Plastik Festival offering a fantastic choice of film in Cork and Dublin

Plastik Festival, a new international festival of artists’ moving image is due to take place over three weekends in venues in Cork and Dublin during February.

The first of its kind in Ireland, the festival will feature the work of internationally renowned artists in experimental film from Holland, Taiwan, New York and Croatia.

A broad selection of screenings and installations, as well as discussions and reading groups will take place as part of the festival.

The curator of the Cork leg of the festival, which is titled Phenomenal Love and falls on Valentine’s weekend, is artist and founding member of the Experimental Film Club, Aoife Desmond.

Plastik Festival is supported by LUX Critical Forum Dublin, Templebar Gallery and Studios, and the Irish Film Institute (IFI).

“There’s very much a sense that this is needed, and that this is new,” Desmond says.

“It’s definitely a film festival but it’s a very particular type of work. We’re obviously not showing any blockbusters! We are placing this kind of work back into focus, removing it from the periphery.”

The focus of Desmond’s selections for Phenomenal Love is ‘Expanded Cinema’, a term that was coined by Gene Youngblood in the 1970s.

He was influential in establishing the field of media arts and wrote a book in which he described filmmaking that utilised technologies such as special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments and holography.

New York duo Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder will open Phenomenal Love with a live projection performance of their piece ‘Obliteration’ in the Theatre Development Centre in the Triskel Arts Centre and will join a panel discussion entitled ‘Film is dead, long live film’ the following day.

Gibson and Recoder, who have collaborated since 2000, prefer to be known as ‘light projection artists’.

PLASTIK Cork kicks off this Fri with a new live performance by Gibson + Recoder @TriskelCork http://t.co/uO6v6En9i2 pic.twitter.com/Vowo6Z8sdh

— PLASTIK Festival (@PLASTIKFestival) February 10, 2015

“This is working in a very physical way with light, in a room, and the audience are very central to that,” Desmond said.

“Some people identify themselves as artist filmmakers, others as experimental filmmakers, or simply filmmakers; to an extent the distinctions are redundant, but at times they’re quite important to how the work is positioned and how it’s received. Most of this work is being presented in a cinematic context. We are positioning it back in to that discussion that all filmmakers share.”

The festival will also host an award for new film work, the Plastik Critical Forum Award.

Five shortlisted artists will have their films screened in Galway and Dublin in the IFI, with the overall winner, chosen by a panel from Critical Forum Dublin, announced after the IFI screening on Saturday February 21.

While many of the festival events and screenings will take place in the IFI, the festival is consciously not Dublin-centred, with several Cork arts institutions supporting the new event.

Desmond is excited about the potential the festival offers artists into the future.

“I suppose the thing about putting this in place is what follows on from it. By doing this, it could generate who knows what? New collaborations may emerge between the Cork artists and visiting artists...who knows? These new opportunities can only come up by putting something in place.”

However, more than any potential for collaboration or recognition for artists involved in moving image, Desmond’s goal is to broaden the audience for experimental film, “So that a much wider audience thinks, ‘This is for me. I haven’t seen this kind of work before but it’s important work, and these are really beautiful films.’”

• Plastik Festival takes place from tomorrow to Sunday in Cork at Crawford Art Gallery, Triskel Arts Centre and The Guesthouse near Shandon; followed by Dublin, Feb 20-22, at IFI and Templebar Gallery. www.plastikfestival.com