Artists' Film: Selected 12
This is a recording of an in-conversation as part of Selected 12, with artist April Lin 林森 and Samiir Saunders.
Selected 12 is a collection of diverse, surprising and provocative new films by early career artists: Sarah Gonnet, Sophie Hoyle, Jessy Jetpacks, Seo Hye Lee, April Lin 林森, Laura Lulika, Jennifer Mehigan and Ker Wallwork. The eight artists were selected by Adham Faramawy and Guy Oliver (shortlisted artists for the 2021 Film London Jarman Award), FLAMIN and videoclub to present a thought-provoking programme celebrating diverse filmmaking talent.
April Lin 林森 (b. 1996, Stockholm — they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator investigating image-making and world-building as sites for the construction, sustenance, and dissemination of co-existent yet conflicting truths. Working across moving image, performance, creative computing and installation, they dream & explore & critique & fret & catastrophise & imagine & play — for a collective remembering of forgotten pasts, for a critical examination of normalised presents, and for a visualising of freer futures as, of course, imagined from the periphery.
Interweaving strands of auto-biography, documentary, queer ecology, and new media, April Lin 林森’s works are topped off with an inevitable garnish consisting of the other matters dialoguing with their brain and heart during the making process of each piece. Uniting their genre-fluid body of work is a commitment to centring oppressed knowledges, building an ethics of collaboration around reciprocal care, and exploring the linkages between history, memory, and interpersonal and structural trauma.
Their work has been shown at the Museum of the Moving Image New York, Sheffield DocFest, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, the V&A Museum, HOME, Malmö Konstmuseum, LA Filmforum, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Manchester Art Galley, MADATAC, Arebyte Gallery, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, NOWNESS Asia, and 4:3 Boiler Room.
Samiir Saunders (b. 1996 — he/they) is a mixed-media poet based in Birmingham. Their work consists of spoken word poetry, performance art, experimental hip-hop, browser-based artworks, and poetry films.
Samiir’s work examines the tension between a desire to communicate authentically and the limitations of digital technology (and of language itself). He explores how the internet’s seemingly unlimited pool of information sits within a wider context of capitalism, post-colonialism, and the various erasures therein, whilst also finding a space for playfulness and the acceptance of ambiguity.
Samiir’s work has featured at galleries, festivals, and online spaces, including: New Art Exchange, Vivid Projects, The Joyous Thing II, SHOUT Festival, Fat Out Fest, no barking aRt Gallery, Channel 4 Random Acts, Eastside Projects, Supernormal Festival, Artefact Gallery, and Birmingham Open Media.
videoclub is an artists’ moving image platform showing artists’ work across the UK and internationally. We support artists through curated programmes, engaging the public through screenings, exhibitions, talks, residencies, and commissions.
Film London Artists' Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) supports London-based artists working in moving image, working in partnership to deliver a comprehensive programme including production award schemes, regular screenings, talks and events, as well as the prestigious annual Film London Jarman Award.