Ptarmigan existed as a project space in Vallila from 2009-2011 and a mobile curatorial/creative platform until 2014. We no longer exist as an organised collective, but this website will continue to serve as an archive of the activities produced as/at Ptarmigan during these years.
Wire Frames brings together film and video with performance art for a night of mixed-format, mixed-media mixings.
Kristīne Želve (LAT)
Kristine Zelve is a filmmaker, writer and curator of cultural events from Riga. She is en route to a Ptarmigan residency in Helsinki, where she will continue research on her film about Finnish/Latvian filmmaker Teuvo Tulio. Tonight she will screen some footage and talk about her project and Tulio's work.
Giles Bailey (UK) : All Whirlwind, Heat, and Flash (Undertone)
All Whirlwind, Heat, and Flash (Undertone) is a performance with an extract of Vito Acconci’s video Undertone (1972) that has been widely circulated on the internet. In the original video Acconci details a masturbation fantasy while apparently caressing himself under the table. He punctuates this periodically by withdrawing his hands from beneath the table and addressing the camera and the audience directly before returning his hands out of view and continuing to touch himself, thus building to a predicable conclusion. In Giles Bailey’s performance the sound of Acconci's fantasy is faded out and he delivers a monologue that constructs an alternative narrative, a counterpoint redolent with the clichés of a cinematic love story and replete with car chases and betrayal. Bailey becomes a vicarious counterpart to Acconci's narcissism, living a fantasy through the structure of his video rather than the vivid sexual act he describes.
+ performative video work by Camilla Wills and Ed Clive (UK)
