In the context of Courtisane Festival 2025 (Gent, 2 – 6 April 2025), with the support of KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts.
“So I scrabble in the rubbish, an archaeologist who stumbles across a buried film. An archaeologist who projects his private world along a beam of light into the arena, till all goes dark at the end of the performance, and we go home. Home is where one should be, as Dorothy said, clicking her ruby slippers, there’s no place like it. Now, I’m not going to duck it, ART is the key. Those who don’t know it simply don’t live, they exist. It, of course — is an approach to existence, an inner approach to the outer world; it’s not just words and music, but gardens, sweeping, the washing-up; it needs no money this archaeology of soul, tho’ the powers grab it and run it through the projector to blind you. An artist is engaged in a dig. Deep down, depth, ‘the way up is the way down, …’ ” (Derek Jarman)
Derek Jarman loved to use archaeology as a metaphor in his work: in his painting, in his written memoirs, and in his cinema, which he recurrently characterised as an “archaeology of soul”. An apt metaphor for the work of an artist who always strived to dig down deep into England’s Hidden Reverse, tirelessly and unflinchingly searching to reassemble the fragments of a world he saw falling apart, including his own private world. Shortly after being diagnosed HIV positive, he bought a little plot of land in Dungeness — amidst a seemingly inhospitable landscape known as “the desert of England”. There, Jarman continued to excavate industrial and political leftovers, scavenging and cultivating the bleak wasteland to create a scenography of forgotten riches and new blossoms. It’s hard to avoid considering his garden at Prospect Cottage as the ultimate repository of Jarman’s life and work. Like his cinema, the garden was wild yet meticulously tended, English and alien, refined and subversive, avoiding walls or fences. A celebration of growth and existence, beauty and resilience, it also stands as a memorial to silence and disappearance.
The approach to many of Jarman’s film works is similar to the layering of the palimpsest — conjuring up former and new forms on a palimpsestuous surface where they meet and contest one another. This is particularly the case for the inventive layering of his films’ soundtracks, the result of a process that he once called “the archaeology of sound”. Variably playful and quotational, violent and mournful, electronic and classical, the soundtracks heightened the time travel effect of his films, shuttling backwards and forwards through history, while animating the image tracks with a kind of sympathetic resonance or momentary dreaming between the two. As Dan Barrow has noted: “Just as individual shots, characters and narrative fragments in Jarman’s films ping, semi-maddeningly, out of their provisional contexts, forcing the viewer to reconceive the film’s shape at every step, so the music often seems to disappear into its own game of reverie and seduction before momentarily touching the carnal vicissitudes of the image.”
From the punk aesthetics of his first feature Jubilee (1978) to collaborations with musicians and bands as Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Brian Eno or Coil, the work of Jarman was instrumental in bridging the magical gap between the UK’s experimental music underground and the avant-garde film and art world. But Jarman’s most enduring and fruitful sonic collaboration was undoubtedly with Simon Fisher Turner. Their friendship started when Turner worked as a driver during the production of The Tempest (1979), after which Jarman invited him to compose soundtracks for a string of Super 8 films and the feature Caravaggio (1986). Their working partnership continued into the 1990s, culminating in Jarman’s final, devastating and liberating film, Blue (1993). Inspired by Robert Bresson’s note on sound from his Notes on the Cinematograph: “the noises must become music,” Turner’s work blends field recordings — which he prefers to call “life recordings” — with classical and modern elements, incorporating a variety of instrumentations, textures and colours into rich sonic frescos that, like the work of Derek Jarman, resolutely defy containment and categorisation. A palimpsestic poetics accommodating the multiplicity of the present, embracing the spectres of the past as well as the promises of the future.
With this programme of screenings, conversations and performances, we would like to pay homage to the work of Derek Jarman and Simon Fisher Turner.
In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent). In collaboration with Film Fest Ghent.
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SCREENING 1
3 April, 2025 – 14:00
ARCA
The Last of England
Derek Jarman, UK, DE, 1987, digital, colour, 92′
“The film is an attic; I’ve opened the doors. Think of the mead hall in Beowulf, with the swallow flying through… Think of that mead hall full of the junk of our history, of memory and so on; there’s a hurricane blowing outside, I opened the doors and the hurricane blows through; everything is blown around, it’s a cleansing, the whole film is a cleansing. I need a very firm anchor in that hurricane, the anchor is my inheritance, not my family inheritance, but a cultural one, which locates the film IN HOME.” (Derek Jarman)
Named after Ford Madox Brown’s iconic painting, Jarman’s bleakest vision is a violent howl against both the loss of traditional English culture and the Thatcher government’s creation of totalitarian anti-LGBTQI+ legislation. Jarman’s layered small-gauge images of a world in ruin are tied together by his own poetic narration, Christopher Hobbs’ audacious production design, Sandy Powell’s indelible costumes and Simon Fisher Turner’s hypnotic soundtrack of blended score (with contributions by Diamanda Galas, Mayo Thompson, Barry Adamson a.o.) and sound design, pre-empting their final collaboration on 1993’s Blue.
In the presence of Simon Fisher Turner
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SCREENING 2
3 April, 2025 – 19:30
Sphinx Cinema – zaal 3
The Garden
Derek Jarman, UK, DE, 1990, digital, colour, 88′
“The film is structured like a dream allegory, in a poetic tradition, rather like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The film is a dream allegory of the author, in this case, myself. I could have put somebody else into it, but really dreams are always in the first person, though people often invent proxies. I go to sleep and go on a mental journey. Sleep can take lots of side turnings and in turnings a lot of things can happen.” (Derek Jarman)
In many ways a companion piece to The Last of England, Jarman’s first feature of the 1990s is a highly personal, almost dialogue-free “dream allegory” reflecting on the hostility and violence faced by gay, queer and trans people in the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic. Drawing together a collage of scenes filmed at Jarman’s cottage in Dungeness, numerous references to classical and popular culture, and a bold retelling of the Passion of the Christ featuring a gay couple in the lead role, it is one of Jarman’s most startling meditations on mortality, loss and queer politics.
In the presence of Simon Fisher Turner
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SCREENING 3
6 April, 2025 – 12:00
ARCA
Blue
Derek Jarman, UK, 1993, digital, colour, 79′
“Blue walks into the labyrinth. Absolute silence is demanded of all its visitors, so their presence does not disturb the poets who are directing the excavations. Digging can only proceed on the calmest of days as rain and wind destroy the finds. The archaeology of sound has only just been perfected and the systematic cataloguing of words has until recently been undertaken in a haphazard way. Blue watched as a word or phrase materialised in scintillating sparks, a poetry of fire which cast everything into darkness with the brightness of its reflections.” (Derek Jarman)
Dedicated to his partner Keith Collins (aka “H.B.”) “and all true lovers”, Jarman’s last feature stands as one of the great final films and as a singularly poetic and affecting account of living and dying with AIDS. Famously, in acknowledgment of, and in meditation upon, his failing eyesight, the image consists wholly, unflinchingly, of a hue as close to Yves Klein’s patented “International Klein Blue” as could be captured on film. John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton and Jarman himself read excerpts from the director’s hospital diaries and recite his poetry, atop an immersive soundtrack created by Simon Fisher Turner and several of Jarman’s other musical collaborators.
In the presence of Simon Fisher Turner
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SCREENING 4
4 April, 2025 – 13:15
KASKcinema
Sloane Square: A Room of One’s Own
Derek Jarman, UK, 1976, digital, colour, 9′
Records life in Anthony Harwood’s Sloane Square apartment where Derek Jarman lived during the period that he made Sebastiane. Long sequences in stop frame pixilation animate the interior. The middle part is a “removal party” held when Derek was finally evicted.
Garden of Luxor
Derek Jarman, UK, 1972, digital, 9′
An imaginary Arabian garden made out of old postcards of Alexandria, Egypt, is adorned with costumed figures and filmed through discarded footage from an old swords-and-sandals epic.
A Journey to Avebury
Derek Jarman, UK, digital, colour, 10′
A long car journey to the great Neolithic stone circle and its surroundings at Avebury in Wiltshire, filmed through a yellow filter which creates a map of a landscape saturated in gold: a path, fields, trees, sheep, cows, and the stones.
My Very Beautiful Movie
Derek Jarman, UK, 1974, digital, b&w, 7′
Fire Island in New York is filmed and reimagined through a glass prism held in front of the camera: waves, the beach, plants, jutting wooden posts, and a man holding a starfish.
Being Blue
Luke Fowler, UK, 2024, digital, colour, 18′
Being Blue was made on a residency at Prospect Cottage, the former home of Derek Jarman. Fowler sought to consider both the landscape of Dungeness and Jarman’s life and work during his time there. The film touches impressionistically on themes of sexuality, art making and nature, and features newly discovered recordings of Jarman, as well as music from Simon Fisher Turner and Bruce Gilbert.
In the presence of Simon Fisher Turner, Luke Fowler
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PERFORMANCE: Alessandra Novaga / Simon Fisher Turner with Sebastian Sharples
5 April, 2025 – 19:30
MINARD
Classically trained at the Musik-Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade, Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy’s thriving new, experimental music scene, rendering striking solo efforts, in addition to collaborations with Loren Connors, Stefano Pilia, Paula Matthusen, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument’s unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound. With the LP Fassbinder Wunderkammer (2017), Novaga embarked upon the exploration of her love of film. Having begun with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was followed in 2020 by the release of the utterly fantastic I Should Have Been a Gardener (Die Schachtel), a deeply intimate mediation on the life and work of Derek Jarman. At the Courtisane festival, Alessandra Novaga will perform a live reiteration of this sonic homage.
“I spent almost two years immersed in his world, I read everything he wrote, I saw everything he shot, and slowly the idea of translating all this into music sprouted within me. It was a very slow process, many ideas were sacrificed because I felt the need for a clean, stripped, meaningful and above all evocative result. I eliminated all the parts that felt too descriptive. I visited Prospect Cottage, walked around his house and recorded my steps — and I hear those steps, I feel I am there walking; I feel his presence.” (Alessandra Novaga)
From child actor to teenage pop idol, self-confessed “extreme sound freak” to acclaimed solo recording artist, Simon Fisher Turner’s career has been nothing if not varied. After releasing his first solo album in 1969, Turner followed an often eccentric, sometimes outlandish musical path. He operated on the fringes of punk, performed briefly with The The and released two albums as one half of a fictional duo known as Deux Filles. But through all this, Turner was developing a deep and abiding interest in the stuff of sound, accumulating a vast library of collected sounds from daily life. It is this interest which forms the basis of his improvisatory, eclectic approach to music making, manifest on his most recent solo albums (on labels such as Mego Editions, Mute and A Colourful Storm). Turner cites Derek Jarman, for whom he composed the soundtracks for Caravaggio, The Last of England, Edward II, The Garden and Blue, as a continuing influence on his life and work.
Sebastian Sharples is a documentary film maker and photographer. He has worked collaboratively with Juergen Teller and Billy Childish and has made more than thirty films with Tracey Emin including her feature film Top Spot. Sebastian has contributed visual backdrops for Simon’s live performances for over twenty-five years and made the accompanying film for his album Lana Lara Lata (Mute, 2005). For the performance at the festival, Sebastian has created a moving collage of photographic images inspired by Simon’s music.
“Derek’s role in my life was like a teacher without teaching. He’s constantly on my mind. He was wise and curious, instilling in me a sort of bravery. He used to talk about things I’d never heard of: Yves Klein, Caravaggio. I had no idea who these people were. He was capable of so much and made incredible images. He could do a narrative film like Edward II and then do The Last of England (1987) or The Garden (1990), which don’t have a normal structure. And then you have Blue, which is not so much a story, but observations about life and death and love in this frame, this void, of Yves Klein Blue: nothing and everything.” (Simon Fisher Turner)
Simon Fisher Turner performs an extra solo concert following the screening of The Garden on Thursday April 3, 22h00 at ARCA.
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CONVERSATION with Simon Fisher Turner & Luke Fowler
4 April, 2025 – 14:30
KASKcinema
Simon Fisher Turner is renowned for his film soundtrack work which started in collaboration with Derek Jarman, for whom he scored many feature films—from Caravaggio (1986), through to Jarman’s final work Blue (1993). Filmmaker and musician Luke Fowler is a long-time admirer of the work of Derek Jarman. In his new film work Being Blue he sought to consider Jarman’s life and work during his time at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness. In this conversation we will talk about Jarman’s films and filmmaking process, with a particular focus on the remarkable use of sound and music.
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