The Life Room | 10 mins | 2015

In January 2015, Video Jam premiered four new audio/visual works at the Whitworth Art Gallery for a special programme to mark it's re-opening following a major extension. Four pairings of emerging film and sound artists were commisisoned to work with a small range of footage chosen by the North West Film Archive relating to Manchester’s social history and cultural development. Each pairing was given the opportunity to produce a piece using their personal choice of this footage combined however they choose with their own visual and aural material. All of the artists involved were given access to the same archive footage, making the commission an experiment in individual interpretation.

The Life Room is a film by Mike J Scott with an original score by Manchester based Negra Branca. The work is a visual manipulation of selected footage chosen the the archive. Imagery is presented in vertical slices - a device which Scott has developed elsewhere in his practice - reulsting in a simultaneous concealment of context and revealment of small detail. The film concentrates in particular on imagery of Manchester police force at work in the early 20th century.

Mike J Scott is an award winning Director, Editor and VJ based in Manchester. Making films that lack the tedium of pleasantry. 

Negra Branca (Marlene Ribeiro) is a member of the influential GNOD squad based at Islington Mill in Salford. Her solo project, under alias Negra Branca, sits in an electric dream world, dropping in and out of all kinds of entrancing genres including psych, dub and electronica.

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