Adam Benmakhlouf presents: each person houses parts of others

each person houses parts of others is a selection of films intended to provide empowering historical and international contexts for the civically-minded local groups in the North of Scotland, especially as they respond to the Highlands’ housing crisis. The selected artists sensitively and experimentally document the intimacy of communal living, and legacies of community-led responses to housing crises, as well as contemporary grassroots groups.

In Rosalind Nashashibi’s Hreash House, a warm and candid record is made of ​“one family as an entire community” in a concrete block shared by an extended Palestinian family. Also taking place in part in a home-setting, Winnie Herbstein’s Minutes combines footage of an independent feminist welder’s collective, who are also the actors in some improvised reconstructions of Take Root meetings, a 90s self-organised womens’ housing provider. Similarly, Ed Webb-Ingall’s Community, Land, Trust parallels contemporary and historical efforts by local groups in Milton Keynes to create not-for-profit, affordable homes. His film closely follows the methodologies of community video production, modelled on Channel 40 – a 70s local television network designed to enhance civic engagement.

Sharing a commitment to thorough research and observation, the films each provide different forms of insight into the radical and far-reaching potential of locally-based political action.

each person houses parts of others is curated by artist, writer and educator, Adam Benmakhlouf.

Programme:Rosalind Nashishibi, Hreash House, 2004. SD Video, 20 minWinnie Herbstein, Minutes, 2019. HD Video, 12 min 30 secEd Webb-Ingall, Community, Land, Trust. 2019. HD Video, 36 min 39 sec Programme duration: 79 min + introduction by Adam Benmakhlouf.

Rosalind Nashashibi works primarily in film and also makes paintings and prints. Her films use the camera as an eye to convey moments and events, merging everyday observations with fantastical and mythological elements while utilising an array of filmic conventions. In 2017 she is participating in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel and has been nominated for the Turner Prize. Alongside her solo practice she is one half of the collaboration Nashashibi/​Skaer with artist Lucy Skaer.

Hreash House shows an extended Palestinian family living a collective existence in a concrete block in Nazareth. It shows a feast and its aftermath during Ramadan.

Winnie Herbstein graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2014 (Environmental Art). She was on the committee at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, and in 2018 studied at the City of Glasgow College (Women in Construction). She is a visiting lecturer at Glasgow School of Art and member of Slaghammers, feminist welding group.

Working across a range of video, text and sculpture, the work seeks to investigate the silences and gaps in our ​‘official’ narratives. Recent projects have considered gendered spaces and materials, whilst thinking about ways in which we can live our lives differently. Solo shows include: Brace, Jupiter Woods, London (2019); STUDWORK, Glasgow International (2018); Riprap, Atelier am Ecke. Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); Before I could speak, X spoke, Outpost Gallery. Norwich, England (2017); Soft Shoulder, SWG3 Gallery. Glasgow, Scotland (2016).

Minutes draws on material from the archive of Take Root, a women’s self-build group that formed in Glasgow in the 1990s. Working closely with minutes taken from the group’s meetings, moments were developed into scenarios and restaged by members of Slaghammers, a feminist welding group based out of Glasgow Autonomous Space. Layering and sharing experiences of organising, this video was shown as part of the exhibition Brace, a solo show at Jupiter Woods, London.

Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants. He is currently writing a book with the working title ​‘Video Activism Before the Internet:1969 – 1993’. In 1976, Milton Keynes made its first broadcast on local cable television network ​‘Channel 40’. The central factors behind the cable television experiment were to make information about the new city accessible to residents and to encourage individuals and groups to share their interests, experiences and points of view with others. Community, Land, Trust recalls the original spirit of Channel 40 and imagines what it might look like forty years after it stopped broadcasting. This video is the result of a series of conversations that took place following discussions between residents trying to establish a community-housing project and a number of organisations involved in housing and land provision locally. Drawing on different forms of assembly including public meetings, community consultations and television panel shows, this video seeks to account for, and investigate, the way housing and land ownership in Milton Keynes is currently controlled and organised, asking how decisions are made and by who.

Adam Benmakhlouf is an artist, writer and educator based between the Highlands and Glasgow. Working across a variety of roles and media, Benmakhlouf’s paintings, prints, sound and video work are borne out of an engagement with informal community groups, grassroots organisations and forms of alternative education.

The works he produces reveal hints of autobiography, friendship and intimacy, which can be tender, honest and candid.