Rivers
From Mediaspace
Ben Rivers
The films of Ben Rivers (born Somerset, 1972, lives in London) are rich, cinematic portraits that explore wilderness environments and self-contained worlds, representing memory through visual fragments. He primarily uses 16mm film, often black and white, and processed in the kitchen sink, giving the appearance of ageing, archival footage. The artist shoots on an old Bolex wind-up camera, which can only offer a continuous shot of 30 seconds. This arduous process has limitations turned to the artist's advantage to accumulate fragments of situations.
For mediaspace_09 Ben Rivers will show his 2006 film The Coming Race. The 5 min long 16 mm film consists of hand processed material in which thousands of people climb a rocky mountain terrain. The destination and purpose of their ascension remains unclear. A vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage fraught with unknown intentions. The title ‘The Coming Race’ is after a Victorian novel by E.G.E. Bulwer-Lytton, about a race of people who live under a mountain.
Ben Rivers born in Somerset lives and works in London. He has screened his films in International Film Festivals and Art Spaces worldwide and received commissioning awards from The Arts Council of England, London Artists Film and Video Awards and The Netherlands Film Fund. His two recent works 'This is My Land' and 'The Coming Race' were included in 'if' at Bloomberg Space in March this year. Rivers' on going project 'The Brighton Cinematheque', which he co-founded in 1996, is a regular screening programme of recent and historical works, which highlight his interests in dealing with the complex strategies to convey cinematic histories within film making. Included in the ICA's Nought to Sixty programme Rivers held a unique screening drawing from his own ideas and fellow artist film-maker friends.
