Our projects are invariably accompanied by specially-commissioned texts, a selection of which are published here.
Jacob Sam-La Rose
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.
Rob Young
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
Steven Bode traces the journey Ori Gersht undertook to research and make The Forest in this catalogue essay from 2005.
Rosa Tyhurst
Michael O'Pray Prize 2021: Rosa Tyhurst on Danielle Dean’s subverting of the vampiric strategies at work in brand marketing.
Sara Quattrocchi Febles
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
Steven Bode follows the route of Andrew Cross’s ‘English Journey’ in this catalogue essay from the time.
Owen Hatherley
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.
Mariam Zulfiqar and Dr David Edwards
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
Brian Dillon examines themes of the past, present and future in Patrick Hough's The Black River of Herself. View the storyboard-illustrated PDF of this text here.
Nathalie Olah
Nathalie Olah considers the intimate nature of the human-animal bond in Toby Parker Rees's film the great dog, Pan.
Michael Newman
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.
Steven Bode
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
Elhum Shakerifar reflects on Maryam Tafakory's film Nazarbazi, and the prohibition against touching in Iranian cinema that is the film's recurring motif.
Belinda Zhawi
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.
Stewart Lee
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
Dominic Paterson (The Hunterian, The University of Glasgow) explores Georgina Starr's Quarantaine within the context of avant-garde cinema and theory.
Steven Bode
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.
Graham Gussin, Steven Bode and Chris Darke
A conversation between Graham Gussin and Steven Bode. Interlocutor: Chris Darke
Steven Bode
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.
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Steven Bode
To accompany Marianna Simnett's The Bird Game and Confessions of a Crow, Steven Bode adds some supplementary notes.
Rebekah Taussig
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.
Rachel Pronger
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
Harvey Dimond explores the historical resonances of this slavery-referencing artwork made during a suffocating pandemic
Mimi Howard
Winner of the Michael O'Pray Prize 2020, Mimi Howard finds that there are oblique ways to engage with tumultuous times.
Jo Thompson
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.
Steven Bode
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
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.
Adnan Madani
Artist and writer Adnan Madani explores the allegorical within Reman Sadani's Walkout 1.
Louise Ashcroft
Louise Ashcroft ponders the conflicting voices in her head as she watches Guy Oliver's You Know Nothing of My Work.
Steven Bode
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
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
Rianna Walcott responds to De'Anne Crooks' Great-ish: The Gaslighting of a Nation, exploring the collective gaslighting of the Black community in Britain.
Ellen O'Donohue Oddy
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.
Steven Bode
FVU Director Steven Bode reflects on the making of Celebration (Cyprus Street) as well as its relevance for today.
David Kwaw Mensah
David Kwaw Mensah considers how Nadeem Din-Gabisi's MASS can be categorised in the genre of Transcendental Cinema.
Nadeem Din-Gabisi
Nadeem Din-Gabisi, writer and director of MASS, articulates the thinking and process behind his film.
Steven Bode
FVU's Director Steven Bode reflects on our first film to premiere on FVU Watch: Nadeem Din-Gabisi's MASS.
Laura Jacobs
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
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.
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Ellen Mara De Wachter
Writer Ellen Mara De Wachter looks at the potential for newness within open source materials in the work of Open Music Archive.
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Paul Morley
Writer and broadcaster Paul Morley discusses the history of the UK charts, sampling and music distribution in the work of Open Music Archive.
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Ellen O'Donohue Oddy
This interview with Open Music Archive explores collective cultural consciousness and pop music.
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Steven Bode
Steven Bode reflects on Everything I Have is Yours by Open Music Archive.
Natasha Hoare
Goldsmiths CCA curator Natasha Hoare explores the work of Richard Whitby and asks whos implicated in the UK immigration act.
Emily LaBarge
This creative-critical text responds to Webb-Ellis’s installation For The First Baby Born in Space.
Steven Bode
FVU's Steven Bode discusses the cultural and historical contexts behind Elizabeth Price's FELT TIP.
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Cathy Lane
Professor Cathy Lane looks at the relationship between noise and narrative in Mikhail Karikis' No Ordinary Protest.
George Vasey
George Vasey looks at the concept of the 'unintended concequence' in the work of Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta.
Steven Bode
Director of FVU Steven Bode explores the concept of the 'first impression' in the work of Hetain Patel.
Chantal Faust
Chantal Faust responds to Rob Crosse's Prime Time with a creative prose-poem exploring desire, intimacy and touch.
Erika Balsom
Film theorist Erika Balsom takes a close-up of Jane and Louise Wilson's 2016 work We Put the World Before You.
Laurence Scott
Writer Laurence Scott considers temporality in the 21st century, looking at the work of Alice May Williams and Karen Kramer.
Steven Bode
Steven Bode picks through the postmatch data of the Rugby World Cup 2015 alongside Ravi Deprees' The Gain Line.
Patrick Langley
Read Patrick Langley's response to Ben Rivers' Things, commissioned for FVU's Stay Where You Are project.
Lavinia Greenlaw
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
Lavinia Greenlaw
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
Lavinia Greenlaw
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
Lavinia Greenlaw
A series of texts drawing on Lavinia Greenlaw's experiences of the immediate, everyday world as it unfolds through the present moment.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths embraces the confines that her work often leaves behind in its pursuit of the wider, wilder world outside.
Patrick Langley
Patrick Langley considers the concept of travel and its representation in Layla Curtis' Antipodes
Paul Rooney
The monologue from Paul Rooney's Dust, as featured in his anthology 'Dust and Other Stories'.