Our projects are invariably accompanied by specially-commissioned texts, a selection of which are published here.
Rachael Rakes examines how visual technologies, especially photography, film, and now AI, have never been neutral tools for revealing truth, but have instead been shaped by systems of power that determine what counts as evidence and reality.
Adnan Madani's text examines a world saturated with mediated images of violence, revealing how perception is shaped by power and spectacle.
Jaye Hudson explores how queer and trans artists in the ’90s and early 2000s used low-budget media to challenge mainstream misrepresentation, often without institutional backing.
Gary Zhexi Zhang situates Giants' Anatomy as a near-future reflection on dismantling industry, mourning labour, and turning industrial history into spectacle and museum culture.
Declan Wiffen considers the connections and resonances that emerge between the three works commissioned for The Open Road.
Runner-up for the Michael O'Pray Prize 2025: Oliver Dixon revisits the work of experimental documentary filmmakers
Runner-up for the Michael O'Pray Prize 2025: Emily Morley examines a new mode of distributed filmmaking
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2025: Ricardo Reverón Blanco on a Cuban filmmaker suppressed both at home and abroad
Steven Bode reflects on Suki Chan’s Sleep Walk Sleep Talk as a haunting portrait of London at night, blending visuals and voices to explore urban life, alienation, and inner consciousness.
Steven Bode has written a new text reflecting on the expansive life and practice of late artist Julie Henry, alongside the creation of her FVU-commissioned work This Sporting Life (2002).
Lola Olufemi uses objects, images and phrases found in Rhea Storr’s film Subjects of State, Labours of Love and weaves them together to create a textual meditation on work, ‘blackness’ and political transformation.
To accompany Patrick Hough's feature on FVU Watch, you can now read Naomi Pearce’s 2017 essay, Commencement Speech, commissioned as part of the catalogue for the Jerwood/ FVU Awards 2017, which took the form of a facsimile of fictitious documents.
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2024 Bami Oke examines Garrett Bradley’s embodied video reflection on US culture
Michael O'Pray Prize 2024 awardee E De Zulueta explores the delirious resistance of Mexican filmmakers Colectivo los ingrávidos
Michael O'Pray Prize 2024 awardee Nevan Spier views Palestine through the films of Mustafa Abu Ali and Elia Suleiman
To accompany Sophie Cundale's The Near Room (2020) featuring on FVU Watch, writer and critic Maria Walsh reflects on the concept of the ‘clinch’ as depicted in the work.
Steven Bode reflects on the intimate entanglement between the human species and the other life forms with whom we share the world, explored through Maeve Brennan's work Listening in the Dark (2018).
Writer Naomi Pearce reflects on themes of Death, the female archetype, and ideas of community in Lucy Beech's Me and Mine (2015).
Steven Bode remembers the late Bill Viola through a rumination on his iconic The Reflecting Pool, one of the highlights of the FVU showcase of the artist’s work, ‘A Thoughtful Gaze’.
Read a newly developed text by FVU’s Associate Director Steven Bode reflecting on the production and timely context of Simon Pope’s Memory Marathon.
Read author Sukhdev Sandhu's original text commissioned for Memory Marathon, reflecting on the impact of recollecting significant cultural events and the acoustic framework of memory
Originally commissioned in response to Webb-Ellis's For The First Baby Born in Space, writer Emily LaBarge expands on the work’s revelatory nature.
Rosa reflects on Jayne Parker’s quartet of musical interventions in the present moment — exploring the power of non-verbal communication, gesture and dance.
Read Jinan Coulter’s new essay produced in response to our latest #FVUWatch feature Aphonia (2024) by Sophie Hoyle.
Awardee of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2023 Natasha Thembiso Ruwona explores Ashanti Harris’s Black Gold.
Read Adam Bobbette's essay examining the granular connections explored through Gayle Chong Kwan's exhibition—bringing forth the historical and colonial ties between the Isle of Wight and Mauritius.
Antosh Wojcik's newly developed text draws on the visual and mechanical choreography performed in Sean Dower’s Automaton by the automated rig as it documents musician Steve Noble’s epic performance.
Read a newly developed text by writer and critic Martin Herbert, responding to the future-facing conspiracies of Daniel Cockburn’s recent FVU Commission Ahead of the Curve.
We believe in justice, dignity, freedom and equality for all people and condemn the violence enacted towards Palestinian and Israeli civilians.
Read a new text by Steven Bode reflecting on A Forest Tale by Ruth Maclennan two years on—now contextualised in the wake of Russia’s developing authoritarian regime and the war in Ukraine.
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2023 Leena Habiballa considers the physical reworking of a pioneering film’s 16mm print.
Awardee of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2023 Aislinn Evans critically examines a lesbian relation to histories of the land and landscape cinema.
Artist Reman Sadani expands on themes of grief, loss and memory presented within Myriam Rey's 2023 FVU commission absent landscapes.
Writer and academic Mimi Howard considers Anne Bjerge Hansen’s Interludes against the ceaseless flow of video images in the present and the slower televisual rhythms of the past.
Steven Bode looks back at Mikhail Karikis’ No Ordinary Protest through the discoloured lens of the extraordinary events of the summer of 2023.
Commissioned for the initial 2018 exhibition of Mikhail Karikis' No Ordinary Protest, artist and academic Cathy Lane considers the work in light of Karikis' broader artistic practice.
Published in the booklet accompanying the 1997 Passagen CD-ROM, the artists Ellard and Johnstone wend the creative and literary pathways within their work.
Steven Bode tunes into the lingering resonances of Marcus Coates’ work, and how its ecological message reverberates in the present.
Steven Bode revisits Shona Illingworth’s Balnakiel in the light of her recent major work, Topologies of Air.
To accompany the remastered release of Adam Chodzko's Plan for a Spell, we shake off the dust from Chris Darke’s essay from the 2002 catalogue for the work, Plans and Spells.
Awardee of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2022 Siavash Minoukadeh explores the power of oblique suggestion in queer cinema.
Awardee of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2022 Dan Guthrie tries to imagine the experience of Steve McQueen's elusive artwork Bear.
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2022 Evelyn Wh-ell examines two French trans icons’ focus on image as surface.
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2022 Laura Bivolaru presents an argument for viewing the moving image while moving.
In this specially commissioned text to accompany The Song, novelist Kamila Shamsie picks up the bitter-sweet refrain of the film and visits its protagonist some years into the future.
From the scourge of illness to the succour of creativity and the solace of friendship, Jessica Moriarty’s essay charts a complementary companion path to Joanna’s Callaghan’s video.
Intergenerational longings, dislocations and waiting in Soojin Chang's BXBY.
A re-run of Steven Bode’s introductory essay from the Portrait of a River accompanying publication.
Writer and artist Gary Zhexi Zhang traces the underlying meanings and associations of Michael Ho’s Echoes from the Void.
Author and activist Ben Rawlence finds multiple points of kinship and connection with his own journeys around the arboreal zones of the Arctic in this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s film Treeline.
Poet Zein Sa’dedin considers the complex emotions of homecoming and departure through the prism of Zineb Sedira’s Saphir.
Poet Jacob Sam-La Rose goes back to his Eighties childhood, lit up by its ever-changing parade of new computer-games but clouded by its anxious hints of environmental catastrophe, to crack the code of Rodell Warner’s Natural Error.
Author Rob Young, chronicler of British TV esoterica in his compendium ‘The Magic Box’, lifts the lid on the myriad ‘wyrd’ influences lurking in Craig David Parr’s Wings of Love.
Steven Bode traces the journey Ori Gersht undertook to research and make The Forest in this catalogue essay from 2005.
Michael O'Pray Prize 2021: Ronnie Angel Pope enters a cinematic void.
Michael O'Pray Prize 2021: Rosa Tyhurst on Danielle Dean’s subverting of the vampiric strategies at work in brand marketing.
Michael O'Pray Prize 2021: Sara Quattrocchi Febles explores how a film can no longer be fixed in time and place when screened outdoors.
Steven Bode follows the route of Andrew Cross’s 'English journey' in this catalogue essay from the time.
In the aftermath of the headlong, headstrong English journey in pursuit of Brexit, Owen Hatherley considers the changing features of a mercantile and architectural landscape clearly signposted in Andrew Cross’s video 3 hours from here: an English Journey.
In this essay on Ruth Maclennan’s Treeline, Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards consider the wider botanical, cultural and geopolitical resonances that are opened up by the work.
Brian Dillon examines themes of the past, present and future in Patrick Hough's The Black River of Herself.
Nathalie Olah considers the intimate nature of the human-animal bond in Toby Parker Rees's film the great dog, Pan.
In this essay, critic Michael Newman traces the evolution of the panorama and its importance as a motif in Marine Hugonnier’s beautifully rounded portrait of Afghanistan.
As the latest chapter of Afghanistan’s repeating cycle of history seems set to start, Steven Bode looks back at Marine Hugonnier’s Ariana and its resonance for the present moment.
Elhum Shakerifar reflects on Maryam Tafakory's film Nazarbazi, and the prohibition against touching in Iranian cinema that is the film's recurring motif.
Poet and artist Belinda Zhawi draws on her own unique experience of language and food in this essay on Kondo Heller's MU/T/T/ER.
Stand-up comedian, writer and director Stewart Lee asks whether comedy can ever be art in his essay on Patrick Goddard's film Animal Antics.
Dominic Paterson (The Hunterian, The University of Glasgow) explores Georgina Starr's Quarantaine within the context of avant-garde cinema and theory.
Graham Gussin's Remote Viewer was made twenty years ago this year. From a distance of two decades, Steven Bode reflects on how much it resonates with the present.
A conversation between Graham Gussin and Steven Bode. Interlocutor: Chris Darke
With Paul Rooney's Dust and Bellevue available on FVU Watch, Steven Bode reflects on their themes of limbo and confinement one year into the global pandemic.
To accompany Marianna Simnett's The Bird Game and Confessions of a Crow, Steven Bode adds some supplementary notes.
Writer Rebekah Taussig explores how caregiving is both a personal and communal experience in this powerful response to Kyla Harris and Lou Macnamara's It's Personal.
Michael O'Pray Prize runner-up Rachel Pronger discovers in the experimental work of a pioneering filmmaker a familiar tension between the social being and the individual body.
Harvey Dimond explores the historical resonances of this slavery-referencing artwork made during a suffocating pandemic
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2020, Mimi Howard finds that there are oblique ways to engage with tumultuous times.
Writer Jo Thompson explores Rachel Maclean's Feed Me within the context of surveillance capitalism, highlighting traces of the fairytale narrative in our online behaviours.
As Rachel Maclean's Feed Me shows on FVU Watch, Steven Bode reflects on what we can learn from the film at Christmas amidst a pandemic.
Emmie McLuskey unpacks our modern dependence technology, substances and ritual, as well as what it means to belong, in Cal Mac's Agony to Ecstasy.
Artist and writer Adnan Madani explores the allegorical within Reman Sadani's Walkout 1.
Artist and performer Louise Ashcroft ponders the conflicting voices in her head as she watches Guy Oliver's You Know Nothing of My Work.
Responding to Chris Zhongtian Yuan's Wuhan Punk, Steven Bode reflects on how the city of Wuhan was previously famous for being the hotbed of China's punk rock scene.
Iris Long reflects on the machinations at play in Chris Zhongtian Yuan's Wuhan Punk, exploring the implications of restoring visual memory via the medium of film.
Rianna Walcott responds to Exodus Crooks' Great-ish: The Gaslighting of a Nation, exploring the collective gaslighting of the Black community in Britain.
We sat down with Sophie Cundale to discuss the making of The Near Room and how she came upon the film's key concepts: Muhammad Ali's Near Room and Cotard Delusion.
FVU Director Steven Bode reflects on the making of Celebration (Cyprus Street) as well as its relevance for today.
David Kwaw Mensah considers how Nadeem Din-Gabisi's MASS can be categorised in the genre of Transcendental Cinema.
Nadeem Din-Gabisi, writer and director of MASS, articulates the thinking and process behind his film.
FVU's Director Steven Bode reflects on our first film to premiere on FVU Watch: Nadeem Din-Gabisi's MASS.
Laura Jacobs on hostile environments, both social and natural, in Patrick Staff’s ‘On Venus’ exhibition. Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2019.
Cassandre Greenberg considers Derek Jarman’s Blue as a celluloid artefact in an age of portable digital media. Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2019.
Writer Ellen Mara De Wachter looks at the potential for newness within open source materials in the work of Open Music Archive.
Writer and broadcaster Paul Morley discusses the history of the UK charts, sampling and music distribution in the work of Open Music Archive.
This interview with Open Music Archive explores collective cultural consciousness and pop music.
Steven Bode reflects on Everything I Have is Yours by Open Music Archive.
Goldsmiths CCA curator Natasha Hoare explores the work of Richard Whitby and asks who is implicated in the UK immigration act.
This creative-critical text responds to Webb-Ellis’s installation For The First Baby Born in Space.
FVU's Steven Bode discusses the cultural and historical contexts behind Elizabeth Price's FELT TIP.
Professor Cathy Lane looks at the relationship between noise and narrative in Mikhail Karikis' No Ordinary Protest.
George Vasey looks at the concept of the 'unintended concequence' in the work of Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta.
Director of FVU Steven Bode explores the concept of the 'first impression' in the work of Hetain Patel.
Chantal Faust responds to Rob Crosse's Prime Time with a creative prose-poem exploring desire, intimacy and touch.
Film theorist Erika Balsom takes a close-up of Jane and Louise Wilson's 2016 work We Put the World Before You.
Writer Laurence Scott considers temporality in the 21st century, looking at the work of Alice May Williams and Karen Kramer.
Steven Bode picks through the postmatch data of the Rugby World Cup 2015 alongside Ravi Deprees' The Gain Line.
Read Patrick Langley's response to Ben Rivers' Things, commissioned for FVU's Stay Where You Are project.
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Patrick Langley considers the concept of travel and its representation in Layla Curtis' Antipodes
The monologue from Paul Rooney's Dust, as featured in his anthology 'Dust and Other Stories'.
