“Hulse creates out of whatever is to hand – he transforms the everyday and
banal into something striking, witty and beautiful.” (Glasgow Short Film Festival)
Our next Featured creative is Matt Hulse, Matt is an artist filmmaker. His work typically combines moving image, music, sound, performance, text and community. His films have screened in 25+ countries interna2onally. In 2013 he completed his second feature film DUMMY JIM. In 2017 he was awarded GOLD at the Felix Schoeller Photo Award (Osnabrück, Germany).
Here he answers our five questions…
1 Could you explain your practce? Only you know why you do what you do.
Music was my first passion. At the age of 11 or 12, I listened to The Stranglers’ ‘No
More Heroes’ album mercilessly, un2l the tape snapped. My grief was real. Spotting
this, my music-loving dad took me to Boots to buy a Cassette Repair Kit. I taught
myself how to dismantle cassettes, and, using a razor blade and sticky tape, splice
and rejoin the tape, then re-spool, and reassemble the housing.
With regret at the time, I had to cut out several centimetres of chewed-up tape in
order to save the album. This meant the loss of most of JJ Burnel’s iconic bass solo
intro on the opening track. But I felt I was rescuing my relationship with the band: it
was worth it. To my ear, to this day, however, a full, unblemished original version
always sounds ‘wrong’. Error had led me inadvertently to creating my own version;
over time I learned to accept and love it.
Handling the medium directly had been empowering: a sense of agency, proactive
prac2cal engagement. Cutting however involves a degree of risk, and therefore also
thrill. Such (mildly) perilous mischief was addictive. Curiosity got the better of me
and I went on to ruin a number of cassettes by trying and failing to create ‘tape
loops’, an idea that I had come up with by myself (and fancied I had invented).
Witnessed from the outside, here was a young lad wilfully destroying his ‘toys’. I got
into trouble for that. A perceptive uncle however pointed out that such practices had
precedent, going back decades, emerging from the avant garde. This historical
context lent my experiments a degree of validation, despite me having only half an
idea of what ‘avant garde’ meant. I was ahead of myself, if not time.
Experiencing first-hand the physical materiality of recordings, I learned that it was
possible to ‘break into’ a time-based medium, to rearrange its elements, to re-mix, to
juxtapose, to ‘play with time’. I was, at a relatively early age, without fully realising it,
acquiring fundamental practical and conceptual skills in the art of montage.
Years later, at Art School, following experiments with sequential photography, I was
introduced to Super 8mm cine film - essentially ‘tape with pictures’. That’s when the
value of those early experiments truly bore fruit. Sounds and images started to come
together, and I could play - dance even - with their combinations: magic unfolded.
To this day, whether it’s film loops, digital loops, installation, performance, short
films, documentaries, animations, I am exploring possibilities in the rearrangement
and juxtaposi2on of images and sounds. My work is rarely script-led. I prefer to feel
the material as far as possible, and allow the material to suggest how it might be
arranged, or choreographed.
At its core, my decades-long practice - which includes most film and video mediums
since 1990, plus recent forays into generative AI - can arguably be traced back to that
initial urge to (at least try and) repair something that I love. Since then I actively
accept ‘mistakes’, and incorporate and show ‘faults’ that result from repair: kintsugi.
Regardless of my work’s subject maner, or medium, this is essentially my practice, or
at least what I aim for. If necessary using a razor blade and some sticky tape
2 - Is art relevant today?
It’s essential!
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us, we want to know what art
you don’t like and which influences you?
Influences come from visual art, cinema, literature, music or combinations of these.
An ever-shicing field of examples might include Warhol, Jane Campion, Spalding
Gray, Alain Resnais, David Byrne, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Susan Sontag, Quentin Crisp,
Ota Janacek, Laurie Anderson, Ivor Cutler, Hipgnosis, Annie Ernaux, Brian Eno, Bruce
Nauman. I am also influenced by (and work with) ‘found’ materials - books, videos,
photographs, sounds, ephemera - and have an affinity with and fondness for
amateur / outsider art and artists. I am able to appreciate art that I don’t particularly
‘like’, it’s all of interest. I suppose I see everything as potential material.
4- If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
20 YEARS AGO: “Take yourself less seriously.”
10 YEARS AGO: “Take yourself more seriously.”
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
A musical.
WEB: http://anormalboy.wordpress.com
INSTAGRAM: @thisismatthulse