About me and my work

Jennet Thomas is an artist and film maker whose work emerged out of the lively Underground/experimental media club scene in London in the early 1990's. It now shows all over the place, - see filmography and screenings- and is distributed internationally by Video Data Bank www.vdb.org.
Jennet Thomas constructs formally playful moving image works, forging her own hybrid methods of representation, often using song-like structuring devices and experimenting with the act of storytelling. Her videos contain passages that look like low budget TV drama, horror, experimental animation, amateur 'home' video as well as activity more akin to performance art. Her work deals with very 'human' content and is sometimes funny. She likes to confound categories of cultural production; professional, amateur, hobbyist, 'underground', art, home made folk culture?
Her work manifests as experimental narrative videos, and video installations often designed for a specific gallery space- a kind of 'expanded narrative' with interconnected objects and images.

She was a founder member of THE EXPLODING CINEMA COLLECTIVE. Set up in 1991, it is a non profit-making collective of film and video makers dedicated to originating new methods of exhibition. Since it's inception it has screened over 2,000 short films, videos and related performances in ground-breaking open access shows. The events, taking place in venues as diverse as disused factories, church halls, clubs, pubs, empty swimming pools and a circus tent, are radically eclectic low budget/high ingenuity spectacles, that have attracted a substantial cult following. Exploding cinema has toured programmes of work across Britain, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, the Czech Republic and the United States.
www.explodingcinema.org

When not making films, videos, paintings etc. Jennet Thomas earns her living as a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts, London.
She is currently developing a new Undergraduate Fine Art course there in Time Based Media; Film, Video, Performance and Sound.
www.wimbledon.arts.ac.uk

Filmography and screenings:

DOUBLE DUMMY
Digital Video 7 minutes 2004

"Four Dummies, two cats, and a portal to bliss inside their attempts at symmetry
A hair ball, and a mess of twigs, whose love has died and who are sad.."

A hooded woman appears frame left carrying a stuffed dummy of herself- this is mirrored by what appears to be an identical image on the right, but the sync gradually decays. A mysterious rainbow like band of twinkling colour, that evokes a nostalgic sense of the sublime, runs down the centre of the frame, into and out of which the hooded characters (and a black cat) appear and disappear. On closer examination this band is made from plastic strip 'fly' curtains one might see in the doorways of seaside tea shops or adult video stores. These passages are punctuated by a love story between a ball of hair and a site specific sculpture.

ON THE SHAPE OF THE SCAB'
An 'expanded narrative' installation at Anthology Film Archives, New York
March 2004

A beaming Lady in evening dress and 'Blackface' drops a ceremonial (?) plaster ball, that reappears in the right had side of the split screen frame falling from the sky into a field, onto a man dressed in some kind of furry white ritual costume. He smashes these balls to smithereens with a ceremonial paddle (striped blue and white like the balls) Each smash produces a flying puppet-doll like thing, that hits the camera to sporting cheers on the sound track - it's given a 'score' on the screen. This verse and chorus like song structure elaborates into a fake painting competition whose logic is 'explained' by young children. With each new 'smash-ball-puppet' chorus the score rises, the face on the puppet changes from a baby to an old man...who periodically appears in another part of the video, as a confused guy in a residential care home. This video projection was embedded in an environment hung with the six found 'amateur' landscape paintings with 'additions' - oddly shaped, scab-like UFO's hovering in their sky. The space had to be entered and exited through a false wall of plastic strip "fly" curtains - directly opposite the same false wall through which the performers entered and exited the fictional space of the video projection. Some visitors got quite freaked out by this, as they entered through the curtains at the same time the performers on the opposite wall did- in the disorientating dark they thought they were 'real'...

Perfect Spot
14 mis/digital video/ 2003
Mother and daughter are together for the last time at the seaside. Everything will
be okay, all things will work out as they have to, when they find the perfect spot.
Experimental Narrative.

The Local Sky Enlarger
28.5 minutes Digital Video 2001-2002
There's something wrong with a patch of sky. As it travels over Southern England, objects cast up into it come down hugely enlarged, bloated. Meanwhile in London, the patch is in fact a troubling scab on a crippled old man's head. As the scab develops, all he can do is wait, going through the changes, waiting for the twin in the sky to implant him- when he's ripe- with GOD'S DARK SPERM.

COWBOYS AND INDIAN
2.5 minutes digital video 2002
3 Cowboys 1 Indian, 3 guns one blow
A split screen video, originally made for an installation as part of 'Something Funny in the Woodshed' touring show.
One one side three very young cowboys 'face- off in triangular' resevoir- dogs' style with toy guns, and repeatedly all die and then re animate backwards to life, whilst on the other side we gradually approach an 'Indian' shut in a play house who covers his eyes peekaboo style rhythmically, repeatedly in a loop.

SHARONY!
11 mins digital video 2000,
featuring Daisy Burchill, Lydia Burchill and the band Dograck
The story of two young girls who dig up a microscopic woman from the back garden.
They incubate her in their mouths, in their bed, they lock her in a dolls house wallpapered with pornography to make her grow up faster, and when she is ready and life sized they take her to the disco. Unfortunately, though maybe alive, she has grown up to be full of nothing - so they have to get rid of her and put her back into the place in nature where she came from. This piece was commissioned for the big group show 'GIRL' at the New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

MALDOROR- THE FEATURE FILM
1999, super 8 to 16mm /dvd 100 minutes UK/Germany
This radical project- a brainchild of Exploding Cinema's Duncan Reekie, was to make a film like no other -a film of the blashphemous and surrealist - inspiring 19th Century cult classic Anti-Novel MALDOROR by Lautreamont.
I was one of 12 Film makers selected, 8 from the UK (5 of whom are members of the Exploding Cinema) and 4 from Germany. We were each sent one chapter from the book and an invitation to make a film out of their chapter. Each maker could use different techniques, styles, actors and locations but there would be a voice over narration by one narrator over the entire feature. The only proviso was that is was to be shot on super 8. (later blow up to 16mm) What resulted is an extrodinary realisation of Film makers' imagination and ingenuity, a veritable chowder of the tasiest in Underground
my section-
The Spectacular Murder of Mervyn
6 mins, 2000,Super 8 Film, model animation, photo animation and live action.
Voice: Charles Phillips,
Mervyn: Paul Tarrago,
Aghone: Stefan Szczelkun, Text: Lautreamont,
Translation: Alexis Lykiard
An adaptation of the gruesome and fantastical ending chapter of this notorious anti-novel and a joyful return to the necessity of super 8 film tricks, my mission was to realise the impossible climax of the film- when the anti- hero Maldoror- murders the young 'hero' Mervyn by swinging him on the end of a rope from the top of Nelson's column, and throwing him at the Albert Hall.

The Point of Light- Collaborative Video Projet
2000, 10 minutes digital video
Video Education project/Residency at The Photographer's Gallery, London with film maker Paul Tarrago, on the occasion of Tony Oursler's' The Influence Machine' Artangel Public¬Ý Art project. We made a collaborative video - a portrait of the soho area- with local young homeless people.

The Lee Mysteries
2000, 15 mins
Digital video and Super 8 cut out animation, Documentary/animation/fantasy.
This piece is a collaboration made with 50 school children from 2 North London junior Schools where I was Artist in Residence, about the Local section of canal ( the Lee Navigation cut) that runs by the back of their school. It is a collage of childrens' stories (that the children animated themselves), spectacular hand crafted digital Special effects and fast paced documentary footage. It was commissioned by SPACE STUDIOS for the Canal Culture Festival.

4 Ways he tried to tell you
1999, 7 mins
Digital video, digital video animation and Super 8 Film with model animation and human pixilation.
Voice: Philip Thomas, the Man: Theo Cowley
'This is a video about the thing that won't go away, it has been trying to contact me by altering bits of my reality for several years now and this 7 minutes is a clear demonstration of that. My 8 year old nephew got drawn into the whole thing and that's why his voice is on this tape. I'm not sure if it's dead now, we'll just have to see.'

The Mr. Cole Trilogy 1997, 98- and ongoing
When walking in the park I find patches of the earth that make loud noises when I step on them- underneath the grass are mathematically encoded messages, of a desperate nature -this is how. Mr. Cole begins his relationship with me. This three part, one woman, 20-30 minute performance / projected digital video piece is about the fantasy/fear that Cause and Effect may not function as we think, with messages from beyond the grave and inside matter. It combines the conventions of several 'genres'; the 'true life video re-construction' and the 'storyteller/lecturer', who gradually confounds and decays the rules of distance in her relationship to the subject matter, sucking the audience into the inevitable dynamic of a narrative but then changing the rules of engagement and offering up a different kind of closure.

Victims of F.A.T.E.
1998 12 minutes
A Video Artist Residency at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, July to August 1998 as part of the Tower Hamlets Summer University producing 'Victims of F.A.T.E.' - a multi media computer animation video project with about time travel, made collaboratively with groups of local people.

Important Toy
1997, 8: 20 mins.
Digital video. Digital Video effects, live action
and model/object animation. Girl: Lydia Burchill,
Mother:Liz Burchill, sister: Daisy Burchil
Additional camerawork: Paul Tarrago
A young girl buys a weird toy from a charity shop - she forms such an intense relationship with it that it develops special ways of communicating, and a strange connection to her that seems to defy the laws of physics. As the situation escalates, it seems that repression is the only way forward. First conceived of as a kind of Fairy tale that goes wrong, this is a piece about learning the 'rules' of grown-up reality; and an extrapolation of the consequences of 'over-identifying' with toys.

'How I got Stuck in their Brains'
1997, 9 min. Digital video animation \ multi media collage arising from the Whitechapel Art Gallery Video Artist's Residency at Tower Hamlets Summer University. Using the nightmares/ dreams narrated to me by participating adolescents, animations of their plasticene 'demons/bogeymen' were collaged together with their own physical mime acts into a bizarre fantasy.

Gorgeous Operation
8 minutes, 1996 Super and Single 8 Film
Originally (like most of my earlier film work) a performance piece , with the text read alongside the projected image. A complex ' story' about a man who thought there was something wrong with his eye...so he goes to the doctor, who can't help him much, but he finds a sheep that can, with uplifting but tragic results.

4 STORIES;1994-5 A Film making Residency
Film maker in residence at Catford County Girls School, Lewisham, London, LAB Funding award. The 7 minute Super 8 film was screened at the Bradford Museum of Film and Television as part of the Co-Op Young People's Film and Video Festival.

A FOOT FILM: A Film making Residency
1993
Film maker in residence at Benthal Junior School, Stoke Newington, making a 12 minute animation and live action super 8 film in collaboration with pupils- using their own whacky take on a 'public health infotainment' about foot hygiene.

¬Ý'What are you doing with your fingers?'
1996, 6 mins. Digital video, Live action, digital video effects, human pixilation and model animation. Woman: Jennet Thomas, Additional Camera: Paul Tarrago
Featuring myself as a woman who is lured in to the garden by the cries of foliage, given a dinner she doesn't want by a mysterious organic being and then turned into something else or maybe not. A piece about self-consciousness and the fearful noise of wind in the trees. My first foray into digital editing and special hand crafted effects.

'O. Heck'
1995, 5 mins
Super 8 projection with live performance
My father runs towards me in slow motion repeatedly down a long beach, and I animate myself spinning around on my bottom in the back garden. By the light of my torch there's a puffy white thing thrashing around at night in the back garden, and the camera has a fag strapped onto it's eye, which keeps trying to fertilise both flowers and a picture of a young girl. Poetic monologue declaimed with chorus.

'I'm So Sorry'
1995, 10 mins
Video projection with live performance and Super 8 - super imposition projection with (very home made) Special effects.
My father is rather depressed and bored, and finds small blue patches appearing on his body...

Heady
1994, 8 mins
Super 8 Film, cut out animation, model and object animation
Starring an inflatable wig holder that I got at a car boot sale in Bremmen, this film began as a demonstration of different film animation techniques but evolved into a bizarre improvised narrative in which the head escapes from the violent clutches of a mixed-up model girl, is sent to Poland in a wicker basket, where it has a nice holiday.

The Real Hamster Film
1994, 5 mins
Super 8 Model Animation film projection with performance/narration text
A film about real hamsters and non-real (Undead?)hamsters, another exploration of my fantasy metaphysics, and what may happen to things you love when they die.

'IT's Flakey' 1993 4 mins
Live performance narration (shouted!) with super 8 and video projections collaged live on screen
"it's fucked-up it's flakey, it's in your local area..."

Polyester nightie
4 mins, 1993
rhyming monologue with slides

small
4 mins, performance text with Super 8 loop 1993
Slide/live performance/narration- a kind of sci- fi fantasty poetic monologue

Sharony
4 mins, 1993
The original poetic monologue I wrote, from which the 10 minute video of 2000 was developed, this was a
Slide /live Text performance with Drum machine ( and once with a trumpet too, I think)

New Dimensions in total Motivation
4 mins, 1992
3-d Super 8 animation
using time lapse of sprouting beans thrashing around in the tiny animated set .. a bedroom with a distressed doll crawling around with a ping pong ball for a head...with inter titles from a motivational film for salesmen...?

Solo Shows/screenings

Jan 2006 Flatscape Video Baton Rouge Center for Contemporary Art, USA

2004 March On the Shape of the Scab - (Video installation) Courthouse Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, New York

2004 March Jennet Thomas Retrospective Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan,
New York

2003 November '7 Pieces from my head' retrospective at Wharf Centre D'Art Contemporain de Basse Normandie ( Part of 17th Rencontres Video Art Plastique)

2003 March Conversations at the Edge The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago USA, and Women in the Director's chair Festival, Chicago (in conjunction with Video Data Bank)

2001 March '6 Pieces from my head' DUMBO Arts centre, Brooklyn,
New York

2000 October 'The Film Couch- Jennet Thomas'LUX Centre, for Film Video and Digital Arts, London

Selected recent group shows/screenings

2006
Cinema Texas screens Because of the war
Chicago Underground Film Festival screens Because of the war
'Sugarcoated' group show at ArtSway July ’Äì August 'Because of the War' group show, video installation
Gallery 33 GrosseHamburgerStrasse Berlin, April FILTHY HATCHBACK BASEMENT STACK ( Group show Video installation)
Tannoy- Group show at THE ENORMOUSE SPACE, July, London
'Double Dummy'
International kurzfilmtage Oberhausen screens 'Because of the War'
Athens International Film+video festival Double Dummy'
European Media Arts Festival Germany,' Because of the War
New York Underground Film Festival ' Because of the War at Anthology Film Archives
Double Dummy on EMAF world tour
Double Dummy on PULSAR international Tour, Venezuela

2005
MOMA New York, 'New York Premiers' series screens
'Double Dummy'
EMAF- European Media Arts festival Osnabruck Germany screens 'Double Dummy' ( then international tour)
Podewil's Palais BERLIN Tesla Project screens 'Double Dummy'
Jeu de Paume museum and Entrepot movie theatre Paris
screens 'Double Dummy'
ICA London Halloween Short Film Festival
Screens 'Perfect Spot' and 'Double Dummy'( Perfect Spot' wins
'Hey Ladies' Best Film Prize'
Exploding Cinema London, live performance/film 'O Heck'
24th Annual Women In the Director's Chair International Film & Video Festival, Chicago screens 'Perfect Spot'
Ballroom Marfa Marfa Texas, USA screens 'Perfect spot as part of
'Treading Water'
FEMINALE. Cologne, Germany various video works programmed in 'Good meat Feeds Good People'
CinemaTexas, Austin Texas, USA screens ' Double Dummy'
New York Underground Film Festival, Anthology film Archives NYC 'Double Dummy'

2004
The Chateau' Brisbane, Australia screens 'Sharony!' and 'Perfect Spot'
National Review of Live Art, Glasgow Touring work with
THE EXPLODING CINEMA
Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN -Exhibition
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE: VIDEO ARTISTS NAVIGATE CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT
42nd Ann Arbor Film Experimental Festival, USA screened 'Sharony!'
Athens International Film/Video Festival screening 'Perfect Spot'
Rotterdam International Film Festival
'Perfect Spot' screened as part of the Main Programme Shorts
Nova Cinema, Brussles- Exploding Cinema Tour screened 'Local Sky...'

2003
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
The Local Sky Enlarger' screened in Pari February 2003 and Berlin in July.
'Perfect Spot'
Antimatter Festival of Short Film and Video, Victoria, Canada
screened 'Perfect Spot'
The Lux Open, Royal College of Art, London
Screened 'The Local Sky Enlarger' and 'Perfect Spot'
Women in the Director's chair festival, Chicago, IL, various works
New York Underground Film Festival USA March 2003
Screened 'Perfect Spot' At Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, New York
Exploding Cinema, London screened ' Perfect Spot'
LA Freewaves' TV or NOT TV Experimental Media Arts Festival USA
Sharony! shown in programme 'Mom, Dad, I Have Something to Tell You'

2002 'Something Funny in the Woodshed' Group show, with 2x video installations paintings and objects.
Touring from Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff to Aberystwyth Arts Centre
ICA, London 'Sharony!' in OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM programme
San Francisco Indie Fest screening 'Local Sky Enlarger'
NEDERLANDS FOTO INSTITUTE (Rotterdam) LOOKALIKE Barbie-Lolita
(installation) Cinemanova, Melbourne, Australia

2002 Various works screened,
PHOTOESPANA 2002 Madrid, Spain.'Videos XX Femeninos,feminismos 'Sharony!
Best of the New York Underground Film Festival Sharony!,

2001
Lux Centre, London touring Programme curated by the NYUFF Festival director Sharony!
Chicago International Underground Film Festival MALDOROR
collaborative Feature Film
New York Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives MALDOROR
Rotterdam International Film Festival Sharony! and '4 ways he tried to tell you'

2000
New Art Gallery Walsall 'GIRL' group show, touring to Angel Row Gallery Nottingham, Important Toy
Whitechapel Art Gallery A DIFFERENT KIND OF SHOW shows Sharony!