Video © Luke Norman & Nik Adam

About

Night Contact is a new photography and multimedia festival. Supporting and promoting contemporary image making, Night Contact aims to bring together exciting and innovative photographic works that provoke or engage in conversations with other media, such as film, music and literature.

The second edition of Night Contact took place across a range of venues in Brighton, UK in October 2014, and formed part of the internationally recognised Brighton Photo Biennial. The programme aimed to deconstruct and question the process of collaboration in relation to the image. The selected work explored ideas of borrowing and influence, collaboration’s affect on individual practice, digital culture and the life of images online, participatory modes of creation, and questions of authorship and re-appropriation. NC14 showcased film and photography by over 180 artists, including international award winners the ARKA Group, Manuel Fernadez, Jason Fulford, Jason Lazarus & Eric Fleischauer, John Maclean, Melanie Manchot, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Joanna Piotrowska, Rick Morris Pushinsky, Ben Rivers, Aleix Plademunt, Bjorn Veno, Isabelle Wenzel & Michel Kouider, alongside emerging talent. Three outdoor screens, one indoor cinema space and pop-up installation in an HGV truck sat alongside stalls and bars stretched over a square mile of central Brighton. A £2,500 grant was awarded to two visual artists, Tom Pope and Terrence Smith, to produce a new work for the festival, encouraging experimentation through collaboration. This was shown in a custom built projection space over the weekend of Night Contact. Over 500 artists submitted work to the event. These submissions were judged by panels of artists, including photographers and filmmakers, musicians and poets, and professionals from organisations such as Photoworks, The Photographers Gallery and Brighton City Council. NC14 was produced by Emily Graham, Tim Bowditch, Anna Gormley, Shannon Ghannam, and Anna Stevens.

The inaugural edition of Night Contact took place across a range of venues in Dalston, East London in September 2013, presenting innovative work from the new frontiers of photography; screening projections across indoor and outdoor spaces, and illuminating the streets of Dalston with still and moving images. At the centre of the festival were three new multi-channel works, commissioned from photographers working in collaboration with filmmakers and sound artists. Please visit our 2013 section for full information on winners and 2013′s programme.

Night Contact is produced by Contact Editions with the support of the Arts Council England. For information or enquiries please contact us.

Signup to our newsletter for updates on the 2015 edition.

 

 

Submissions

NIGHT CONTACT COMMISSION

Night Contact partnered with Photoworks to offer a £2,500 grant towards one new site-specific collaborative work to be the focus of the 2nd edition of the multimedia festival taking place 18 October 2014 as part of Brighton Photo Biennial (BPB). Our commission winners Tom Pope and Terrence Smith created an experimental film, Silent Fore to Aft, charting their seven-day journey between London and Brighton by tandem bicycle. They applied strict rules to their journey, including not speaking to each other, turning their collaborative journey into a performative event. The work premiered at NC14 in a specially designed truck trailer. Tom Pope and Terrence Smith also held an artist talk about the project at Grand Parade.

Night Contact celebrates the collision of mediums; the dialogue between the still and the moving, text and image, digital and the object. Brighton Photo Biennial is the UK’s leading curated photography festival and promotes new thinking around photography through a commissioned programme of events and exhibitions. The festival is produced by Photoworks, an organisation dedicated to enabling participation in photography, the most democratic medium of contemporary visual culture. Photoworks’ programme includes commissions, publishing and participation. In collaboration with local, national and international partners, Photoworks connects outstanding artists with audiences and champions talent and ambition.

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith: Silent Fore to Aft
15:01

https://vimeo.com/110818303

Proposals were judged by: Celia DaviesDirector, Photoworks & Brighton Photo Biennial Katrina SluisDigital Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery Donna Close: Head of Arts at Brighton and Hove City Council Jason Evans: Photographic artist

Open submissions: now closed

Night Contact are invited open submissions from photographers/artists to respond to one of four lines of text provided by four independent judges. Four curators – Thurston Moore, Esther Teichmann, Rebecca Norris Webb and Anne Bourgeois-Vignon – each selected a line of text with personal resonance for photographers to respond to.

Entrants submitted images for one of the four texts, and in turn each judge selected and edited a selection of the submitted images into a slideshow. Each slideshow is a visual representation and interpretation of the curator’s original text. The project explored the ambiguity of the image, how meaning can be constructed through a layer of participants, and the active role of the viewer.

 

Thurston Moore (musician & writer)

“Speak to the wild / Reach for the wire / Protect your child / (From) empty empire The king has come to join the band”

Thurston Moore, Speak to the Wild, from The Best Day (Matador, September 2014)

Anne Bourgeois-Vignon (Creative Content Director, Nowness)

“All that is clear is the perfection of what we were given, the unworthiness of our response, and the certainty, in view of our current deprivation, that we are judged.”

(Robert Adams, 1986)

NB For copyright reasons soundtrack is unavailable here.

 

Rebecca Norris Webb (photographer & poet)

“You can see beauty only from the side, hastily.”

(Tomas Transtromer, from the poem Under Pressure)

https://vimeo.com/110818305

 

Esther Teichmann (artist)

“As he swam , he pursued a sort of reverie in which he confused himself with the sea. The intoxication of leaving himself, of slipping into the void, of dispersing himself in the thought of water, made him forget every discomfort.”

(Maurice Blanchot, Thomas the Obscure, translated by Robert Lamberton, New York: Station Hill Press, 1973 (1941))

https://vimeo.com/110818301

 

Signup to our newsletter to be kept up to date.

Event

Location

Night Contact at Brighton Photo Biennial 2014 took place on 18 October 2014 from 6pm – 11pm, projecting film and photographic works across four spaces in central Brighton: Jubilee Square, Jubilee Street, the Basement, and Circus Street market.

  • Jubilee Square
    Time Artist Description More Info
    19:00 Introduction to the evening
    19.15 Various artists A programme of invited work and the open submissions project.
    An outdoor screen in Jubilee Square showing a programme of invited films and slideshows:
    Jason Fulford: Caribbean Spirit
    John Maclean: Hometowns
    Ben Rivers: Things (Winter)
    Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs: Chimney, Lamp and Fire, 2014
    Isabelle Wenzel: Double Act
    Melanie Manchot: Dance (All Night, Paris)
    Aleix Plademunt: Almost There
    Rick Pushinsky: Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Study Guide
    The screen also showed the Night Contact open submissions project, in which photographers were invited to submit images in response to four different quotations. Four judges curated the entries into individual slideshows, depicting a visual representation of the texts.
    Featured photographers:
    Rebecca Norris Webb: Tell it Slant
    “You can see beauty only from the side, hastily.”
    (Tomas Transtromer, from the poem Under Pressure)
    Adrian Astorga, Ian Jones, Andreas Oetker-Kast, Juliane Krueger, Ruben Martin, James Parkin, Simone Fisher, Andrew Davies, Charlotte Thoemmes, Albertini Giacomo, Miguel Rato, Ida Taavitsainen, Dora Csala, Shanshan Chen, Sharon Boothroyd, Joseph Conway, Julian McKenny, Andre Malerba, Chenille L’Oiseau, Amy Sacka, Calum Simpson, Marcin Lewandowski, Raul Guerrero, Justyna Ptak, Bruno Quinquet, Debi Cornwall, Tabitha Soren, Kirk G Ellingham, Viet Ha, Oana Camilleri, Swee Hoe Lim, Lauren Carter, Ayako Sekine, Tete Silva, Amelia Shivani Hassard, Niko J. Kallianiotis, Yibo Hu, James Parker, Hiko Uemura, Claire Abraham, Marita Pappa
    Thurston Moore:
    “Speak to the wild/ Reach for the wire/ Protect your child/ (From) empty empire
    The king has come to join the band”
    Hiko Uemura, Mariya Ustymenko, Tabitha Soren, Jana Lohde, Diego Dede, Gabriella Rose, Amy Faulkner, Katie Mccallum, Luis Rubim, Bruna Brandao, Adrian Astorga, Matt Henry, Caroline Douglas, Maja Smiejkowska, Laura Pannack, Gabriella Rose, Letizia Iman, Andrea Colombo, Elisa Ferrari, Dipanjan Mitra, Rebecca Johnston, Darren Goodwin, Daniel Rutter, Allan Dransfield, Miguel Rato, Heather McDonough, Lily Rose Thomas, Beth Rowland, Almuden Aromero, Bethan Highgate Betts, Anna Karoliina Partanen, Lodoe Laura, Dimitra Dede, Florencia Alvarado, Sebastian Reynolds, Teresa Cos, Andrea Colombo
    Anne Bourgeois-Vignon:
    “All that is clear is the perfection of what we were given, the unworthiness of our response, and the certainty, in view of our current deprivation, that we are judged.”
    (Robert Adams, 1986)
    Romain Forquy, Arnis Balcus, Bruno Quinquet, Stanislav Shmelev, Emma Crichton, Rosie Squires, Jeff Evans, Joan Alexander, Tabitha Soren, Anne Corrance Monk , Matt Henry, Anargyros Drolapas, Laura Pannack, Albert Elm, Isabelle Evertse, Andrew Davies, Lynsie Roberts, Amy Sacka, Alexander Christie, Daniel Hewitt, Nikolas Ventourakis, Dipanjan Mitra, Nikita Shergill, Laura Lodoe, Matteo Malvino, Dipanjan Mitra, Evgeniy Stepanets, Mariya Ustymenko
    Esther Teichmann:
     “As he swam, he pursued a sort of reverie in which he confused himself with the sea. The intoxication of leaving himself, of slipping into the void, of dispersing himself in the thought of water, made him forget every discomfort.”(Maurice Blanchot, Thomas the Obscure, translated by Robert Lamberton, New York: Station Hill Press, 1973 (1941))
    Tanya Mitsuko, Amelia Shivani Hassard, Arnis Balcus, Arpita Shah, Claire Abraham, Anne Kathrin Greiner, Anna Lilleengen , Felipe Enger, Eva Voutsaki, Rebecca Najdowski, Heather McDonough, Elizabeth Moran, Sophie Davis, Emma Crichton, Isabelle Dubois, Laura Pannack, Anna Skladmann, Caroline Douglas, Alexandra Lethbridge, Micha Warren, Nicholas White, Olivia Poppy Coles, Izabela Nowak, Sara Hibbert, Sharon Boothroyd , Romain Forquy, Julian McKenny, Joan Alexander, Luke Brown, Katie McCallum, Rebecca Jane Johnston, Jana Koelmel, Claire Laude, Evita Goze
    The programme looped twice during the evening.
  • The Basement
    Time Artist Description More Info
    18:00 ARKA group EXTRAMISSION: On the research of Professor J. Hillard

    EXTRAMISSION: On the research of Professor J. Hillard, the ARKA group

    19:19 minutes, screenings on the hour and half hour.

    Featuring Rachel Elizabeth Gay Commissioned by Cornerhouse, Manchester.

    Asking questions that cannot be answered in the laboratory, a scientist takes his beliefs out into the field to test them, where his previously stable world begins to unravel.

    The film is compiled from video recordings made by a professor of entomology and ornithology as he travelled across the globe as part of his research. The ARKA group attempted to decipher the story of Professor Hillard’s tapes with help from his secretary, Patricia Mayhew.

    The ARKA group is a collaboration between Ben Jeans Houghton & Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau, producing films, sculptures and sound works about the stranger fringes of scientific and philosophical thought. The ARKA group collaborates with emphatic individuals from various disciplines and institutions relevant to the subject of each new work.

  • Jubilee Street
    Time Artist Description More Info
    19:00 Jason Lazarus & Eric Fleischauer First UK screening of Jason Lazarus & Eric Fleischauer’s feature length silent film twohundredfiftysixcolors.

    twohundredfiftysixcolors, Eric Fleischauer and Jason Lazarus 

    (Curatorial assistant Theo Darst)

    97 minutes

    What happens when the gif moves from the computer screen to the cinema, frames turn into minutes, and our fame is looped into an infinite abyss?

    Crafted from over 3,000 animated GIFs, twohundredfiftysixcolors is an expansive and revealing portrait of what has become a zeitgeist medium. Once used primarily as an Internet page signpost, the file type has evolved into a nimble and ubiquitous tool for addressing everything from politics to pop-culture, the labyrinthine multiverse of sub- cultures to the art world’s white cube. The film is a curated archive that functions as a historical document charting the GIF’s evolution, its connections to early cinema, and its contemporary cultural, political, and aesthetic possibilities.

  • Circus Street Market
    Time Artist Description More Info
    18:00 Tom Pope and Terrence Smith Silent Fore to Aft: Night Contact and Photoworks commission by Tom Pope and Terrence Smith

    Silent Fore to Aft: Night Contact and Photoworks commission by Tom Pope and Terrence Smith.

    Travelling on a tandem bicycle from London to Brighton over the duration of seven days, the artists turn collaboration into a performative event, where a set of rules will be in place that influence the outcome, an experimental film.

  • University of Brighton (window screens)
    Time Artist Description More Info
    On rotation Joanna Piotrowska FROWST, Joanna Piotrowska

    Silent slideshows in the windows of the University of Brighton, Grand Parade.

    What does it mean when an individual is not understood in isolation but as a part of bigger entity?
    Joanna Piotrowska is interested in modes of behaviours within a family, and the mutual bonds that strongly affect who we are. Inspired by different kinds of psychotherapies, and theories that use the body as a main source of information for the mental states, Piotrowska in collaboration with her subjects, examines how the body’s positions and movements reveal the complexity of relationships between people. Piotrowska’s carefully staged images are private performances for the camera, exposing the tensions of self in the family dynamic.

    On rotation Manuel Fernández Recognition, Manuel Fernández

    Recognition uses face recognition software to generate a series of animated gifs. Through a struggle to recognize faces in common objects, the work moves this process away from its conventional use and towards the creation of a new kind of image.

    On rotation Bjørn Venø The Window, Bjørn Venø

    With the project “The Window” Venø sought to find willing participants to photograph through their windows. The participant could do whatever she or he wanted, but Venø wished to encourage exploration by asking them to do what ever came to mind without inhibition or censor, the resulting portrait aiming reveal something of the subject’s inner personality.

Artists included in Night Contact 2014 were ARKA Group, Manuel Fernadez, Jason Fulford, Jason Lazarus & Eric Fleischauer, John Maclean, Melanie Manchot, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Joanna Piotrowska, Rick Morris Pushinsky, Ben Rivers, Aleix Plademunt, Bjorn Veno, Isabelle Wenzel & Michel Kouider.

The programme aimed to deconstruct and question the process of collaboration in relation to the image. The selected work explored ideas of borrowing and influence, collaboration’s affect on individual practice, digital culture and the life of images online, participatory modes of creation, and questions of authorship and re-appropriation.

A grant was awarded to two collaborating visual artists, Tom Pope and Terrence Smith, to produce a new work for the festival, encouraging experimentation through collaboration. This was shown in a site specific installation in Circus Street Market.

An open submissions project explored the ambiguity of the image and the idea of the viewer as an active participant in photographic works. Four judges selected a line of text of personal resonance for photographers to respond to, and entrants submitted images to one of the four texts resulting in four individual slideshows where each judge curated a selection of responses. Judges were: Esther Teichmann, Thurston Moore, Anne Bourgeois-Vignon and Rebecca Norris Webb.

2013 Edition

The inaugural edition of the festival took place across a range of venues in Dalston, East London in September 2013, presenting innovative work from the new frontiers of photography; screening projections across indoor and outdoor spaces, and illuminating the streets of Dalston with imaginative still and moving images from national and international artists. The work selected represented a range of responses to the new digital landscape. NC13 showcased the work by over 50 artists, including international award winners Stephen Gill, Mishka Henner, Christian Patterson, Augustin Rebetez, Clare Strand and Penelope Umbrico, alongside local emerging talent. Three large screens, stalls, pop up bars and street food formed the beating heart of the festival in Gillett Square, and in the lanes and alleys nearby various projections, a purpose built cinema and other visual interventions. At the centre of the festival were three new multi-channel works, commissioned from photographers working in collaboration with filmmakers and sound artists. Three £1000 grants were available in 2013 for new site specific collaborative works. The winners of the three Night Contact grants were: Mariah Skellorn, Laura Copsey & Michael Cranny: Forecasting Maja Daniels & Anne Hovad Fisher: Are You Playing Twins Steve Ryan, Pablo Jargstorf & Charlie Doran: Dalston Dining These new collaborative multimedia pieces were premiered on the three large screens at the hub of the festival in Gillett Square. Please see below for more information about the judges as well as a list of the artists whose work was chosen through our open call for submissions of existing work. NC13 was produced by Anna Stevens, Emily Graham, Tim Bowditch and Ollie Harrop.

2014 Edition

The second edition of Night Contact took place across a range of venues in Brighton, UK in October 2014, and formed part of the internationally recognised Brighton Photo Biennial. The programme aimed to deconstruct and question the process of collaboration in relation to the image. The selected work explored ideas of borrowing and influence, collaboration’s affect on individual practice, digital culture and the life of images online, participatory modes of creation, and questions of authorship and re-appropriation.

NC14 showcased film and photography by over 180 artists, including international award winners the ARKA Group, Manuel Fernadez, Jason Fulford, Jason Lazarus & Eric Fleischauer, John Maclean, Melanie Manchot, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Joanna Piotrowska, Rick Morris Pushinsky, Ben Rivers, Aleix Plademunt, Bjorn Veno, Isabelle Wenzel & Michel Kouider, alongside emerging talent.

A large outdoor screen on Jubilee Square in Brighton

Night Contact, Brighton

 

Three outdoor screens, one indoor cinema space and pop-up installation in an HGV truck sat alongside stalls and bars stretched over a square mile of central Brighton. A £2,500 grant was awarded to two visual artists, Tom Pope and Terrence Smith, to produce a new work for the festival, encouraging experimentation through collaboration. This work, Silent Fore to Aft, was shown in a custom built projection space over the weekend of Night Contact. Over 500 artists submitted work to the event. These submissions were judged by panels of artists, including photographers and filmmakers, musicians and poets, and professionals from organisations such as Photoworks, The Photographers Gallery and Brighton City Council. NC14 was produced by Emily Graham, Tim Bowditch, Anna Gormley, Shannon Ghannam, and Anna Stevens.

The installation of ‘Silent Fore to Aft’ in Circus Street Market, Brighton

Night Contact, Brighton

Newsletter

Twitter

The Blog

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB – “TELL IT SLANT” #5

October 2014

TOM POPE AND TERRENCE SMITH – 7 DAYS, 7 QUESTIONS: DAY 7

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB – “TELL IT SLANT” #4

October 2014

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB – “TELL IT SLANT” #3

TOM POPE AND TERRENCE SMITH – 7 DAYS, 7 QUESTIONS: DAY 6

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB – “TELL IT SLANT” #2

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith – 7 Days, 7 Questions: Day 5

October 2014

Interview with Director of Night Contact Emily Graham

Rebecca Norris Webb – “Tell it Slant” #1

October 2014

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith – 7 Days, 7 Questions: Day 4

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith – 7 Days, 7 Questions: Day 3

October 2014

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith – 7 Days, 7 Questions: Day 2

October 2014

Tom Pope and Terrence Smith 7 Days, 7 Questions: Day 1

October 2014

Interview with Night Contact 2014 Commission Winners Tom Pope and Terrence Smith

September 2014

Commission and Artists Announced for Night Contact 2014

September 2014

Thurston Moore, Open Submission Judge

September 2014

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB, OPEN SUBMISSIONS JUDGE

August 2014

Anne Bourgeois-Vignon, Open submissions judge

August 2014

Esther Teichmann, Open submissions judge

Interview with Jason Evans, NC14 commission judge

July 2014

Alice Myers

September 2013

Clare Strand

September 2013

Aria – Emma Critchley

September 2013

Festival After Party

September 2013

Fool’s Errands

September 2013

Celia Davies

September 2013

Rebecca Scheinberg

September 2013

Esther Teichmann

September 2013

Arnau Oriol

September 2013

MJR Photo Collective

September 2013

Luke Norman and Nik Adam

September 2013

Melanie Manchot at Baltic 39

August 2013

Stephen Gill, from East London to Amsterdam

Augustin Rebetez selected for Foam Talent 2013

August 2013

Partners

2014

2013

  • KEY FUNDERS
  • KEY FUNDERS
  • MEDIA PARTNER
  • PROGRAMME PARTNERS
  • PROGRAMME PARTNERS
  • PROGRAMME PARTNERS
  • PROGRAMME PARTNERS
  • PROGRAMME PARTNERS
  • PRODUCTION PARTNERS