We could be closer than we think

I wanted it to be a recognition that we were moving towards each other, and understanding that we want similar things, have similar desires. Whilst maintaining our individuality, and being apart. It is about valorising our own little institutions, and encouraging many smaller institutions as well as being part of larger ones.

Cecilia Edberg - Learning to line dance with Big Ray - Cecilia has been working at the Sewing Circle where we do screenings once each month. She has been so wonderful and this video she made is just one more thing that makes me admire her. It is so funny how the group of ladies dancing are so together like a pack and Cecilia is sort of outside and just a completely different shape, and bodily comportment. They seem like they want to help her but they don’t want to give up their own pleasure, or it is like they just can’t stop moving.

Lilia Paskiewicz- Suspended - I walked into the cinema and you are on the screen. Is it you? or is it somebody with the same fringe, blonde hair and mean way of smokin. It is not your movie, I know that but what are you doing there. Later I go to eat soup. Jemma my friend who works here has to go home, her boyfriend has locked himself out, and there is a riot in Brixton. I agree to cover her shift as an usher in the cinema, although I am disappointed because she won't get to see your film. It is a good evening, Ian (the cinema curator) and I are at the back chatting and commenting on films, I love these nights when it feels like it is our place to do what we like. The films perfectly complement these feelings. All the time anticipating your movie. Hooray E. leslie arrives all fidgety and wearing a neck scarf. Ali is here too, about to be exposed to another night of disjointed images and I feel somehow responsible for her. Greg the projectionist passes me the message from the video cassette box, hi Lilia! Then your film. I knew it was you. Actually I have never seen any of your videos before now.

Peaches and Sharon Daly - Cum Undun - Peaches is a Canadian musician based in Berlin. These videos are partly made up from super 8 projections that were part of her live show. Beautifully edited by Kara Blake, now as a kind of pop video version. I wonder if she is making new tapes? or showing these same ones on MTV.

Marina Vishmidt - Cliptrap- Marina worked with me on my video ’Raising a resister’, both in the performance and editing. I love watching her dress up in her house, while we were making the video. This film is her secret life, before I knew her I imagine, she has good secrets. There are these vibrating close ups that seem to hum, and the lines and shapes seem connected to one another, she held onto them in her mind until something came along that fit. She pretends like it is abstract form, I see concrete and careful selection.

GUP_py with Yoko Hata - Island, landscape between sky, land and sea- I met Yoko through a friend of mine who is now living in Berlin, Janine Rostron. The first time I met her we walked from Brixton tube station to the Old Kent road, where I was in a show at the time in a small gallery there. It was a long walk, and I remember even then admiring her stamina. This video is something extraordinary, it is like cloth or even just what you are trying to imagine. Yoko also has developed something called gup_py a design idea with special offices and a magazine. Yoko is back in Berlin, I will see her again there.

Emma Leslie and Krista Bagnell - To watch when you are dressing - This is my best friend Emma, and her friend Krista, the year after I left college, in Sheffield, they are there performing whilst the other shoots and holds a small tape player around their wrist playing their favourite music. I love the the theme to ‘Rocky’ and the girl sitting in the top window of Emma’s terraced house with her legs dangling outside. I also like how the colours flare in some parts, where the tape is quite old, the red pillow and the lady in her red top.

Emma Hedditch - Raising a Resister - It is partly reconstructed found footage from videos made at ‘The Lambeth Women’s Project’ a centre for young women in South London. It features Marina Vishmidt, who performed the voice over and edited the video with me. It is a woman called carol, at a point in her life where she feels she understands her own desire and need for isolation but also to be part of a group, movement or scene. It came out with the tone of some really personal relationships that have gone wrong, or somehow needed further analysis. I like to say intimate things in an art context, as another way of saying something that is really important to you and moving, so this language seems more appropriate than a less intimate one.

Vanessa Able - Bird- I have not met Vanessa, but I have had some emails from her. It seems brave to go on the island alone, and the island looks small.

Maria Karlsson and Marjam Rahimsadeh Oskoui - Elysian Park Los Angeles - I had this tape for a long time and I really like it because it is so slow, they seem quite inventive with the small number of props they have. I like the directions of the camera person, who is Marjam. I did get to meet Maria finally in Denmark and she told me that sheand Marjam made several videos together.

Francesca Gore - Wish- Fran makes performances photographs and video. They often remind me of those books about Victorian girls who are naughty and something happens to them and they become good. This also makes me think of snoopy dancing, which doesn’t really mean that he is happy, only that it is something he does to get in touch with his feelings.

Who has seen this tape