Jordan Baseman

Jordan’s research orbits around recorded interviews, made over a period of time, that are ultimately combined and edited with various archival and original visual and audio sources - raw materials used specifically for the production of narrative-based, creative non-fiction, single screen films, sound works and moving-image based installations/artworks. 

The spontaneity and the unpredictability of the interview is always at the very core of his research. The resulting artworks are a synthesis of reportage, portraiture, documentary, creative non-fiction, and narrative practices. The editing, re-interpretation and re-positioning of speculative ideas, opinions, beliefs and anecdotes towards the production of new, layered meanings within narratives are central to his objectives. The resulting artworks address questions about the relationship between moving-images and the manufacture of portraiture, fact and fiction and the role and function of both linear and non-linear narrative structures within contemporary art practices.

Jordan's research orbits around the generation of recorded interviews, combined with recorded observation processes and the use of archival sources as raw materials towards the production of narrative-based, creative non-fiction, single screen films, sound works and moving-image based installations/artworks. The spontaneity and the unpredictability of the interview situation lie at the heart of his research. The resulting artworks are a synthesis of reportage, portraiture, documentary, creative non-fiction and narrative practices. The editing, re-interpretation and re-positioning of speculative ideas, opinions, beliefs and anecdotes towards the production of new narratives is central to his studies. The resulting artworks address questions about the relationship between moving-images and the manufacture of portraiture, fact and fiction and the role and function of both linear and non-linear narrative structures within contemporary art practices. 

The aim of his research is to adopt some of the methodologies (specifically the recorded interview) used by journalists, oral historians, anthropologists, criminologists and other social scientists and academics, and to combine that approach with the literary device of creative non-fiction, solely towards the generation and production of artworks.

The constructed narratives within the artworks are positioned from the perspective of lived experience: anecdotal first person narratives, academic expertise and speculative opinion are re-presented equally within the films/artworks in order to ask questions about the conditions and structures of both our religious and secular belief systems: our philosophical, social, political and academic foundations. 

Baseman’s intention is to produce a hybrid form of expanded, experimental portraiture through the act of combining different established methods of creating, collecting and deploying narratives and then fusing the results of those activities with conceptual and physical experimental film-making practices and processes.

2015

• Experimental Film, Big Muddy Film Festival, Illinois
• Leverhulme Trust, Artist in Residence, University of Lincoln, School of Law, Lincoln
• Wellcome Trust Arts Award, Research and Development for Marked
• Teton ArtLab, Artist in Residence, Jackson, Wyoming

2014 

• Visiting Artist, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
• Sites of Collective Memory Commission, Animate Projects, London
• Artist in Residence, Bemis Center, Omaha, Nebraska

2013

• Artist in Residence, Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku
• Best Experimental Documentary, Atlanta Underground Film Festival
• Best Experimental Film, Kansas City International Film Festival, Kansas City
• Best Experimental Film, Fargo Film Festival
• ArtSouth Commission, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

2012

• 971 horses + 4 zebras, Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England
• COMPASS, Beacon Art Project, Lincolnshire
• Best Experimental Film, Independent Filmmakers Showcase, Hollywood
• Research and Development Award, Animate Projects, London

2011

• Best Short Film, Lone Star International Film Festival, Dallas
• deadness, Wellcome Trust Arts Award, London
• Artist in Residence, Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo
• 1973, Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England
• Artist in Residence, St. John’s College, University of Oxford

2010

• Rough Machine Commission, Animate Projects, London
• Best Film (Dangerous Experiments), Los Angeles Animation Festival
• Best International Short Film, Melbourne Underground Film Festival

2009

• Identity Project Award, Nature’s Great Experiment, Wellcome Trust
• Blue Movie, Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England, Henry Moore Foundation and Matt’s Gallery London
• Commonwealth Suite, a hypnotic effect, Collective, Edinburgh
• dark is the night, ArtSway and Photographers’ Gallery, London

2008

• Stop.Watch., Animate Projects and RSA Film

Marked (Working Title, 2015 – )

Marked is funded by the Wellcome Trust and is currently at the research and development stage as a project. Marked, (working title), will eventually become an experimental animated film that features the personal narratives of female breast-cancer survivors, who, after undergoing mastectomy surgery, have declined breast reconstruction and have adorned their surgery scars with tattoos, challenging the norm of breast reconstruction and perceived notions of womanhood.

Artist in Residence, April 2015 – November 2017

University of Lincoln School of Law and College of Social Science and the City of Lincoln. Funded by Magna Carta 800 Trust, Leverhulme Fund (Artist in Residence) and Arts Council England. 

The focus of this research will refer to personal experiences and case studies in attempts to expand (and contract) definitions and interpretations of ideas relating to The Law, so that the resulting artwork(s) explore ideas around human rights, politics, activism, terrorism, youth crime and prevention, anti-social behaviour, crime and deviance, social inclusion/exclusion, participation and representation, etc.

This research driven project will explore Power and the Law, the spectacle of crime (and deviance) from the point of view of offenders and victims, and those working at all levels within the legal system, with a particular focus on social, political and cultural discourses. 

Solo Exhibitions/Screenings (since 2008) 

2015

• Tape 1 Tape 2, PS1, University of Lincoln
• July the Twelfth 1984, Matt’s Gallery @ Hospital Club, London
  

2014

• Nobody Likes Us But We Don't Care, Kunstverein Freiburg
  

2013

• Deadness, Matt’s Gallery, London
• A Cold Hand on a Cold Day, Fabrica, Brighton
• True Crime, Aspex Gallery at Omega Centre, Portsmouth
• Green Lady, Index Gallery, Site Visual Art Festival, Stroud
  

2012

• Green Lady, Modern Art Oxford at Story Museum, Oxford
• 1973, Matt’s Gallery @ Genesis Cinema, London
  

2011

• Nasty Piece of Stuff, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen
  

2010

• The Most Powerful Weapon in This World, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
• Nature’s Great Experiment,
• Catalyst Arts, Belfast
  

2009

• Blue Movie, Matt’s Gallery, London
• dark is the night, The Photographers’ Gallery, London and ArtSway, New Forest
• a hypnotic effect, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
  

Group Exhibitions/Screenings (Selected - since 2008)

2015

• FUSO International Video Art Festival, Lisbon
• Aesthetica Film Festival, York
• FILMadrid, Madrid International Film Festival, Madrid
• Sequences 7, The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik
• London Short Film Festival, Hackney Picture House, London
• Freedom Lies, The Collection, Lincoln
• Strangelove Film Festival, University of the Arts London, London
• Big Muddy Film Festival, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
• MAC International, MAC, Belfast
  

2014

• Seville International Film Festival, Seville
• Aesthetica Film Festival, York
• See it This, Forde Space, Geneva
• Hey, Im Mr. Poetic…, Wysing Arts, Cambridge
• Sites of Collective Memory, Animate Projects London
• Between Subject and Object, University of Cape Town, Cape Town
• Art (After) Death, Royal Academy Schools, Lauderdale House, London
• Oxford Film Festival, Oxford (Mississippi)
  

2013

• 3AM: Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night, Bluecoat, Liverpool
• Atlanta Underground Film Festival, Atlanta
• Imagina Animation Festival, Lima
• 971 horses + 4 zebras, MADA Gallery, Melbourne
• International Animated Film Festival, Annecy
• Athens International Film Festival, Athens (Ohio)
• Kansas City International Film Festival, Kansas City
• Independent Filmmakers Showcase, Hollywood
• Berlin Independent Film Festival, Berlin
• Fargo Film Festival, Fargo
• 971 horses + 4 zebras, Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania, Hobart        
• 971 horses + 4 zebras, Tate Modern and Wimbledon Space, London
• Light Assembly, Miami Art Basel, Miami
• Made in Three Mills Film Festival, London
• I Would Breathe Water, Sarah Scout Gallery, Melbourne
• COMPASS, Beacon Art Project, Lincolnshire
  

2012

• Audio: Jordan Baseman y Susan Hiller, Fundacio Tapies, Barcelona
• Animasivo Festival, Mexico City
• Oaxaca International Film Festival, Oaxaca
• San Francisco Short Film Festival, San Francisco
• Tokyo Story, Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo
• Independent Filmmakers Showcase, Hollywood
• London Short Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art, London
  

2011 

• Lone Star International Film Festival, Fort Worth, Dallas
• Scope, Tsinghua University, Beijing
• Edinburgh Documentary Film Festival, Edinburgh
• Dark Matters, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
• Among the Nightingales, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
• When the Dead Help the Living, Light Projects, Melbourne
• Volta + Armory, Artprojx Cinema, SVA Theater, New York
• London Short Film Festival, London
  

2010

• Moving Portraits, De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
• Coming of Age, Great Northern Museum, Newcastle
• Los Angeles Animation Festival, California
• San Francisco International Short Film Festival, California
• ResoVision, Resonance FM @ Frieze Art Fair
• The All Sided Game, Edinburgh Film Guild Cinema, Edinburgh
• Among the Nightingales, Tatton Park Biennial, Tatton Park
• Adding Complexity to Confusion, Tate Britain, London
• Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Melbourne,
• Fools in Print, Berkley Art Museum, California
• Voice/Under, Sixes and Sevens, White Box Studio, Nottingham
• Glimmer, Hull International Film Festival, Hull
• Gstaad Film Festival, Gstaad
• Film, Video, Performance, Wimbledon College of Art, London
  

2009

• New Forest Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice
• Leading Lights, Several Pursuits Gallery, Berlin
• Talk Show/Speakeasy, Institute of Contemporary Art, London
• Ways of Living, Guest Room, London
• Fool Me, drift, New Media Scotland, Edinburgh
  

2008 

• Stop.Watch., British Film Institute, London
• Reading Experimental Film Festival, Rising Sun Art Centre, Reading
• Folie A Plusiers, MCO Arte Contemporanea, Porto
• Drawn Encounters, Wimbledon College of Art, London
• Parallel, Salamanca Art Centre, Hobart, Tasmania
• Multi-Channel, ArtSway, New Forest
• Art and Strangers, Turnpike Gallery, Wigan
• Alchemy, Manchester Museum, Manchester
• Grain, Isle of Grain, Kent

Jordan has a long history of conducting projects in collaboration with public institutions.  These have included residencies and commissions for: Papworth Hospital (Heart and Lung Transplant Unit), Cambridge; The Science Museum, London; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland; Grizedale Arts, Cumbria; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska; Camden Arts Centre, London; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Book Works, London; National Sculpture Factory, Ireland; The Wellcome Trust, London; Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Tasmania, Australia; Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo; The Photographers' Gallery, London; Matt's Gallery, London and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, to name a few.