discourse

Critical Living by Alex Widdowson

"Critical Living draws upon the experiences of people involved in the Philadelphia Association therapeutic communities while also addressing some of the major discussion points in the Critical Psychiatry movement.

Critical Psychiatry, formally known as Anti-Psychiatry, has been scrutinising the dominant medical understanding of distress for over 50 years. It’s leading members were a disparate bunch that included R. D. Laing and David Cooper, both disillusioned psychiatrists and co-founders of the Philadelphia Association, as well as the renowned philosopher Michel Foucault, the libertarian Thomas Szasz, and Erving Goffman a sociologist.

Since creating a therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall in 1965, the Philadelphia Association has run more than twenty community houses which have offered asylum and hospitality to people in distress. This work continues at two houses in North London.

The experience of fifty years has shown that personal crises and seemingly inescapable unhappiness may for many people be transformed in households like these. They are places where people can come together to address their difficulties in a situation of shared everyday living."

Any Instant Whatever by Michelle Brand

"A man in a room, in a film – it is the becoming of something and simultaneously becoming in itself. Nothing is as solid as we believe.

The film explores our perception of time, bodies and objects, and our inability to comprehend the full motion of things."

https://directorsnotes.com/2020/12/09/michelle-brand-any-instant-whatever/

Director, Animator & Sound Design: Michelle Brand
Sound Mix and Additional Sound Design: Ed Rousseau
Colouring Assistants: Jiaqi Wang, Leo Metcalf, Agata Leniartek, Paige Anderson, Jordan Brunton, Megan Earls, Liang-Hsin Huang

Conception – Why I Won’t Teach My Son ‘Black Codes’ by The New York Times

"Her child is just 1, but she knows soon he will be perceived as a “big black boy.” Can she overcome the “systems” she feels are in place to oppress her young son?

Series Producer: Margaret Cheatham Williams

Animation by: Jocie Juritz

See the series: nytimes.com/conception"

Tomorrow’s On Fire by Oh Yeah Wow

Created in direct response to the Australian Bushfire crisis, Darcy Prendergast's new film #TomorrowsOnFire is a rallying cry for hope, in a country increasingly scarce of it.

Please help support injured Australian wildlife, by making a donation to: wildlifevictoria.org.au/

Lyrics:
I’m angered, incensed, enraged and fed up.
With you lazy, ignorant fossil fool chumps

You’ve sold out our nation, and served up division
Whilst it’s grief stricken people, scream at deaf politicians

And it’s not just the humans— our animals fry
While you coal hearted arsonists, continue to thrive.

On our future you wager, without heed nor concern
Just misinformation, while our backyards burn

You elected officials hold aloft lumps of coal,
With the pride of an Olympian, who’s just won gold

From up high on ye’ podium, you silence dissenters
What we’ve come to expect, from you bald one percenters

You should be disgraced, and thrown headfirst from office.
Do not pass go, do not stock mining coffers.

Instead you drive narratives, of left vs right,
Whilst you all fear, what the middle just might.

So rally together, love strong and rage stronger
So that life on this planet, can last some time longer.

Tomorrow’s on fire, and the sky it bleeds crimson.
So it’s about time, we made our tax dollars listen.

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Made by: Oh Yeah Wow, ohyeahwow.com/

Written, animated & directed by: Darcy Prendergast.

Narrated by: Miles M.

Sound Design by: Richard Tamplenizza.

Narration recorded by: Talia Raso @ Dead On Sound.

Coloured by: Jayden Dowler, Meg Lee, Matt Abello, Marc Moynihan, Michael Sweeney.

Waiting for climate change by Isaac Cordal

Piotr Kamler - Une Mission Ephemere 1993

"Kamler's animated cinema suggests a singular variety of science fiction. Completely unalike to more conventionally linear and text-based narratives, Kamler's films instead explore a series of dynamic visual motifs. Typically, the conclusion of these films is less suggestive of resolution, than it is of recurring episode."

Urban Echo by Christopher Baker, presented @ Huset i Magstræde, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007

Urban Echo is an ongoing series of interactive sound and video installations. The project has appeared in many forms ranging from intimate outdoor video sculptures to large interactive public façades. Urban Echo aims to collect and creatively represent the
thoughts and imaginings of city-dwellers.
In each installation, participants send their thoughts and questions via SMS and voicemail. The responses are then projected and added to a dynamic spatialized audio composition.

Music: J. Anthony Allen http://janthonyallen.com.
Concept: Christopher Baker http://christopherbaker.net/projects/urbanecho/