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JEFF KEEN<\/strong> A special Mayday Rayday expanded cinema performance to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Rayday<\/em> broadsheet. Using 8mm, 16mm and video, Jeff Keen bridges the gap between 1969\u2019s Raydayfilm <\/em>and his recent Artwar: The Last Frontier<\/em>. A unique and spontaneous mixed-media collage from Britain\u2019s first and most productive independent filmmaker.<\/p>\n Jeff Keen, From Raydayfilm to Artwar, UK, 1969-2002, colours, sounds, c.70 min (multi-media performance)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cKeen is indebted to the Surrealist tradition for many of his central concerns: his passion for instability, his sense of le merveilleux<\/em>, his fondness for analogies and puns, his preference for \u2018lowbrow\u2019 art over aestheticism of any kind, his dedication to collage and le hazard objectif<\/em>. But this \u2018continental\u2019 facet of his work \u2013 virtually unique in this country \u2013 co-exists with various typically English characteristics, which betray other roots. The tacky glamour\/true beauty of his Family Star productions is at least as close to the end of Brighton pier as it is to Hollywood B-movies\u2026 The heroic absurdity and adult infantilism that are the mainsprings of his comedy draw on a long tradition of post-Victorian humour: not the \u2018innocent\u2019 vulgarity of music hall, but the anarchicness of The Goons and the self-lacerating ironies of the 30s clowns, complete with their undertow of melancholia.\u201d (Tony Rayns, \u201cBorn to Kill: Mr. Soft Eliminator\u201d, Afterimage<\/em> No. 6, 1976)<\/p>\n
\nWednesday 1 May 2002, at 7:30pm<\/strong>
\n London The Photographers’ Gallery<\/strong><\/p>\n