CIRCUIT CAST

For the final episode of Ka Mua Ka Muri – Walking Backwards Into the Future host David Upton (LUX Scotland) speaks with Sandy Wakefield (NZ) and Andrew Black (UK) about using the moving image to affirm ancestral connections to land and home. They discuss one film by each artist; Sandy's Nakunaku (2020) set on Rakiura / Stewart Island and Andrew’s Dàn Fianais (2022), set on the Isle of Skye. In the face of tourism and rapid commercialisation both islands still retain a deep sense of place which is held in the songs, stories and heritage of local people. Both works stream on LUX Scotland 23 March - 5 April 2026.

https://luxscotland.org.uk/programme/events/ka-mua-ka-muri-sandy-wakefield-andrew-black

Image: Left: Sandy Wakefield, Nakunaku (2020). Courtesy of the artist. Right: Andrew Black, ‘Dàn Fianais’ (2022). Courtesy of the artist.

For the second episode of ‘Ka Mua Ka Muri – Walking Backwards Into the Future’ we present a conversation between Maria de Lima (UK/ Brazil) and Alex Monteith (NZ), two artists using moving image in a time of fragile ecologies as a platform for global knowledge exchange, deep time awareness and human rights. Hosted by Mark Williams.

From 9-22 March 2026 we will be presenting Alex Monteith's, ‘Deepwater Currents’ (2020) alongside Maria de Lima’s ‘This Map of Affections’ (2024) on LUXScotland.org.

This podcast series has been made possible with support from the British Council and their programme Connections through Culture.

Image: Maria de Lima, ‘This Map of Affections’ (2024). Courtesy of the artist.

Ka Mua Ka Muri - Walking Backwards Into the Future is a thee-part podcast series that brings together artists who work with CIRCUIT and LUX Scotland.

In this episode Thulani Rachia and Jamie Berry (Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou, Ngā Puhi) discuss Thulani's obuyile (2021-ongoing) and Jamie's Hiwa-i-te-rangi (2023). Both works are based on a shared interest in dreaming, abstraction, repetition and rest as a contemporary continuum of ancestral knowledge.

obuyile and Hiwa-i-te-rangi show on LUX Scotland from 23 Feb-8 March 2026.

Ka Mua Ka Muri has been made possible with the support of the British Council arts fund Connections Through Culture.

Tessa Laird: Cinemal

“All film is made out of hooves”. Mark Amery speaks to writer Tessa Laird about her new publication Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film, and discusses the various animal qualities of cinema, like scratching and sniffing, vibrant colours, and voices.

00:00: Introduction

01.52: What is a Cinemal?

On the hybrid of Cinema and Animal. Inspiration of films by Australian film-makers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill. The idea of 'a cinematic animal...(while watching a film) the human viewer may also become animal...”

The subtitle 'the becoming animal of experimental film', where does that come from?
Tessa discusses the book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980) by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, Tessa's resistance to reading it, discovery of the books assertion that “all art comes from the animal… when we are engaged in artistic production we are at our most animal”. Discusses our “current hyper separation from the natural world".

7.14: What is experimental film?

Discusses non-narrative film, the work of Australian film-makers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill.

9.52: Meeting the Cantrills, following research into work by Nova Paul, discusses three colour separation, “the lingering of ghosts”. Seeing the Cantrill films in the original format, understanding the tactility of film. Understanding celluloid film as a dying medium, much as natural species were dying out. Mentions the Cantrills'film in new Zealand, 'Bubbling mud pools in Rotorua'.

15.29: Community of film-makers around the Cantrills from the 1960s onwards, the magazine Cantrills Fllm Notes, which included New Zealander Phil Dadson, Nam Jun Paik and others. “They were a network”.

16:40: In what way is film like animal? Discusses how celluloid includes a gelatin component. The book Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times (2009), and how animal parts have furnished the rise of capitalism. “All film is made out of hooves”. “You can’t have a vegan cinema that’s made out of celluloid”. Film being full of toxic chemicals. The colour, grain and translucency of film. Question of whether the interest in film is just a nostalgic medium. “I think it’s more than that but I’m prepared to be challenged on that”.

20:15: Film being animal. Technological analogy between watching animal movement and media. Discusses the book The Squid Cinema From Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia (2020) and animals as screens. Animal attributes as technology.

23:00: The sixth sense and our bodily feel for cinema, the inexplicable - spirit, energy. The human and the non-human.

25:20 The eye of the camera.

25:50: On film programme accompanying the Cinemal book launch. The work of Nova Paul, and her phyto-filmic practice, working with trees. Vegan Cinema. On Sriwhana Spong working with film, realising the specificity of the medium in her practice, film as an entity.

"Sometimes even a cup of tea can fail"

In a hyper-connected world, Samantha Cheng's durational performances examine failure as a generative space. In the final episode of Comic Release Joe Jowitt talks to Samantha about time, labour and the body.

00:00: Introduction to Samantha's practice by Joe Jowitt

1.50: Joe - "There seems to be a real tension between comedy and exhaustion in your practice. Could you start by describing what draws you to humour as a material or method?" Samantha describes her masters research on failure.

3.30: Humour as a personal practice. Samantha asks Joe "What do you find funny? Where does your humour come from?"

5.00: On making the video Happy Ever After (2021). The classic film trope of a happy ending. The repetitive gesture in Happy Ever After.

7.10: Joe compares the work to classic cinema devices "the fall, the loop, the failed gag". He compares the work to Bas Jan Ader and the slapstick tradition of Buster Keaton

8:13: The 'failure of narrative' in the work. Samantha describes watching it with an audience. Joe on the Sisyphean metaphor of human striving but never getting there.

9:20: Failure as a response to the problem of a highly optimised society. On failure, paranoia and contemporary digital surveillance and data harvesting.

12:00: Humour and abstract art. Inefficiency in Samantha's practice. Samantha -  "It's not the really big failures that I'm interested in... smaller ones have more of a disruptive agency".

13:00: On the work Take a 10 (2022), work and labour. Time as money. "...making that work allowed me to kind of view what 10 minutes actually really felt like. 'Cause in a break, 10 minutes goes by so quickly doing that video felt like doing it for hours".

15:30: How does the absurd fit in your practice? Being "in on the joke".

16:30 Western academic descriptions of humour versus origins of Samantha's own humour. Family.

17:10: How important is it to perform the work yourself?

18:10: Social media as influence

19:30: On work Steep dreams (2024).

21:00: Humour found in everyday life. How do you write about the big subjects? "You can start by writing about the small ones and then maybe we'll get there".

22:00: On Passengers (2023) public event, produced for Chez Derriere.

23:30: Mass/Mess project at Window Gallery.

24:24: On spontaneity and not over-working humour. Working in a space where humour is not welcome.

26:00: What does it offer the viewer to ask questions about boundaries?

26:43: Anti-ICE protests in USA using costumes. "Autocrats hate humour".

27:30: Is humour a way to stay present in the world? Weaponisation of humour. Individual sense of what's funny versus other people's interpretation.

28:58: END