GFF 2013: Random Acts

When invited to produce Random Acts, Jacqui Davies stipulated that she was only interested in broadcasting things that were works of art in themselves, and nothing less. Virtually all of the 23 three-minute shorts screened here can make artists proud to face the viewing public. Many play self-reflexively with TV as the site of their dissemination. The Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries collective’s piece, Change Your Lives, is a rhetoric-laden public service announcement, while Richard Billingham’s Siberian Tiger takes a pop at the rarefied world of art collecting using a clever parody of bid TV. 

One of the few not commissioned specifically for Channel 4, Dara Birnbaum’s Kojak/Wang (1980) is a high-energy collage of found footage, equating TV shoot-outs with the violence of American commercials. Another of the highlights appears much less choreographed – in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Monsoon, a man responds to Japan’s devastating earthquake by skyping his lover across the world. No words are exchanged – instead, he shows his partner a firefly. [Jac Mantle]