STEPHEN BAIN
live performance maker
Video projects are categorised into four sections
Video Portraits - Falling Unseen, 2022
Falling Unseen is a series of videos created for Pyramid Club in 2022, all shot, edited & directed by Stephen Bain. The interior lives of artists are revealed everyday actions. A short essay accompanies the films on the Pyramid Club website. These videos were shot entirely on a Huawei 5T mobile phone.
PART I
Cleaning The Old Folks Ass.
Cleaning is time to think and to dream. The radio is our portal to other times and spaces.
Performer - Jade Daniels
PART II
Katie Saves Lives
Dancer & choreographer Katie watches over Parnell pools.
Performer - Katie Shaw
PART III
Voyagers
Can we be travelling in two places at the same time? A conversation takes place in a tram travelling through the city, meanwhile our computers are portals to other worlds.
Performers - Jeff Henderson & Grace Verweij
Music featured - Phil Dadson, Hermione Johnson, Rachel Shearer and Simon Allen
PART IV
Balancing Time with Geoff in Eight Minutes
When you hang around trees, you have to readjust your sense of time. Human time has a tendency to stretch in and out, depending on the task.
Performer - Geoff Gilson
PART V
The Situationist
Gabriel White speaks about the ideas and works of experimental sound artist Alvin Lucier and his relationship to The Situation. Gabriel is a film maker and essayist, I spent the afternoon observing him at work.
Performer - Gabriel White
PART VI
Katie & Oli think about the future
Katie and Oli went to dance school together, they get together frequently to share experiences of a life of art and how to sustain it. Performance clips are from 'Others' choreographed by Carla Harre.
Performers - Katie Shaw & Oli Mathiesen
Music featured - Tobyn Gregory & Floating Points
Falling, Unseen (work and art)
"There is a strange distinction that distorts this action beyond the walls, I am paid to do this. Every hour I spend cleaning I get 25 dollars in my bank account, a simple transaction. Is this the work, or another layer of fiction to enable the work to begin? More enabling than destabilising? Does this make cleaning more real than unreal? Does cleaning enable a future that could not be realised otherwise? An economic arrangement that defines a life of art, from a life of not-art? Is cleaning taking me closer to myself or further away from it?" (Stephen Bain)
Experimental shorts & projection videos
A collection of short films made in the past few years in Aotearoa, Taipei and Brussels.
Fête de la rue Vanderweyer
Shot in Schaerbeek, Brussels in 2010. The neighbourhood fête takes place at the end of summer. This was shot from the window of my apartment in during the course of the day.
SHORT FILM
Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain
7:36
40 degrees & so-many minutes
VIDEO DANCE
Dance-theatre film created in 2005 featuring dancers Justine Cooper & Solomon Holly-Massey. A young man finds himself trapped in a prison-like room confronting past decisions and an ambivalence to life. He finally ventures out but his anxieties following him back to his cell in the morning, embodied as a potential partner.
Directed & edited by Stephen Bain
Music composed by Leila Adu
Performers Justine Cooper, Solomon Holly-Massey, Jeff Henderson
32:00
Everybody Performs Taipei (excerpt)
FILM EXCERPT
The changing of the guard at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The large crowds that gather daily to witness this ceremony create a performance of their own.
(Excerpt from 60min film Everybody Performs Taipei, 2015)
Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain
12:00
Blueroom
Short video exploring the blueroom studio of French artist Jacques Halbert in Brussels. I was fortunate to sublet Jacques studio for 4 months in Schaerbeek during a study trip in 2010.
EXPERIMENTAL
Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain
Best listened to with Headphones
6:40
Drifting Floating / Rising Falling
The house floats with ease, but what comes up must come down. A contemplation on the NZ housing market.
VIDEO STUDY
Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain
music is by Kenny Graham from the film The Small world of Sammy Lee (1963)
7:00
Music Videos
Shot mostly for friends, these are experiments in cinematic framing, directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain
I'm Calling - Leila Adu & Band
My first ever video, shot with a handycam and a library copy of how to use FCP. Leila's first video and her first album, shot in and around Wellington.
Performers - Leila Adu (with Chris Palmer, Francesca Montfort, Tom Callwood)
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Dark Joan - Leila Adu
Shot under a bridge in Rome where Leila was living and working at the time in a primary school. The school film club played the army of cardboard warriors.
Performers - Leila Adu (with students of ?? school)
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
30 degrees on the rocks - Loudhaler
Performers - Kristian Larsen
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Wellington electronic musician Loudhaler with vocals by Hinemoana Baker, shot in and around Wellington with mystery man Kristian Larsen.
The Garrulous Sax
Animation artist Nestor Aprile-Muresan together with musician Jeff Henderson on solo saxophone. Released Nov 2022.
Animator - Nestor Aprile-Muresan
Music - Jeff Henderson
Editor - Stephen Bain
SMASH HIT!
Fertility Festival, a large ensemble led by Jeff Henderson based in Wellington, came out of the music venue HAPPY during the 2000s. The video was shot in Albany in 2009.
Music - Fertility Festival - Jeff Henderson, Julian Taylor, Isaac Smith, Warwick Donald, Ian Downer, Dan Beban, Gerard Crewdson, Blair Latham
Shot, directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Live Performance Documentation
These videos were made to document live performances.
The Drifting Room
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2020, performance documentation during Nowhere! Festival, filmed in and around Wynyard Quarter.
Performers - Stephen Bain
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Cameras - Matt Gillanders & Jess Quaid
Music - MWIMWIM (Marija Dimitrijevic & Stephen Bain)
The Floating Theatre
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2017, entering into the harbour from the Whau river. Additional cameras, Campbell Farquar, Matt Gibons
Performers - Jeremy Randerson & Jen McArthur
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Music - Jeff Henderson
THIS MEANS YOU
Recurring performance for a transforming plastic bag in and around the streets of Taipei, Taiwan in 2015.
Performers - Stephen Bain
Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain
Additional Camera - Anne-Flor Cabanis