For Manchester After Hours 2015, we were invited to collaborate with the Museum of Science and Industry to deliver a site-specific Video Jam amidst the Victorian machinery in the Textiles Gallery. Responding to the After Hours theme ‘Odd Couplings,’ we invited Liverpool duo The Aleph & filmmaker Mary Stark and visual artist Sarah Hill & composer Jack Sheen to work together over a period of time to create a new audio/visual work, drawing inspiration from the museum’s textiles collections and archives. We were also delighted to welcome back Miles Halpin - a long term collaborator of Video Jam - to score a short film by Mary Stark. Included in the proceedings were electrical sewing machines, mechanical sounds, sculpture, and one exceptionally fine saxophone player (Harry Fausing Smith).

Act 1 

The Aleph & Mary Stark present She Hangs Her Coat on the Highest Peg

Pop Reconstructivists The Aleph collaborated with artist filmmaker Mary Stark to present an expanded 16mm film performance with live music. Mary's performance involves 16mm film loops of cotton mill workers and textile patterns; The Aleph explore and re-imagine material sourced from traditional industrial folk music, tracing its resonances through to the present day, and further, into the future.

Act 2

Ghosts of Industries Past by Mary Stark scored by Miles Halpin

Miles Halpin is a Manchester born artist who has been working as a sculptor for over 20 years, and is a Member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. He has worked on an independent music project, Slow Drum Hum, since 2008. Miles's music for this event in MOSI links with Mary Stark's passion for filmmaking fabric and performance. Mary Stark’s ‘Ghosts of Industries Past’ is a 16mm found footage of textile mill works as well as black and white photograms of fabric and lace.

Act 3  

Jack Sheen & Sarah Rowland Hill present Machine Film: there are things that you feel are there (7.50 mins) & Hand Film: I have never been anywhere so long (7.50 mins)                       

Visual artist Sarah Rowland Hill and composer Jack Sheen have each developed a response to each others’ material that takes on new meaning in the context of the textiles gallery at MOSI. Their work is presented in two parts: in the first, notions of image association, dream, pattern, process and memory are at play within the found footage of machinery and the music for solo saxophone, played by Harry Fausing Smith. The second is a meditation on manual labour and repetition, made in collaboration with dance artist Hannah Buckley.

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Museum of Science and Industry

The Museum of Science and Industry tells the story of where science met industry and the modern world began, and features interactive galleries, vibrant exhibitions and live demonstrations at one of Manchester’s most historic sites.

Creative Tourist

Manchester After Hours is a one night, city wide social. It’s part of the national Museums and Night festival, and this year’s programme, organised by cultural diarists Creative Tourist,  featuring (for 2015) poet laureates and soundscapes; secret gigs amongst medieval book stacks; traditional Warli art, contemporary music and a live literature tour.