GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW – a new format and dates for the Artists’ Moving Image Festival

Maeve Redmond.

We are pleased to announce a new format and dates for the forthcoming Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF). Co-programmed by Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf the festival will take place across the course of 2021, beginning with an online exhibition from 21 – 24 January in partnership with Tramway, Glasgow followed by a series of online screenings and events, scheduled to follow the lunar calendar across the rest of the year and available to view from any location online.

GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW extends what was a weekend festival across eleven months, first inviting audience members to see an introductory selection of works in the gallery space at Tramway before participating in a full programme of virtual screenings and events.

The programme lies in between the folds of artists’ moving image, performance documentation, protest documentary and animation, considering their strategies for interruption, to undo the formal and psychological trappings of a neo-colonial, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal cinema system.

A list of works, screening times and a booking link will be released in early January 2021.

The extended structure of GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW also encourages each artist’s work to be considered distinctly, as an event in itself. Space is given for these artists to be different from one another. Each work reimagines what artists’ moving image is, literally setting a new agenda for each meeting. Alongside each release, the work or small set of works will be the subject of a dedicated event, structured with prompts to activate close and detailed watching and discussion by attendees.

The programmers undertook a residency at Cove Park earlier in 2020 to plan the programme for the festival.

Take responsibility as a viewer, watch these works carefully, energetically, expend your energy and think of new ways to be with the screen…” – Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf, Cove Park, 2020

Tako Taal said,GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW obstinately extends what was a weekend festival across 11 months as a strategy against the frenetic fatigue of the festival format. A demand can unite and thinking together about possible futures requires time; I want to stretch this out as much as I can. The extended structure encourages each artist’s work to be considered distinctly, as an event in itself and the breaks in between a chance for renewal.”

Adam Benmakhlouf said, Since the invitation to co-programme, the global pandemic has – in symbolic and real terms – prevented the festival from comfortably resuming. Our schedule is in some ways sparse, but energies are directed away from marathon watches of dozens of films. Can you instead watch these films closely and enunciate what they look like, what they do, bring, lack, break, bend, reinforce …?”

Tickets for Tramway will be released in January, alongside a full programme for the festival at the venue. An update on social distancing plans for the event will also be made then.

Dates for online events across 2021 are as follows, with a programme to be announced in the new year.

13 March – new moon (Saturday)

20 April – first quarter moon (Tuesday)

2 June – last quarter moon (Wednesday)

17 July – first quarter moon (Saturday)

22 August – full moon (Sunday)

6 October – new moon (Wednesday)

19 November – full moon (Friday)

About AMIF:

LUX Scotland and Tramway’s annual Artists’ Moving Image Festival (AMIF) was established in 2012 to provide a platform for the discussion and presentation of artists’ moving image, showcasing forms of production and research alongside screenings and discursive events. AMIF is presented and produced as a collaboration between Tramway and LUX Scotland, funded by Screen Scotland’s Film Festivals Fund and Film Hub Scotland’s Access Fund.

About the programmers:

Adam Benmakhlouf works as an artist, educator, writer and programmer. Committedly manifold, Adam’s practice includes experimental sound production, installation, painting, community organising and critical writing. Their work sensitively counters the underrepresentation and undervaluing of queer and anti-colonial lifestyles, labour, communities and knowledges.

Their work was acquired in 2018 by the Glasgow Museum collections and in 2019 they were commissioned to create a major new work for the Edinburgh Art Festival. Their writing has been included in Art Monthly, Frieze and The Skinny – where Benmakhlouf has served as the Art Editor for five years. In 2021, they will present a new solo exhibition in Glasgow’s CCA Intermedia Gallery.

Tako Taal is an artist and programmer. She was a 2019 RAW Academy fellow at RAW Material Company, Dakar and a Committee Member at Market Gallery, Glasgow, 2016 – 18.

At stake in her artistic practice are the psychic structures of colonial relations, and the question of how vivid they remain in the present. Her work has been presented at Tramway, Glasgow [online] Glasgow Short Film Festival, Glasgow Women’s Library, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, LUX Moving Image, London and Grand Union, Birmingham.

About Tramway:

Tramway is an international art space supporting established and emerging artists, both international and local, who focus on experimental and contemporary dance, visual art and performance. For thirty years Tramway has built a reputation for its unique performance and exhibition spaces and ambitious and inspiring programming.