Under Cover of Night
Presented by Belltable Late Night in association with Ormston House
Late night double-bill of artists’ film
Under cover of night is an idiom used when describing activities carried out during night time hours, in darkness, avoiding detection from authority. The clandestine and revolutionary connotations of this idiom frame this programme. With distinct focusses and subject matters, the films find commonality in their radical propositions for alternative forms of living and being.
A brief introduction precedes each film and there will be a DJ in the foyer playing music before, between and after the films.
Presented by Belltable Late Night in association with Ormston House
Late night double-bill of artists’ film
Under cover of night is an idiom used when describing activities carried out during night time hours, in darkness, avoiding detection from authority. The clandestine and revolutionary connotations of this idiom frame this programme. With distinct focusses and subject matters, the films find commonality in their radical propositions for alternative forms of living and being.
A brief introduction precedes each film and there will be a DJ in the foyer playing music before, between and after the films.
About the films
Becoming plant (2022) by Grace Ndiritu
Becoming Plant follows six dancers who participate in a therapeutic group experiment with psychedelics, while temporarily ‘living’ together on the demilitarised industrial site. While they are subjected to the plant’s consciousness and to each other’s presence, they perform a choreography, aligning their naked bodies with each other and with the architectural ruins. The film serves as a catalyst to discuss wider social and relational issues such as science, spirituality, psychiatry, healing, healthcare and the problems of collective depression and trauma resulting from living in the age of Late Capitalism.
Expulsion (2021) by Caoimhín Gaffney
Expulsion follows a fictional utopian Queer State as it devolves from a promised oppositional force into a dystopian bureaucracy. Interspersed throughout, is archival footage of queer activist Joan Jett Blakk, the drag persona of Terence Smith, who ran for president of the USA in 1992. Expulsion navigates through queer history, from the witchcraft trials and the inquisition, to current debates around the co-opting of queerness by capitalism. The optimism and determination seen in the footage of Joan Jett Blakk’s speeches is countered by the fictional queer state depicted by Gaffney, which descends into totalitarianism.