Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson
30 Jan - 02 Feb 2014
© Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson
In Search of UIQ, 2013, film still
Courtesy: Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson.
In Search of UIQ, 2013, film still
Courtesy: Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson.
SILVIA MAGLIONI & GRAEME THOMSON
In Search of UIQ: It took forever getting ready to exist Part 1
30 January – 2 February 2014
The Otolith Collective and The Showroom are delighted to announce the UK premiere of artists Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson’s new film In Search of UIQ (2013, 72 min).
Moving surreptitiously between the modes of essay, documentary and fiction, In Search of UIQ unfolds the story of philosopher and schizoanalyst Félix Guattari’s attempts to produce a science fiction blockbuster from his original screenplay, Un Amour d’UIQ (UIQ in Love). The script imagines a hyper-intelligent, invisible, protean life force dubbed UIQ (Infra-quark Universe) that makes contact with a community of outsiders while simultaneously causing havoc to global communications networks as it begins to develop consciousness. Guattari began work on the project at the beginning of the 1980s – collaborating at one time with the independent filmmaker Robert Kramer – and his radical vision for a subversive ‘popular’ film would occupy him on and off for the next seven years.
In Search of UIQ sees Maglioni & Thomson reveal key moments in the development of Guattari’s ambitious project. The film has three movements: the first evokes the prehistory of Guattari's previous film projects around the free radio and the Italian autonomist movements; the second is part documentary, part fiction and reenacts Guattari as an unlikely alien visitor in Hollywood; and the final movement enfolds the artists’ research into Guattari’s archive around the enigmatic figure of a Finnish filmmaker who appears to have his own plans for the Un Amour d’UIQ script.
A special event will be held at The Showroom on Saturday 1 February, with a screening of In Search of UIQ, presentations by Otolith Collective’s Kodwo Eshun, artist and theorist Mark Fisher and philosopher and writer Federico Campagna on the themes of 1980s science fiction cinema, collectivity, mutation, Hollywood cinema and the Autonomist movement, and concluding with a discussion with the artists.
In Search of UIQ is part of a mutating, multiform project that Maglioni & Thomson have conceived around Guattari’s unmade film, with the first work the publication of the Un Amour d’UIQ script, accompanied by a visual essay and Guattari’s notes and letters. It took forever getting ready to exist marks a new stage of development that begins with The Showroom screenings to be followed by a series of ‘transduction’ workshops in different countries and concluding with an exhibition at The Showroom in January 2015 and the English translation of Un Amour d’UIQ: Scénario pour un film qui manque.
We would like to thank Lisson Gallery for equipment support.
In Search of UIQ: It took forever getting ready to exist Part 1
30 January – 2 February 2014
The Otolith Collective and The Showroom are delighted to announce the UK premiere of artists Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson’s new film In Search of UIQ (2013, 72 min).
Moving surreptitiously between the modes of essay, documentary and fiction, In Search of UIQ unfolds the story of philosopher and schizoanalyst Félix Guattari’s attempts to produce a science fiction blockbuster from his original screenplay, Un Amour d’UIQ (UIQ in Love). The script imagines a hyper-intelligent, invisible, protean life force dubbed UIQ (Infra-quark Universe) that makes contact with a community of outsiders while simultaneously causing havoc to global communications networks as it begins to develop consciousness. Guattari began work on the project at the beginning of the 1980s – collaborating at one time with the independent filmmaker Robert Kramer – and his radical vision for a subversive ‘popular’ film would occupy him on and off for the next seven years.
In Search of UIQ sees Maglioni & Thomson reveal key moments in the development of Guattari’s ambitious project. The film has three movements: the first evokes the prehistory of Guattari's previous film projects around the free radio and the Italian autonomist movements; the second is part documentary, part fiction and reenacts Guattari as an unlikely alien visitor in Hollywood; and the final movement enfolds the artists’ research into Guattari’s archive around the enigmatic figure of a Finnish filmmaker who appears to have his own plans for the Un Amour d’UIQ script.
A special event will be held at The Showroom on Saturday 1 February, with a screening of In Search of UIQ, presentations by Otolith Collective’s Kodwo Eshun, artist and theorist Mark Fisher and philosopher and writer Federico Campagna on the themes of 1980s science fiction cinema, collectivity, mutation, Hollywood cinema and the Autonomist movement, and concluding with a discussion with the artists.
In Search of UIQ is part of a mutating, multiform project that Maglioni & Thomson have conceived around Guattari’s unmade film, with the first work the publication of the Un Amour d’UIQ script, accompanied by a visual essay and Guattari’s notes and letters. It took forever getting ready to exist marks a new stage of development that begins with The Showroom screenings to be followed by a series of ‘transduction’ workshops in different countries and concluding with an exhibition at The Showroom in January 2015 and the English translation of Un Amour d’UIQ: Scénario pour un film qui manque.
We would like to thank Lisson Gallery for equipment support.