.
Super-Whip is colourful and bright: a frenetically spinning/stuttering/stopping depiction of the Super-Waltzer ride on Brighton Pier. Presented to us in a split-screen frenzy, Super-Whip is frantic and relentlessly joyful because of its hallucinatory nature. The driving soundtrack of original music propels the visuals ever faster.
Super-Whip by Jordan Baseman:
Galaxy is a somber, back and white film that portrays the stark architecture of Brighton’s Horror Hotel and the end of the pier Galaxy ride. Washed out, barely-there images flicker in silhouette. In a landscape that is normally teeming with people – this ride, this place, is empty. Summer is over.
Galaxy by Jordan Baseman:
Credits (both films):
Recorded and Made: Jordan Baseman
Music: Jordan Baseman
Thanks: Carolyn Thompson, Robin Klassnik, Len Thornton, Wimbledon College of Art, Animate Projects, Matt’s Gallery London, Brighton Pier, The Butthole Surfers, Soho Film Lab, Fuji Film (Poland Street)
Hand-Processing Support: Nick Manser
Jordan Baseman received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an MA from Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Baseman is currently Reader in Time Based Media at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts, London. He is a lecturer at the Royal College of Art Sculpture School and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford.
He has a long history of creating projects in collaboration with various public institutions. These have included residencies and commissions for: ArtSway, New Forest; Arts Council England, Papworth Hospital (Heart and Lung Transplant Unit), Cambridge; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; The Science Museum, London; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland; Grizedale Arts, Cumbria; London Arts; Camden Arts Centre, London; The Serpentine Gallery, London; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Book Works, London; National Sculpture Factory, Ireland; British School at Rome; The Wellcome Trust, London; Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Tasmania, Australia; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Matt’s Gallery, London and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Jordan Baseman has received grants from: Arts Council England, The Arts Humanities Research Council, The British Council, The Henry Moore Foundation, The Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England and London Arts Board. He has exhibited and screened his work internationally in countries including Australia, USA, Austria, Germany, Japan, Portugal, France and Italy.
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