Little Jewel Cinema JET SEASON 26th Nov 07 - 7th March 08

 

Ben Jeans Houghton's films are full of things. Things are noisy, cluttered and distracting. Things disturb the pure note which comes from emptiness. In Houghton's work there is silence. How does he achieve this silence of things? These carefully composed films balance their content, playing objects off against each other. Each object in Houghton's work can be said to have a frequency, and these frequencies are used to cancel each other out.

Houghton's work is minimal, in a sense. It is composed and controlled, but unlike the formalised processes of Minimalism, it does not seek to tune out the world within which it is formed. This acceptance of the city he lives in, full of noise and clashing colours, runs parallel with his uncanny ability to compose a shot filled only with stillness.

The fullness of the scenes he presents is not at odds with the quietness that fills his art. Untitled Animation is full of frenetic activity. Objects are arranged and re-arranged by the unseen artist; the quest for compositional perfection never fulfilled. This presentation of constant change is a zen-like answer to the question of artistic activity. The product is the process. The answer is the question.

These films are snapshots of Houghton's artistic practice, which is fuelled by, and fuels, his life. All of the objects in Untitled Animation have been rescued from skips, salvaged from office refits or found in back streets. His magpie tendencies extend not only to objects, but to situations. Void and 1106 exploit specific circumstances that allow the artist to present familiar scenes, in this case the sky and a normally busy street, as other-worldly places. 1106 in particular, with it's empty streets and blinking traffic lights, makes us ask, “How did he do that”.

I have worked collaboratively with Houghton; on a book that is to be released as part of this programme of films, and on the film that will be shown at the end of the programme. Both have been exercises in interpretation, we simply work in opposite ways. I have to translate his visual language in to words before I can begin the process of writing for him, and he has to translate my writing back in to a set of visual ideas before he can use it. He thinks only in images. 1106 was filmed by him, on his own, each perfectly composed shot done first time, and with only his approximate visual estimations to tell him where to stand. Every single photo in Perdu and every object in Untitled Animation was sourced and organised by him. Before the filming of Untitled Animation he ordered the objects according to colour, a mammoth task, but for Houghton, a necessary one.

It is this exploitation of his own attention to minutiae that helps make Houghton's films so interesting. To watch him inventing hypothetical histories for the objects he finds is to watch a master story-teller at work. His stories are a visual exploration of the world in which he embeds himself. He does not position himself as an observer, though he does observe. He does not claim to be an outsider, though he is often separate. All the time he is within; operating, interpreting and repositioning both the environment and himself.

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