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Blue Movie is Jordan Baseman’s second exhibition at Matt’s Gallery and features a 16mm film that incorporates found pornographic footage (originating from the early 1940s during Nazi occupied Belgium) with an original soundtrack based on academic enquiry and discourse. The voiceover for Blue Movie has been created from interviews with the cultural commentator Pamela Church Gibson, Reader in Cultural & Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion.

In Blue Movie the main body of the found film is replaced with clear leader footage: allowing only a few seconds per edit, following the existing structure of the source material. Without censoring the original footage, the replacement material creates a charged space that is actively occupied by the soundtrack.

We hear the narrator simultaneously discussing the history of pornography and its relationship to feminism from the right channel of a stereo system, while describing and analysing the Belgian made film document from the left. The merging of the two soundtracks, spoken by a single voice, creates a poetic and layered narrative for the film. Blue Movie expands Baseman’s recent focus on voice-propelled narratives, creating a synthesis between the aural and the visual.

Through the restoration and subsequent use of the original film and the recording, transcription and construction of the interviews with Pamela Church Gibson, Blue Movie deals with ideas of power, patriarchy, feminism, authorship, the history of film, and voyeurism.

This work contains explicit material.

To see the build for this exhibition click here

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Biography
Studied 1986-1988 MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London; 1979-1983 BA (hons) Fine Art, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Solo Exhibitions 2009 Dark is the Night Artsway, Hampshire & The Photographers' Gallery, London 2008 The Documentary Imperative, Manchester Museum, Manchester 2007 Joy on Toast, Manchester Museum, Manchester; (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle; Nature's Great Experiment, Wellcome Collection, London; Tape 1 Tape 2, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, Australia 2006 luv is gonna get you someday, Maus Habitos, Porto, Portugal; Sunday Morning, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2005 don't stop 'til you get enough, Matt's Gallery, London 2004 July The Twelfth 1984, Kaliman Gallery, Sydney, Australia 2003 City of Angels, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland; EF103 603, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland 2002 1 + 1 = 1 / Under the Blood, Art Gallery + Museum, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa; Under the Blood / 1 + 1 = 1, Wysing Arts, Cambridge 2001 Raceway Queen, The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Lonesome Town, The Laing Gallery, Newcastle; The Comedians, The Newman Rooms, Oxford 2000 here, Grizedale Forest, Cumbria 1999 the history of existentialism, Wigmore Fine Art, London 1998 SHUP a screenplay/Performance, The Agency, London; more lies, Mario Flecha Gallery, Girona, Spain 1997 The Party and other things, Richard Salmon Gallery, London; blunt objects, Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz, Austria; Births, marriages, and deaths, The Serpentine Gallery @ Marylebone Town Hall, London 1996 vox humana, Galerie 5020, Salzburg, Austria 1994 F is for love, Mario Flecha Gallery, London and HeberPercy Gallery, Warwickshire 1993 Galerie Guy Ledune, Brussels Group Exhibitions & Screenings 2008 Alchemy, Manchester Museum, Manchester 2007 Grain, Isle of Grain, Kent; Heart, Wellcome Trust, London; The Sun Always Shines on the Righteous, Purescreen, Manchester; Alchemy Artists, Manchester Museum, Manchester 2006 Open Video Library, Zaim, Yokahama, Japan; Hospitality, Accademia Tedesca, Villa Massimo, Rome; No Place Like Home, Beacon Art Project, Boston, Lincolnshire; Arcade, ACAVA Studios, London; Vox Pop, Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle; Contingency Plan, C.A.S.T., Tasmania, Hobart, Australia; Et Tu Tribute, Embassy Rooms, Edinburgh 2005 Variety, De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea; Crossing Borders, Berwick Film Festival, Berwick upon Tweed; Our Surroundings, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; Size Matters, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire 2004 Six Thousand Chairs, Crystal Palace, London; Bad Behaviour, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire; AGORA, Transition Gallery, London; Feast of Silenus, Embassy Rooms, Edinburgh; Island Art Film/Video Festival, UGC Cinema, Docklands, London; Wonderful/Visions of the Near Future, Arnolfini, Bristol (National Touring Exhibition); Volume, Moving Pictures, St. Georges, Bristol; Brides of March, Embassy Rooms, Edinburgh 2003 La Mostra, British School at Rome, Rome; Radio Radio, The International 3, Manchester; In Good Form, Yorshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire; Animality, Blue Oyster Gallery, Auckland, N.Z.; The Human Zoo, University of Newcastle, Newcastle; Further Up In The Air, Linosa Close, Liverpool; Spike Open, Spike Island, Bristol; Don’t Look Down, The Nunnery, London; Infallible: In Search of the Real George Elliot, ATP, London; CHOCKERFUCKINGBLOCKED, Jeffrey Charles, London Turpentine, Studio Voltaire, London 2002 Medicate, Art Gallery + Museum, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa; Somewhere, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; Telling Lies, Forde Gallery, Geneva; Going Continental, University of Applied Arts, Vienna; Hygiene, THRILLER, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; TV Swansong, THE LAST BROADCAST: http://www.swansong.tv/index2.htm; Regards..., Galerie Alain le Gaillard, Paris; it rocks, but gently... Folly Gallery, Lancaster; Second Skin, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; file sound art, City Space, Birmingham; No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, Central Space, London 2001 Interstanding 4:End Repeat, Estonia Center for Contemporary Art, Talin; Project: Film and Video, Pittville Room, Cheltenham; The Great Escape, Grizedale Forest, Cumbria; things are not what they seem to be, Galway Arts Center, Galway 2000 a different kind of show, Whitechapel Gallery, London; ...not enough, Velan Contemporary Art, Turin; The Grizedale Show, Grizedale Forest, Cumbria; Conversation, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes; Now Festival, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; Brief Encounters Film Festival, Bristol; Visions, City of Westminster Arts Council, London; Art in Motion Film Festival, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; SelfService, 5 Years, Underwood Street, London; John, I’m Only Dancing. Collective Gallery, Edinburgh 1999 The Anagrammatical Body, New Museum, Graz, Austria; East Wing Collection, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; The Passage, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London; Saatchi at Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield; Tension, Greene Gallery, Geneva; Passion, Gasworks, London; 1998 Fun de Seicle, Walsall Art Gallery, Walsall; Art Futures, Royal Festival Hall, London; Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; fly, work for the eye to do/King Mob, London; Personal Effects, Spacex, Exeter 1997 Pictura Britannica, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Craft, Richard Salmon Gallery, London; Oak Repels Lightning, Science Museum, London; The Look of Love, Rear Window, the approach, London Recent Acquisitions, University of California, Berkeley 1996 A Cloudburst of Material Possessions, Purdey Hicks Gallery, London; Young British Artists VI, Saatchi Gallery, London; Plastic, Richard Salmon Gallery, London + Arnolfini, Bristol; Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; love and death and all that, Galerie H S Steinek, Vienna; The Gas Station, The Ruskin School, Oxford; Love at Firstsite, Firstsite, Colchester; British Art Show 4, South Bank Centre, National Touring Exhibition 1996 Care and Control, Rear Window, Hackney Hospital, London; Real Time, London; composite, adj., Arnolfini, Bristol; Fetishism, South Bank Centre, National Touring Exhibition 1996 Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Curator’s Egg, Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London; Vitrines, Galerie Guy Ledune/Acte, Brussels; Miniatures, The Agency, London; 1992 With Attitude, Galerie Guy Ledune/British Council, Brussels; Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Double Vision, Anderson O’Day Gallery, London; EAST/SOUTH, Norwich Gallery, Norfolk Institute of Art and Design 1991 EAST, Norwich Gallery, Norfolk Institute of Art and Design 1990 Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London