Peckham Artist Moving Image festival launches at a dozen South London venues

Exhibition: PAMI, various venues, London, until September 18 2011

The not-for-profit spirit of enterprise of the Peckham art scene has gone a step further. Thursday September 15 sees the launch of Peckham Artist Moving Image. The festival pulls together a dozen venues and, this year at least, there’s not a commercial sponsor in sight.

Collectivism and co-operation run throughout PAMI and, in some cases, far beyond this artist and curator-led gallery district. At Sunday Painter they have tapped up LA-based artist Pascual Sisto for permission to show his film installation Push/Pull.

This results in two projections in which 15 lanes of traffic approach and recede and stick to every available surface in a vast spaceage tunnel. Securing this show was as easy as sending an email and downloading the files.

LuckyPDF have also been granted a favour. The project group asked French artist Pierre Huyghe if they could turn a comment made in an interview into a film. Now you can watch the movie Transformers with a voice over by Jean Luc Goddard. A projection lights up the windows of MOCA on Bellenden Road.

Over at Son Gallery, artist and musician Takeshi Shiomitsu has drafted in bandmates to provide a soundtrack for Heavy Reflections. Much like the music, this series of ad-length films veer between the saccharine sweet and the harshly noisy.

At studio/gallery Arcadia Missa they are known for their collaborative shows. Having arrived too early for a launch performance, we were nevertheless promised something both “archival” and “monastic and intense” by artist Rosza Farkas.

Indeed, most of PAMI was and is still to come this weekend. Other venues looking good include N/V_Porjects, a dusty warehouse where films by Liam Gillick and Ruth Ewan are to be shown, and Sassoon, which is bucking the digital trend with two atmospheric handcrafted films by Maayke Schurer and Bea Wilson.

Like all good festivals, there is too much to see, especially when you factor in feature-length screenings at the concurrent Peckham Free Film Festival. So organiser Harriet Mitchell has done a lot with limited resources and a day job.

But who needs time and money when you have enthusiasm. Should you manage to check out PAMI this year, you may find it’s catching.

• Venues open 12-6pm unless otherwise specified. Admission free. Visit the PAMI website for more details. There is also a tour of the event organised by Art Licks on Sunday 18 (5pm-7pm). Booking essential.
  

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