SALA 2020: The Unwelcome

       

The Unwelcome Video Showcase


Over the last few years, my creative practice has moved increasingly from various forms of written poetry into video art. By combining moving image, audio and text, videos expand the range of poetic expression far beyond the printed page or live performance: they can give voice to the literally unspeakable; they can generate images of the unseen and unseeable; they can develop rhythms and moods that defy description with conventional language.

This collection presents a selection of my more political short videos, commenting on the environment, corruption, border controls, colonialism, authoritarianism… unwanted circumstances that, by design or active neglect, now or in a dystopian future, can make us, and those around us, feel isolated, afraid, oppressed, forgotten, erased, silenced… unwelcome.

Most of these videos have been widely screened at festivals, galleries, on-line events and public art installations around the world: UK, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Russia, Austria, Germany, Croatia, USA, Mexico, Brazil, as well as in Australia. The texts for many of them have been published independently in literary and poetry journals. All of the writing, audio composition and performance, video production, animation and editing is by me. Many videos feature special effects that I made myself in Isadora 3, Motion 5 and Final Cut Pro X.

You can view the videos, either as a sequence in the showcase above, or by clicking on the individual images below. Clicking on the video title will take you to a new page with additional information about the context of each video, its production notes, underlying text, and and screening history.

Click here to see all Ian’s videos on Vimeo.
Click here to see a list of all Ian’s video art and their screenings.
Click here to see a list of Ian’s published poetry.


Colony Collapse (2019)
“ghosts, rimed with salt…”
Leakage (2018)
“under the hammer, blessed with character…”
FLOODTIDE (2018)
“after The Incoming, The Overflow…”
future perfect (2019)
“words stripped of ornamentation…”
after-image (2020)
“see them and look away…”
The Exclusion Principle (2020)
“different, opposite, an outermost shell…”
homeless (2017)
“this is not…”
these days (2018)
“on the road, imagine, how will it end…?”
ISOLATION PROCEDURES (2020)
“closed until further notice…”
dog daze (2017)
“as cool as marrowbone jelly…”
The Ferrovores (2020)
“wrought, cast, smithed, we are what we eat…”
unvoiced (2019)
Human Rights, declared, redacted, erased…”