#22 Matthew Noel-Tod, Nausea
2 - 21 July
In the Church of St.Simon and St.Jude
Nausea is distributed by LUX (www.lux.org.uk)
Funded by Arts Council England with the support of Film London
Thomas Stone performing soundtrack, Saturday 15 July 5pm
Extra Screening and Book Launch, Wednesday 5 July 7.30pm
Bicycle Thief (1998 / 2001) 3 mins 30
Jetzt Im Kino (2003) 11 mins 40
Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors (2006) 46 mins
Matthew Noel-Tod was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1978. He studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, London (1997-1998), Fachhochschule Aachen, Germany (2000) and Norwich School of Art and Design (1998-2001). He lives and works in Norfolk and London.
'Nausea' (2005) presents video footage shot entirely on a mobile phone camera, a medium that is so readily a part of 21st century living that an association and understanding between the work being shown and the viewer is automatically established. It is overlaid in parts with non-sequential words taken from the existential novel of Jean-Paul Sartre from which it adopts its title, creating a visual environment suggestive of the constant interplay between the viewer and the viewed; the watched and the watching. The use of overlaid abstract syntax simultaneously brings together and breaks apart the diaristic flow of the piece; words come together as if to form a sentence that the viewer can relate to the flow of images, but as easily as a sentence is formed from these non-sequiturs, it can break down, leaving new image-text associations.
Matthew Noel-Tod’s 54-minute video ‘Nausea’ (2005) presents video footage shot entirely on a mobile phone camera, a medium that is so readily a part of 21st century living that an association and understanding between the work being shown and the viewer is automatically established. It is overlaid in parts with non-sequential words taken from the existential novel of Jean-Paul Sartre from which it adopts its title, creating a visual environment suggestive of the constant interplay between the viewer and the viewed; the watched and the watching.
The use of overlaid abstract syntax simultaneously brings together and breaks apart the diaristic flow of the piece; words come together as if to form a sentence that the viewer can relate to the flow of images, but as easily as a sentence is formed from these non-sequiturs, it can break down, leaving new image-text associations.
The imagery within ‘Nausea’ takes the form of an abstraction of a year of the artist’s life explored in an attempted instinctive manner, analysing the presence of mediation, analysis or artifice in images. Limitations, restrictions and oddities within mobile phone video technology are examined and embraced. As Noel-Tod himself says “the often casual nature of the images in ‘Nausea’ comes ultimately from an examination of a certain ‘end-point’ in cinema, wherein we only ever imagine and receive mediated images – images of images.”
Having exhibited internationally since 1999, Noel-Tod has explored and refined his ability to create multi-expressional videos that display a range of aesthetics and deliberately question cinema’s sensual experience. Noel-Tod's interest in the interplay between words and moving image is a recurring theme in his work. The 46-minute film 'Obcy Aktorzy/Foreign Actors' (2006) uses the visual and aural stimulus of Polish cinema as a springboard into recontextualised narrative, creating multiple fictions and dramas using actors and actresses garnered from Polish cinema, television and graduated Acting School students.
Matthew Noel-Tod studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London and Norwich School of Art and Design. He lives and works in Norfolk and London. In 2004 he was credited as being 'one of London's rising moving image stars' (Time Out, London, 2004). Noel-Tod received this critical acclaim before the 54-minute film 'Nausea' was even finished, having already established himself firmly as a pioneer of video art in Britain and Europe.
‘Nausea’ was shown in the 49th Times bfi London Film Festival 2005 and the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam 2006. ‘Nausea’ was funded by Arts Council England with the Support of Film London and is distributed by LUX (www.lux.org.uk). An artist’s book and audio CD publication titled ‘WORDS IMAGES MUSIC (Nausea)’ featuring images from the video, contextual writings by Steven Ball and Rastko Novaković, plus a CD of the soundtrack music ‘Nausea Songs’ by Thomas Stone will be available from OUTPOST during the exhibition priced £10. Distributed by OUTPOST and supported by Arts Council England.
A discussion between Kaavous Clayton and Matthew Noel-Tod via email on 27th June 2006.
Kaavous Clayton: Do you watch 'Big Brother'?
Matthew Noel-Tod: Not much. I watched most of series 2, I think. I remember becoming incredibly depressed while watching it, or maybe I watched it because I was depressed. It was hard to tell. I stopped watching TV in 2002 and I haven't watched TV at home since. Now, when I go to peoples' houses where the TV is on I can't stop watching it, but I never get the feeling I've missed much in 4 years.
KC: That's a lot of information about your television watching habits. I was more interested in finding out if you feel there are any parallels between 'Nausea' and 'Big Brother', particularly the title sequence with the flashing words and the big eye.
MNT: Well, the short answer would have been "No", but there is definitely a correlation between my videos and what I watch, which is your question generally. However, specifically, no, there was no conscious decision to emulate the 'Big Brother' title sequence in 'Nausea'. The eye is a very potent symbol in cinema, my using it relate as much to Vertov's 'Kino-Eye', Hitchcock's 'Psycho' or Bunuel and Dali's 'Un Chien Andalou' as to that TV programme. It's my eye, which you see in 'Nausea', so the camera is turned back on me.
KC: It seems that in 'Nausea' there is a kind of 'Big Brother' reversal and integration where you are a contestant being filmed, a cameraman filming, a producer editing and audience member watching.
MNT: 'Nausea' is panoptic, meaning broad in scope or all-inclusive, but also 'everything visible in one view'. Relating to my video and what you say about 'Big Brother', I think panoptic is the most appropriate term. It's not really a video about surveillance as we understand it in society, because this kind of surveillance induces paranoia. I would say that precisely because I am doing all this concurrent watching and being observed myself, 'Nausea' is not paranoid. It was actually very enlightening and positive for me to make this video. The images and moments I capture in 'Nausea' are moments hidden from this surveillance of society, private moments and moments when I am often genuinely alone.
KC: But you have turned these private moments into public ones by presenting them to the world. By sharing these times and exposing yourself in a confessional manner are you trying to subvert the traditional form of surveillance?
MNT: I would say that I'm subverting the traditional form of the documentary, rather than solely the concept of surveillance. Documentary is a description I hate. Every documentary film or video creates its own fiction; moreover, every fiction has elements of documentary often more profound than derived from filming the "real" subject. The images in 'Nausea' are documenting things which happened to me; things that I saw, but it's obvious that the viewer sees them filtered through the distortion of the camera and the image / music / text montage. In that sense, I feel that my ideas about filmmaking and art are expressed publicly to someone who watches 'Nausea', but I don't think a viewer gets an explicit window onto my life, more that they get an impression that I create.
KC: I agree, everything is real, even fiction. As we have had to conduct this interview via email and I can't take a photograph of you can you email one of yourself please. Landscape and preferably taken on your phone.