Ben Rivers
Ben Rivers was selected as part of the 2013 Open call for proposals from Artangel and BBC Radio 4 which resulted in THE SKY TREMBLES AND THE EARTH IS AFRAID AND THE TWO EYES ARE NOT BROTHERS. Some of the raw footage from this film was included in The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, an installation in studios at BBC TV Centre in London.
Ben Rivers is an award winning artist and filmmaker represented by Kate MacGarry Gallery in London. Rivers won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea; the inaugural Robert Gardner Film Award, 2013; Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 42, for Sack Barrow; Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, 2010.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Fable, Temporary Gallery Cologne, 2014; Things, Kate MacGarry Gallery, London, 2014; Ah, Liberty! Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2013; Slow Action, Hepworth Wakefield, 2012; Sack Barrow, Hamburg Kunsthalle, 2012 and Hayward Gallery, London, 2011; Slow Action, Matt's Gallery, London and Gallery TPW, Toronto, 2011.
His films have screened worldwide at numerous festivals including Rotterdam Film Festival, where he twice won a Tiger Award for Short Film. His second feature film, co-directed with Ben Russell, A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness, premiered at Locarno International Film Festival, and won top prizes at CPH:DOX and Torino Film Festival. Between 1995 and 2005 he co-programmed Brighton Cinematheque. He is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.
The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers is a series of five films hinged around the dramatisation of: ‘A Distant Episode', a novel written by Paul Bowles in 1947, about the abduction of a European man by Morrocan bandits; a collection of stories told to camera by storyteller and artist Mohammed Mrabet, who was a muse to Jane and Paul Bowles in the 1940’s, and the documentation of a film being made by artist Shezad Dawood within the same time period. Migrating between documentary, fantasy and fable, the films examine the nature of storytelling and film making. The single channel, short films can be shown as 16mm or digital works, all together or a smaller selection.
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Oliver Laxe's work and Ben Rivers's begin to collide when Laxe abandons his film set to take the part in Rivers's reworking of writer Paul Bowles's short story in which a Professor of Languages has his tongue cut out in. A costume fashioned from the lids of tin cans is displayed as worn by Laxe performing this role in 'A Distant Episode'.
The installation includes part of a film being made by Oliver Laxe, 'Las Mimosas', also shot in Morocco. As well as documenting behind the scenes of this production, Ben Rivers stepped in as a second camera unit for Laxe and shot some footage from the back of a taxi. The furtive actor in the front seat left the set shortly afterwards, never to be seen again.
During a stopover in Tangier, Rivers has a chance encounter with Mohammed Mrabet – storyteller, artist and muse to Jane and Paul Bowles in the 1940s – now 79 and still living and working in the city. In a cave outside Tangier, Mrabet tells several stories to camera.
The Paint Frame
In The Paint Frame, an area where sets were created for BBC dramas, a fragment of Carles Santos' soundtrack to Pere Portabella's 'Vampir Cuadecuc' (1970) can be heard.
A large viewing room in The Setting Space constructed from salvaged film sets houses a projection documenting the making of another filmmaker Shezad Dawood's work 'Towards the Possible Film', again shot in Morocco, this time by the ocean. A study in parallel universes and the sparks that fly when worlds collide, Rivers' account of Dawood's shoot is recollected in monochrome as a remote and distant episode, underscored by the Carles Santos soundtrack first heard in The Paint Frame.
A Distant Episode
As well as forming part of the installation at Television Centre, A Distant Episode has been since released as a short film.
Its world premiere was at Toronto International Film Festival, 12 September 2015 and it has also screened at the New York Film Festival. A meditation on the illusion of filmmaking, it is shot behind-the-scenes on a film being made on the otherworldly beaches of Sidi Ifni, Morocco. The film depicts strange activities, with no commentary or dialogue; it appears as a fragment of film, dug-up in a distant future; a hazy, black and white, hallucinogenic world.
Credits
Written and directed by Ben Rivers
Commissioned by Artangel
Produced by Jacqui Davies
First AD Lina Laraki
Sound by Carles Santos
A Distant Episode uses footage generated on the production of Towards the Possible Film by Shezad Dawood, a work commissioned by Film and Video Umbella and Delfina Foundation. Film and Video Umbrella is supported by Arts Council England. With thanks to the Shezad Dawood and the crew of Towards the Possible Film.
More information
The connections between authorship, creativity, landscape and the medium of filmmaking itself are tapped and allowed to run amok within the dusty walls of the Drama Block. – Adam Scovell, The Times, 17 August 2015
A complex web of moving image, sound and architectural space, a poetic meditation on the creative process and the blurring of fiction and reality. — Ben Luke, Evening Standard, 3 August 2015
By including rushes and using the abandoned BBC drama centre to meditate on themes of construction, reconstruction and deconstruction, Rivers has created an artwork that simultaneously begs to be seen as a continuous work and a walk-through installation. It is a work for both mind and body. – Dan Kidner, Frieze, September 2015
Ben Rivers is putting the former drama block of Television Centre department to good use, interweaving layers of fiction and documentary in his Artangel-commissioned film installation, so that the fuzzy-edged threads of movies and reality become confused.’– Skye Sherwin, The Guardian Guide, 27 June 2015
Presented at Television Centre White City with the kind cooperation of Stanhope plc.
Production Manager, Jacqui Leigh
Installation Manager, Patrick Seaman
Installation Crew, Ali Amer, Jim Bridge, Luke Champion, Peter Cooper, Zane Costelloe, Anthony D'Amico, John Gair, David Jones, Christian Marsden, David Sawyer and Rowland Smith.
AV Equipment, Kino Klub, ADi and RNSS.
With very special thanks for the support of Scenery Salvage.
Front of House Team: Keshav Anand, Jen Boyd, Ruby Brown, Martha Crawford, Isabel Ford, Anabel Hazeldine, Laura Hindmarsh, Nick Middleton, John Petrie, Tashi Petter, Marion Ravel, Joseph Taylor McRae (Manager), Tilly Symonds, Rosie Taylor, Sarah Thacker, Helen Turner, Heather Welsh, Lisa Williams, Samantha Wolf.
A Distant Episode from A Distant Episode: The Selected Stories by Paul Bowles. Copyright © 1988 by Paul Bowles, used with permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
Footage generated on the production of Las Mimosas, a film by Oliver Laxe, produced by Zeitun Films, Rouge International and LaProd and footage generated on the production of Towards the Possible Film by Shezad Dawood, a work commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Delfina Foundation all used with permission. Film and Video Umbrella is supported by Arts Council England.
With special thanks to Diversity Art Forum.
The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers is commissioned by Artangel, the Whitworth, The University of Manchester and the BFI’s Film Fund, with the support of Arts Council England.
The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers is included in The Artangel Collection, a national initiative to commission and present new film and video work, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Artangel is generously supported by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels and The Company of Angels.
From the top:
- The costume fashioned from the lids of tin cans that Oliver Laxe wore when Ben Rivers was filming in Morocco on display at Television Centre, June 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
- Ben Rivers and Mohammed Mrabet, Morocco (2015). Photograph: Yuki Yamamoto
- The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers installation at the Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photograph: Michael Pollard
- Taxi Passenger by Ben Rivers, projection at Television Centre, June 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
- Mrabet and Taxi installed at the Chelsea College of Arts in 2024. Photograph: Maria Herrero Tejada
- Oliver Laxe as shot by Ben Rivers, projection at Television Centre, June 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
- Mohammed Mrabet shot by Ben Rivers, part of the installation at Television Centre at White City, 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
- The Paint Frame, an area where sets were created for BBC dramas, a fragment of Carles Santos' soundtrack to Pere Portabella's 'Vampir Cuadecuc' (1970) was heard during the installation by Ben Rivers at Television Centre, June 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
- Rushes from A Distant Episode by Ben Rivers, projected as part of The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers at Television Centre, June 2015. Photograph: Marcus Leith
