Friday 9 May 2008, 10.30–18.00

This symposium examines Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s films in the context of contemporary art, exploring the impact of the director’s work on artists working across a range of mediums. Leading artists and writers examine Tarkovsky’s legacy in Russia and the West, and discuss the relationship between film and artistic expression. This landmark event will provide a fascinating insight into the mind of this legendary artist.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£18 (£15 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments

    

10.30-10.40 Introduction

10.40-11.00 Panel 1

Evgeny Tsymbal, On Sculpting the Stalker

Moderator Nathan Dunne

11.00-12.30 Panel 2

Robert Bird Medium and Mediation: Andrei Tarkovsky and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Art

Hannah Collins Journeys with Tarkovsky

Moderator Vlad Strukov

12.30-13.30

Lunch

13.30-15.00 Panel 3

James Quandt Tarkovsky and His Influence in Contemporary Cinema

Toby Litt Tarkovsky’s Boredom

Moderator Nathan Dunne

15.00-15.30

Tea and coffee served in the Starr Auditorium Foyer

 15.30-17.00 Panel 4

Hannah Starkey Stillness

Jeremy Millar Ajapeegel

Moderator Brian Dillon

17.00

Concluding remarks

18.00-20.00

Concert of the baroque music quartet ‘The Four Temperaments’

East room, Level 7

Speakers' biographies

Evgeny Tsymbal was the assistant director to Andrei Tarkovsky on Stalker (1979), after which he became a filmmaker himself. He is the only Russian director to win a BAFTA (for Defence Counsel Sedov, 1988) and has twice been awarded the Russian Film Academy's Oscar (NIKA). He is a widely published film scholar and is writing a book about the making of Stalker.

Nathan Dunne
Nathan Dunne is a London-based writer on art and cinema. He is the author and editor of a major survey on the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky (2008). He is currently working on a project about the British artist John Latham.

Robert Bird
Robert Bird’s main area of interest is the aesthetic practice and theory of Russian modernism. His first full-length book Russian Prospero (2006) is a comprehensive study of the poetry and thought of Viacheslav Ivanov. He is also the author of two books on the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev (2004) and Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (2008). His translations of Russian religious thought include On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader (1998) and Viacheslav Ivanov’s Selected Essays (2001). His works in progress include The Soviet Imaginary and a book on Dostoevsky and narrative theory, provisionally entitled In Suspense.

Hannah Collins
Hannah Collins is a British photographer and filmmaker. Her work is included in the Tate Collection, Victoria and AlbertMuseum and Deutsche Bank Collection. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1993 and was Professor in Photography at University of California at Davis 2002-2004. Her most recent work is A Current History, a film shot in the village of Beshencevo, Nizni Novogorod, Russia. A monograph of her work, Finding, Transmitting, Receiving was published in 2007 (Black Dog Publishing).

Vlad Strukov
Dr Vlad Strukov teaches Russian literature, media and film at the University of Leeds, UK. He is also associate faculty in the Centre for World Cinemas where he teaches digital culture. He is the author of Kul’tura “Post”; his publications on Russian cinema and animation have appeared in Slavic and Eastern European Journal and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal. He has presented on Russian culture, internet and film at the BBC World Service and at various universities in the UK and USA. He is member of the editorial board of Russian Cyber Space and the founding editor of Static, an international journal for interdisciplinary debate about paradoxes of contemporary culture.

James Quandt
James Quandt is Senior Programmer at Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto where he curated two retrospectives of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, as well as major touring series of the films of Robert Bresson, Mikio Naruse, Kenji Mizoguchi, Shohei Imamura, Kon Ichikawa, and Roberto Rossellini. He has edited monographs on Bresson, Ichikawa and Imamura, and  published widely on such directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Hong Sang-soo, Jia Zhang-Ke, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Manoel de Oliveira, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang and Alexander Sokurov. His commentaries on Bresson's "Pickpocket" and three films by Hiroshi Teshigahara appear on Criterion label DVDs.

Toby Litt
Toby Litt was born in 1968 and grew up in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He is the author of Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself, Ghost Story and Hospital. His new novel, I play the drums in a band called okay, was published in March 2008. He is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. His website is at www.tobylitt.com

Hannah Starkey
Since 1997, Hannah Starkey has produced a series of photographic meditations on contemporary life. Her early works were staged scenarios based on the experiences of young women living in the city. They were meticulously constructed and often cinematic, suggesting a narrative that had been artificially suspended in time. Her later works set up a tension between the real and the imaginary and draw attention to the banality and dehumanizing effects of the constructed environments in which we lead so much of our lives. Starkey’s understanding of the passage contemporary photography has made in the past decade continues to fuel and to challenge the development of her own imagery, making her one of the most influential and exceptional photographic artists working today. Living and working in London, Starkey has exhibited widely internationally. She has recently exhibited at Maureen Paley, London and Tanya Bonkadar, New York and was part of The Youth of Today, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; and others.

Jeremy Millar
Jeremy Millar is an artist living in Whitstable, and is currently AHRC Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts, Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford. In its powerful and haunted depiction of place, Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) has had a profound influence upon the work of Jeremy Millar. In this presentation he will discuss, and show examples of, a number of different works including photographs, a sound installation, and an ongoing video work, Ajapeegel (2006–) which was shot in Tallinn on the location of Tarkovsky's original film.

Brian Dillon
Brian Dillon is the author of a memoir, In the Dark Room (Penguin, 2005) and UK editor of Cabinet magazine. He teaches History & Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent. His writing appears regularly in such publications as frieze, Art Review, Tate etc., the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and Sight & Sound. He is working on Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, to be published in 2009.