Beyond the Trees
Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards
In this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s Treeline, Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards consider the wider botanical, cultural and geopolitical resonances that are opened up by the work.
Our projects are invariably accompanied by specially-commissioned texts, a selection of which are published here.
Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards
In this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s Treeline, Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards consider the wider botanical, cultural and geopolitical resonances that are opened up by the work.
Brian Dillon
Brian Dillon examines themes of the past, present and future in Patrick Hough's The Black River of Herself.
Nathalie Olah
Nathalie Olah considers the intimate nature of the human-animal bond in Toby Parker Rees's film the great dog, Pan.
Michael Newman
In this essay, critic Michael Newman traces the evolution of the panorama and its importance as a motif in Marine Hugonnier’s beautifully rounded portrait of Afghanistan.
Steven Bode
As the latest chapter of Afghanistan’s repeating cycle of history seems set to start, Steven Bode looks back at Marine Hugonnier’s Ariana and its resonance for the present moment.
Elhum Shakerifar
Elhum Shakerifar reflects on Maryam Tafakory's film Nazarbazi, and the prohibition against touching in Iranian cinema that is the film's recurring motif.
Belinda Zhawi
Poet and artist Belinda Zhawi draws on her own unique experience of language and food in this essay on Kondo Heller's MU/T/T/ER.
Stewart Lee
Stand-up comedian, writer and director Stewart Lee asks whether comedy can ever be art in his essay on Patrick Goddard's film Animal Antics.
Dominic Paterson
Dominic Paterson (The Hunterian, The University of Glasgow) explores Georgina Starr's Quarantaine within the context of avant-garde cinema and theory.
Steven Bode
Graham Gussin's Remote Viewer was made twenty years ago this year. From a distance of two decades, Steven Bode reflects on how much it resonates with the present.
Graham Gussin, Steven Bode and Chris Darke
A conversation between Graham Gussin and Steven Bode. Interlocutor: Chris Darke
Steven Bode
With Paul Rooney's Dust and Bellevue available on FVU Watch, Steven Bode reflects on their themes of limbo and confinement one year into the global pandemic.
Steven Bode
To accompany Marianna Simnett's The Bird Game and Confessions of a Crow, Steven Bode adds some supplementary notes.
Rebekah Taussig
Writer Rebekah Taussig explores how caregiving is both a personal and communal experience in this powerful response to Kyla Harris and Lou Macnamara's It's Personal.
Rachel Pronger
Michael O'Pray Prize runner-up Rachel Pronger discovers in the experimental work of a pioneering filmmaker a familiar tension between the social being and the individual body.
Harvey Dimond
Harvey Dimond explores the historical resonances of this slavery-referencing artwork made during a suffocating pandemic
Mimi Howard
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2020, Mimi Howard finds that there are oblique ways to engage with tumultuous times.