4th-31st January 2021
Nick Thomas & Sophie Bates: Noordzee/North Sea, 28m37s, 2020
This month we decided to do things a little differently, and show work made by members of the WET film collective. Instead of a conversation to accompany the screening, we share a podcast we recently recorded with curatorial collective Anorak (Lukas Ludwig, Johanna Markert, and Florian Model) about the interlinked facets of our collective and individual practices, and the upcoming workshop Communal Luxury (June 2021, Kunstbüro der Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg)
Nick Thomas and Sophie Bates are artists based in Rotterdam, and are both members of WET film. They maintain solo practices alongside occasional collaborations and have previously worked together on a radio show, a performance and a quiz.
In Noordzee/North Sea, Thomas and Bates take on the role of roving interviewers on an overnight ferry between the Netherlands and the UK. Passengers on the ferry muse on their journey, daily worries and the role of friendship in their lives, producing a snapshot of a temporary community created by their enforced proximity to one another. The use of the ‘talking heads’ format to create a portrait of a place takes inspiration from examples of interview-films made by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Pier Paulo Pasolini and Sharon Hayes.