John Hill is...

John Hill is an artist, organiser and educator based in Prague. He was a founding member of LuckyPDF and ran the education programme at Flat Time House, London. He is currently a graduate researcher at Liverpool John Moores University.

[johnhill]

I will visiting artist as Šaloun, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague from February to June 2017.

www.saloun.cz/

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The Shift (2016) Flat Time House, London

Part of the closing programme of Flat Time House, this exhibition revisited every project and commission from the houses eight-year history as a public institution.

Featuring over 100 artists and many more works, the exhibition was curated by current and former staff Gareth Bell-Jones, Elisa Kay, Claire Louise Staunton and John Hill.

flattimeho.org.uk

As part of the exhibition, the Mental Furniture Conceptual Yard Sale was a one-day event that unpacked some of John Latham’s anti-institutional, intuitive approach to education. Participants were invited to bring an immaterial idea to share, sell or swap.

Images: Installation photos, Plastiques Photography; event photos, Alice Master;

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Value (2016) in: Gerneral Fine Arts Vol 2. Issue 1

Questioning the power that contemporary art institutions have in defining the context, and therefor the meaning, of post-conceptual art, and taking Edward Snowdon’s revelations about government surveillance as evidence of an ever-increasing breakdown of the boundary between public and private, this essay argues for arts potential to change the institution by refusing is public nature and instead seeing is as a platform for private, invisible and encrypted interactions.

generalfinearts.net

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MFI Group (2011-2015)

For four years, Flat Time House’s year-long programme for recent graduates operated as a reading, discussion and crit group, as well as initiating, hosting and contributing to projects across the UK. As well as hosting events at Flat Time House, MFI Group collaborated with Outpost, Nottingham and ESP, Birmingham on MINITS—4 (2012), Stryx, Birmingham on How to Build a Table (2013), CRG, Margate on CRG @ the HQ, Whitstable Biennale (2014) and It’s all Tropical, Leeds for TREAT YO SELF (2015).

Images: PAMI Festival 2013 (photo: Eiko Soga); TREAT YO SELF; CRG @ the HQ, Whitstable Biennale;

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Machine Research, October 2016, Brussels

The research workshop MACHINE RESEARCH contributes to the transmediale festival programme for 2017. Participants participate in closed seminars and talks in Brussels, the generation of online and offline publications, and public presentations at the festival in Berlin. The 2017 transmediale festival focuses on the elusive character of media and technological change and how it is articulated in the contemporary moment of messy ecologies of the human and non human.

machineresearch.wordpress.com

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Living Sculpture (2016) in: A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham 

To coincide with the exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, this catalogue essay looks at Latham’s ‘found’ sculpture Niddrie Woman and his own Time-Base theory that informs to in relation to the Actor-Network theory of Bruno Latour and the Autopoietic theory of Humberto Maturana.

www.henry-moore.org | www.academia.edu

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Autopoiesis: social and anti-social machines (2016), Overwhelming Imagination Conference, Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing

This presentation looked at the concept of autopoiesis, a term that originates in biology but has been applied to both social and technological systems. It asked how the concept might be useful in understanding our increasingly algorithmic culture, in which technology mediates society, identity and political subjectivity. Drawing out the importance of social creativity in politics, it suggests a link between algorithms, ritual and art that may allow us to adopt critical positions from which to enacting social change.

The conference paper will be part of a forthcoming publication.

yi-projectspace.org/conferences

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Speculative Beaching: Ecosystem *4 Conversation (2016)

John Hill and Lou-Atessa Marcellin engage in a dialogue around living systems. How does one define a living system? Is the garden a machine or an organism and how might thinking about gardens help us to understand the border between the two?

audio available: louatessamarcellin.com/

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Comercialisation and Self-institutionalisation (2014), Withe de With, Rotterdam

Part of Slash: Hybrid Ecologies & Audiences Today, this talk looked at LuckyPDF’s network model of art practice in relation to other commercial and non-commercial models that exist online.

www.wdw.nl

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Keynote Screening, PARSE Conference 2015, University of Gothenburg 

Utilising John Latham’s 1971 film ERTH as a scale or score, this two channel screening contrasted Latham’s minimalist experimental work with seven contemporary artists — Nicholas Mangan, Keren Cytter, Jennifer West, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wojciech Bruszewski, Patrick Tarrant and Anne Tallentire — to look the use of complex and overlapping temporaries and frequencies in artists’ moving image.

www.parsejournal.com

Commissioned by PARSE, University of Gothenburg and curated with Claire Louise Staunton. An text relating to this even will be published in a forthcoming issue of PARSE Journal.

Images: Jenifer West Spiral of Time Documentary Film (2013); Stuart Croft Drive In (2007); John Latham, ERTH (1971); Keren Cytter Der Spiegel, (2007)

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Cinema6 (2014), Arcadia Missa, London

A two-month-long artist run community cinema, Cinema6 transformed the Arcadia Missa gallery into a screening, discussion and workshop space. Conceiving of the cinema as a share cultural resource, the project hosting diverse feature film, documentaries and artists’ moving image and worked with local political and community groups and well as presentations and conversations with international artists and filmmakers such as Trevor Mathison and Surabhi Sharma.

Cinema6 commissioned four new artists’ projects from Three Experiments in Translation with Hana Janeckova, Julia Tcharfas and Anna Galkina, Superlative TV’s documentary Equal Temperament, Screen Shadows’ six-week education programme and an artists’ 3D filmmaking workshop. 

www.cinema6.co.uk

Produced by John Hill and John Bloomfield for Arcadia Missa. Supported by Arts Council England and Film Hub London.

Images: Matthew Cunningham and Hana Janeckova from Three Experiments in Translation;

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You Screen, I Screen, Unscreen, Sunscreen (2013), Library+, London

A group exhibition looking at the flatness of screens in relation to sculpture. Featuring work by Nicole Morris, Richard Sides, Hania Stella-Sawicka and Holly White.

Images: Michael Heilgemeir

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This is a stand in for a solid (2013)

Working with students from UCL and Slade School of Art, London, as well as art historian Cadence Kinsey and artist Katrina Palmer, this project comprised online image sharing, collaborative writing, video and live performance.

thisisastandinforasolid.co.uk/

Developed as part of the Flat Time House Summer School and supported by a UCL e-learning development grant.

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How to Leave London (2014)

An online video series interviewing artists across Europe about the way they live, work and connect. How to Leave London looks at the continued importance of location to making art in a hyper-connected world.

howtoleave.luckypdf.com

Commissioned by Hayward Gallery, London, as part of the exhibition MIRROR CITY.

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School of Global Art (2012)

A semi-fictional online artschool, with both online resources and offline events and live contributions from Tehran, Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai, Melbourne, Manchester, London and Paris.

www.schoolofglobalart.org | www.dismagazine.com

Commissioned by Fierce Festival, Birmingham, ICA, London and Next Wave Festival, Melbourne.  

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Greenscreening (2015)

An online video montage and chroma keying platform, developed for undergraduate fine art students as part of their final year project. Students were asked to edit their own and other’s work to create both singular and a group-authored work.

www.greenscreening.xyz

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Data Trail (postproduction)

A single channel narrative film looking at contemporary relationships of identity and interiority to technology and data. Though the camera follows a central protagonist, the story is told though the data his interactions generate. Claims made about the insights of this data to his unvoiced thoughts become central to an argument about intellectual property and who can own ideas.

Written and directed by John Hill and John Bloomfield.