Experimental Intermedia

The series of films ‘The Movement of People Working’ portrays human labor in its most elementary form. Shot by Niblock between 1973-91, on 16mm color film and later video, and in locations including Peru, Mexico, Hungary, Hong Kong, the Arctic, Brazil, Lesotho, Portugal, Sumatra, China, and Japan, the series comprises over 25 hours of footage. It focuses on work as a choreography of movements and gestures, dignifying the mechanical yet natural repetition of laborers’ actions.

Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)