“Tyger! Tyger! Project 5”
Philip Brophy, Cassandra Tytler, Emile Zile and Johann Rashid
16 Nov → 8 Dec 2012

For the fifth iteration of Tyger! Tyger!, Philip Brophy has collaborated with filmmakers Cassandra Tytler, Emile Zile and Johann Rashid to write a surround sound score for three new short film projects. The three films in the series are Johann Rashid’s The Man Who Folded Himself, Cassandra Tytler’s Messed Up Pop Song and Emile Zile’s Jack.

While it is customary for score composers to work to the rough edit of a film, for the Tyger! Tyger! films Philip worked in an unusual way. He first read the script and engaged in detailed conversation with the writer/directors. He then created a film score for each work prior to the film being either shot or edited.

Please join us for a special screening and artist talk with Philip Brophy on The films will be also presented at West Space for the duration of the exhibition. Please scroll down for further information about each film and biographies for each artist.

The Tyger! Tyger! project comprises six new artwork commissions mounted across 2011 and 2012 curated by Phip Murray. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

………………………………………………………………………………

Philip Brophy’s work constitutes reworking pre-existing media, composing film, music and soundscapes, mixing, mastering, installing and presenting audiovisual work in surround sound environments. Brophy’s eclectic practice ranges from early musical experimentation, underground performances of deconstructed disco, to reconstructed soundscapes for rock video clips and new original scores for Japanese anime.
www.philipbrophy.com

………………………………………………………………………………

Messed Up Pop Song by Cassandra Tytler
Messed Up Pop Song is focused on the fine line between spectatorship and imitation, exploring how we watch people on-screen and identify with them – as a fan, in lust, in camaraderie. The film questions the narcissism inherent in watching: How do we see ourselves? How do we wish we saw ourselves? What are we attracted to? In our engagement with their projected self-image, we watch their confused attempt to be something else, as we pay witness to their on-screen failure.

Cassandra Tytler is an artist working within single-channel video, performance and installation. Her work explores contemporary cultural iconography and the idealised (un)realities that exist within it. She is particularly fascinated by the symbolism of popular clichés, and her work pastiches isolated and fragmented cultural conventions and shapes them into revealing stories or situations. Tytler is interested in the mechanics of performance and representation. She performs the roles in her videos as herself and herself-as-cultural-stereotype, highlighting the artificial and burlesque nature of the characters she represents. She pushes her performances so that they become a ‘theatre of performance’ – an allusion to the absurdity of the cultural roles we ‘play’ and are played for us in the theatre of life. Tytler’s work is playful and humorous and, at times, absurd but it is also an ongoing examination of masquerade and mimicry, and a personal interaction where she plays at becoming something ‘other’ than herself. She is particularly interested in gender construction (both male and female) in popular culture and represents gender as elastic and unrealistic. Tytler has exhibited work in galleries such as A.R.A.C., Paris, Gallery Titanik, Turku, Finland, Harold Golen Gallery, Miami, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Plimsol Gallery, Tasmania, Metro Arts, Brisbane, Kings Artist Run Initiative, Melbourne, and West Space Gallery, Melbourne. Her films have screened in numerous festivals in Australia, the U.S.A., Korea, and Europe. She has done her live video performances in Paris, Barcelona and Tallinn. Tytler completed her Masters degree at RMIT in 2003. She is currently based in Paris. www.cassandratytler.com

………………………………………………………………………………

THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF by Johann Rashid
Borjan stands waiting for your action. We are in a library. Borjan asks the librarian if they have this book or that book, looking for the key to the next chapter of the game. The levels of the library, the repetition of structure and action, and the notion of characters only animated by our presence viewing them, are all reflective of late 1990s PC adventure games. The possibility of multiple turns and choices is further expanded as Borjan finds a charred book that allows him to see into a prison-maze. With his vision guided by a greyhound familiar, he discovers men who can’t remember being free but who pace the leafy corridors nonetheless. The title of the film echoes the title of a 1940s sci-fi novel about a man who travels through time to bet on greyhounds. Led by the sound of a Serbian whistle, Borjan’s vision is drawn into this trap, but when he himself appears in the maze world he finds it artificial and capricious, transformed by his presence. As he explores it, the maze alters until, finally, it breaks down and releases him into a harsh natural landscape. Here, he discovers his part in the burning of the book that brought him here and the elliptical nature of this game and of the film itself.

Johann Rashid is an artist working in video, performance and sculpture. His practice explores magic, illusion and truth, and the tension between immersion, documentation and elusive moments.
tlsc.co/johann

………………………………………………………………………………

Emile Zile’s multifaceted practice examines the effects of the mediation of experience through communications technology. Building on a background of live and single-channel video, his work utilises site-specific performance, portraiture and filmmaking to capture the traces of humanity inscribed on the physical remnants of a digital culture. Recent exhibitions and performances include De Appel Amsterdam, Federation Square Melbourne, Rojo Nova Audiovisual Sessions Sao Paulo Brazil, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Paradiso Amsterdam, F.E.A.V.S. Osaka Japan, Today’s Art Festival The Hague, and the Rietveld Arsenale – 53rd Venice Biennale. emilezile.com