Mount Analogue Night School

In association with Tramway, LUX Scotland presents Mount Analogue Night School, a free night school comprising three evenings of screenings, talks and discussions inspired by Mike Nelson’s Tramway exhibition Eighty Circles through Canada (the last possessions of an Orcadian mountain man). Over the course of three weeks, this temporary school will explore ways in which visual culture intersects with or frames landscape, spatial politics, anthropology and autofiction.

The night school is free and places are ticketed and available for each session. Due to capacity, these places are limited, so booking is advised.

20 November, 6.30 – 8pm

This evening looks at definitions and images of territory. Discussing seminal texts on spatial politics, as well as presenting contemporary depictions of contested territories, Week 1 draws on selected moving image works from the LUX collection, and also features a number of contemporary and soon-to-be-released films. Moving image works for this session will be circulated to ticketed members of the night school. Texts for this session include:

Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. (The Autonomous Zone)

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, writings on deterritorialization/​reterritorialization

Frantz Fanon, Concerning Violence

27 November, 6.30 – 8pm

The second meeting of the night school ranges across a broad but very rich area to look at cultural strategies for the assertion or diffusion of the self.

Picking up on Mike Nelson’s fictional biker gang and the presence of the late Erland Williamson and Wilson Duff within his installation, this session will draw a line between: problematics in ethnographic film; the persistence and usefulness of trickster archetypes; ritual in performance; and the forceful role of technology in image production.

The session will be led by moving image works but key texts for the session include:

Gabriella Coleman on Anonymous

Lewis Hyde on the trickster

Hito Stereyl on multiple archives

4 December, 6.30 – 8pm

This final session turns to interpretations of landscape. Drawing on writing by Nan Shepherd, Rene Daumal, John McPhee, and Robert Smithson, this evening examines the articulation of rural and urban environments; how interactions with the environment might relate to more contemporary approaches to the philosophy of consciousness; the notion of landscape as a space that is pre-language and pre-history; as well as exploring the consequences of aestheticising landscape.

Special guest filmmaker Jon Morrice will join the group for discussion and present extracts of forthcoming documentary portrait of Nan Shepherd, the result of his recent collaborative film with writer Robert McFarlane. Referenced texts for this event include:

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

Robert Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic

John McPhee, Basin and Range