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Jarman
In Pieces
Jarman
in Pieces is Project Adorno's electro-pop biopic of the filmmaker, artist,
writer, activist and gardener Derek Jarman. The piece combines the Adornos'
words and music with samples from first-hand interviews with the following
people: political activist Peter Tatchell, university friend Ann Vaughan
Williams, academic Keith MacDonald, LGBT commentator John Vincent,
co-arrestee Anya Nyx, and artists Andrew Logan and Peter Logan. The
accompanying film consists of images from various Jarman-related locales.
For
decades, Jarman was a thorn in the establishment’s side and yet is now
dangerously close to something he would have hated – the status of
national treasure. Jarman in Pieces is a celebration of this man’s
many parts.
1)
Germination (spoken word) An investigation into the etymology of our
man's surname, accompanied by images of ancestral Jarman graves.
2) The Pinkest Thing in Victorian England (song) links Madox Brown's
painting The Last of England (a title Jarman reused) with the
emigration of Jarman's own forebears.
3) Who is Jarman? (ambient) The interviewees reflect on Jarman's
background: his family, his geography and his 'Englishness'.
4) Memories of Then (song) A personal reflection on the compelling
diaries that log Jarman's final years.
5) London in the 1960s (song) An ode to Jarman's art-school crowd,
accompanied by Ann Vaughan Williams's reflections on an early painting that
he gave her.
6) Alternative Miss World (song) A celebration of Andrew Logan's uber-camp
contest of the same name. Jarman himself won the title in 1974.
7) Alchemy (spoken word) imagines a scene from the notoriously
riotous set of Jarman's interpretation of The Tempest.
8) Super-8 for the Over-Forties (song) Prefaced by Peter Logan's
memories of Jarman discovering Super-8 film, Praveen reminisces about his
own introduction to the format.
9) In Which Jack Drops Anchor (spoken word) A nineteenth-century
novelist's impressions of Jarman's future home.
10) The Dungenettes (song) A celebration of the acolytes who followed
Jarman to Dungeness and thereby stumbled upon such cultural delights as the
Light Railway Cafe.
11) Derek Jarman was a Gardener (song) Gardening was a passion that
ran through Jarman's entire life, reaching its apogee in his sculptural
'garden' at Dungeness.
12) Song for Jean Cocteau (song) A paean to Jarman's favourite
avant-garde filmmakers and their influence on the New Queer Cinema movement.
13) I Need the Glow (ambient) Keith MacDonald assesses the film Blue
(in which the only visual imagery is a blank blue screen) and asks:
accessible or inaccessible?
14) Jarman in Blue (song) charts the onset of Jarman's HIV symptoms,
with a backdrop of imagery from his posthumous Pandemonium
exhibition.
15) David Bowie's Cigarette Packet (spoken word) The strange-but-true
tale of Jarman's failed collaboration with a fellow leftfield icon.
16) Derek Came A-Calling (song) poses the question 'If Jarman came
back today, would he see any progress in the field of LGBT rights?'
17) Alchemy Reprise (spoken word) A latter-day episode from
Dungeness. The wooden signboard was fashioned from materials found in the
Jarmans' ancestral Devon village.
18) Remains (ambient) Keith MacDonald and Peter Logan consider two of
Jarman's less tangible legacies.
19) Old Romney (spoken word) A rumination on the artistic heritage
– both high and low – of
his final resting place.
20) Wonderful Things (song) returns to Jarman's
diaries amidst scenes of his 'canonisation' by the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence.
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OpenHaus
Communications 2019