Hand Film (I have never been anywhere so long) | 4.33 mins | 2015

A collaboration between composer Jack Sheen and artist filmmaker Rowland Hill, Hand Film is a meditation on manual labour, bodily memory and physical identity. The work began life as a response to the changes in Manchester's industrial history and the contemporary use of former industrial spaces; in particular the nature of highly repetitive labour in the cotton mills, undertaken largely by women. The result is a choreography of lost gestures sourced from historical documentation, prompting visual comparison between physicality brought on by technologies past and present.

Commissioned by Video Jam and Manchester After Hours for the Manchester Science and Industry Museum, staged site specifically in the Textiles Gallery as a 3 screen installation. 

Music performed by Harry Fausing Smith
Co-choreographed and performed by: Hannah Buckley

Rowland Hill is an artist and curator. Her creative practice centers on the relationship between moving image, sound and live performance. She has presented her work - in the form of live performance, video screenings and installations - at venues including Splendor (Amsterdam), Mayhem (Copenhagen), the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester), the ICA (London), Horse Hospital (London), Aldeburgh Music, Del Rex (Berlin), Parallel Vienna and The University of Chicago. From September 2016 she will be studying for an MA in Fine Art at The Slade in London. Hill is also the film curator for Video Jam. 

Jack Sheen is a composer and conductor from Manchester. He has written music for the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Aurora Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Psappha, Opera North, EXAUDI and the RNCM. His music has been performed in venues such as The Bridgewater Hall, LSO St. Luke's, Hallé St. Peter's and Snape Maltings, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Jack is the co-founder of ddmmyy, a concert series dedicated to commissioning and contextualising experimental music. 

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