The Sneeze , 80 artists x 80 seconds, 106 minutes, featured film

In conjunction with the Gazon Rouge Gallery Athens, the artists and curators Peter Lloyd Lewis (UK) and Natasha Makowski (USA) have brought together a global grouping of eighty invited artists to provide videos of 80 second length each. These have been edited together to form a single work resembling a feature film format length of 106 minutes. This global grouping of artists represents each continent. The exhibition will open in June 2004. The event will coincide with the Olympic Games and relative Cultural Olympiad.
The project refers to the ethos of the Olympic Games where individuals come together to compete and yet form an event that celebrates diversity of cultures but a harmony of intention. The end forms a 'whole', an event.
The event is supported by UCE Birmingham (B.I.A.D.) and also the British Council.

Project brief
random, contagious, passing on, viral connection, chaos, order, subject, object, spreading, freedom, fantasy, epic, still, moving, abstract, variable, recorded, live unseen, experiment, focus, visible, aesthetic, contaminatory, subversive, rapture, metaphor, allegory, exciting, changeable, be-able, induced, silent, 'a dizzying sophism whir' one global context, narrative, explosion, sense, nonsense.
To coincide with the Athens Olympic Games in Summer 2004 and to open at the Gazon Rouge Gallery Athens, the artists Natasha Makowski and Peter Lloyd Lewis have invited a global grouping of artists to present videos that together form a celebration of image diversity and unknown connections.

Welcome to…… the SNEEZE...............a Featured Film
80 artists x 80 seconds 106 minutes

A celebration of a new equation
Referring to Thomas Edison innovative kinograph film of a sneeze where Frederic P. Ott 1 stood before the worlds first movie camera on January 7th 1894, this project pays homage to and refers to this epic event of early cinema, the creation of one of the first moving images. Acknowledging both the importance of the event in moving image history and considering the idea of its experimental reference we intend to explore the relationships between video art, feature film, and the idea of connections being made between artists and their work, through the questioning of hierarchies, the exploration of narrative and the creative use of time structure, all through the equation of 80 x 80. The idea is not necessarily to form a cohesive and unquestioning result but to use the format for ideas to clash and provoke rereading of work and their relationships through their placing with the other pieces presented.

106 minutes is the average time of a contemporary feature film, together the videos will become/be viewed as a feature that incorporates the work of 80 artists.
Its focus is to form an innovative and questioning work that reinvents and represents itself continually through the random interjection of a program. One research project in the production considerations is to write a computer program that emulates a virus pattern, one that controls order and sequence, calculated chaos, working with other installation variables attempting a new discourse in the formal viewing pattern, so no experience of the piece will be similar.
Part visible and invisible the act of sneezing is an act we experience visibly in terms of the physical act yet we don't necessarily see the viral agents. It's a random connective act > one that releases with variable effects. It is this idea of the unknown connection that we wish to discover through this process.
In his book Relational Aesthetics the writer and curator Nicolas Bourriaud writes about forms coming together through encounters that pile up and produce the birth of the world. From the “deviation” and random encounter of a group of elements a form is produced through this lasting relationship.
We are asking artists to consider this fact as we ask them to make videos that not only can be seen as unique pieces of work that have integrity and can be shown separately but also when placed together they form a piece, ' a whole' that can make unexpected connections and might or might not make a rational or part rational statement.
The viewer will have the opportunity to engage fully with the piece and see the total event if desired or similarly will be able to engage in partial connections, seeing two or three pieces in conjunction and then moving on, channel surfing.
The artists invited will be from a global context-and interdisciplinary practice. Some will be chosen because their subject matter does bare some relationship to the project idiosyncrasy. But in keeping with the ethos of the project we are inviting a surprising and innovative selection of practitioners so that expectations are perpetually confounded. Their responses can be allegorical or metaphorical.
Artists will be free to interpret the invitation as they want. All we ask is that they embrace the ethos of the project fully in terms of a collaborative event with a multidisciplinary exhibition designed for global outreach > spreading.
1January 7, 1894, in Thomas Edison’s film studio, where WKL Dickson the inventor of the Kinetograph used his laboratory assistant, Fredric P Ott to depict an action, Ott sneezing, 'Record of a Sneeze’, the creation of the first moving imagery- forty-five frames- a little over a second in length.

the sneeze 80 x 80
artists
[complete list]

aas   UK
Knut Asdam    Norway
Fabienne Audeoud   France
SE Barnet   US
Dave Beech   UK
Zoulikha Bouabdellah   Algeria
Gary Breslin   US
Carmel Buckley   UK
Dmitry Bulnygin   Russia
Nanna Debois Buhl    Denmark
David Burrows   UK
Ellen Cantor   US
Adam Chodzko   UK
Stuart Croft UK
Alexandre Da Cunha   Brazil
Julian Dashper / Tania Doropoulos, New Zealand
Dana Duff   US
Amal El Kenawy   Egypt
Solange Fabiao   US
Masaki Fujihata   Japan
Carlos Garaicoa   Cuba
Raquel Garbelotti   Brazil
Emil Goh   Australia
Wang GongXin   China
Subodh Gupta   India
Karen Guthrie    UK
Mark Harris   UK
Shari Hatt   Canada
Thalia Hioti   Greece
HK119   Finland
Janet Hodgson / Susan Ayton   UK
Emil Hrvatin / Peter Senk (FWC), Slovenia
Steven Hull   US
Ip Yuk Yiu   China
Sabine Jelinek    Austria
Paul Ramirez Jonas   US
Nikos Kanarelis   Greece
Bouchra Khalili    Morocco
Bharti Kher   India
Patrick Killoran   US
Jinhan Ko   Canada
Germaine Koh   Canada
Laresa Kosloff   Australia
Pawel Kruk   Poland
John Lane   US
Brendan Lee   Australia
Peter Lloyd Lewis   UK
Hubert Lobnig   Austria
Barry Mcgee   US
Dave McKenzie   US
David Mabb   UK
Natasha Makowski     US
Thando Mama   South Africa
Lynne Marsh   Canada
Despina Meimaroglou   Greece
Jo Mitchell   UK
Wagner Morales    Brazil
Hiroharu Mori   Japan
Ivan Moudov   Bulgaria
Moataz Nasr Egypt
Ernesto Neto Brazil
Mohamdou NDoye   Senegal
Jeroen Offerman    Netherlands
Irena Paskali    Macedonia
Christoffer Paues   Sweden
Alexandros Psychoulis   Greece
Rosangela Renno   Brazil
Abigail Reynolds    UK
John Russell   UK
Yorgos Sapountzis   Greece
Pekka Sassi    Finland
Dallas Seitz      Canada
Fatou Kande Senghor   Senegal
Sanjit Sethi      US
Michael Smith US
Biljana Tanurovska    Macedonia
Rebecca Trost   Germany
Dylan Volkhardt Australia
Benjamin Weissman / Damon McCarthy US
Sue Williamson   South Africa