Matthew Noel-Tod: Blind Carbon Copy 

Blind Carbon Copy, 2008

Blind Carbon Copy is built from many sources. The film includes a performance undertaken by six actors, a dancer, a baby, various life drawing sessions and two bands; one based around guitar and drums, the other electronics. In bringing these things together Blind Carbon Copy asks where the point of translation occurs, where does concrete meaning lie and what takes precedent in these moments?

Noel-Tod's new film, Blind Carbon Copy, is based on an evocative script collaged from the artist's personal email correspondence. The emails are interpreted via a combination of spoken, physical and musical performances, taking its central focus from the language and emotions of the correspondence.

Noel-Tod's film rethinks 1970s examples of artists' performance addressing technology and disembodiment. In Blind Carbon Copy there is an attempt to reverse the cold, impersonal state of technological communication through the primacy of human speech and performance. Words and phrases become incongruous and weighty as they are lifted from their natural context and reinterpreted both by actors and by the audience.

Blind Carbon Copy was commissioned as part of the Bristol Mean Time residency, a collaborative project between FLAMIN (Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network) and Picture Time. The residency gave Matthew Noel-Tod – a London based artist – the opportunity to undertake a three month moving-image residency in Bristol.

Blind Carbon Copy will also be screened at ICA, London in October as part of Nought to Sixty.

http://www.picture-this.org.uk/MatthewNoel-Tod.htm