An exhibition co-cured by Jack Jeffreys and Sofia Gil de Biedma, bringing together photographic works, projected video and light installations in a darkened space, Altogether Without stages an encounter with the (in)discernable gap between the still and the moving image. Through a play between darkness and light, the show seeks to shift and trouble perceptions of duration and the ephemeral.
An evening of readings in the exhibition space of Altogether Without at SET Lewisham. Readings from Junko Theresa Mikuriya, Anna-Rose Stefatou, Lily Petch, Sofia Lyall, Matilde Nardelli and Jack Jeffreys around the themes of stillness, movement, light and dark which will be read in the darkened exhibition space among the artworks.
(08/11/2025) Short film screening
For the closing event of the exhibition Altogether Without, we will be screening a programme of 16mm short films that explore the tension between still and moving images.
Co-curated with Cici Peng, the programme is centred around filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa, who passed away in April of this year, and seeks to honour his playful experimentations on 16mm. The screening features Nishikawa’s Tokyo Ebisu/Shibuya duology with in-camera visual effects that document Tokyo’s busiest metro line, as well as his short film “Sound of a Million Insects, Light of a Thousand Stars”, in which Nishikawa buried a 100ft roll of Tungsten film underneath fallen leaves nearby the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, from sunset until sunrise. Nishikawa conversely awakens the potential for chance through rigid structure, as traces of light, commuters and cars emerge as rogue surprises before his methodologically positioned cityscapes.
We will also screen Vincent Grenier’s Time’s Wake (Once Removed). Grenier, a colleague of Nishikawa at Binghamton University, describes his own film as “a strange contradiction between liveliness and frozenness”. Making use of home movie footage and an ‘earlier version’ of his film that remains unseen, Grenier patches together an ‘endearing but removed artefact’ of his personal past. The play between intimate encounter and orchestrated distance draws our attention to the nature of the image as “altogether outside, without intimacy, and yet more accessible and mysterious than the thought of the innermost being” (Maurice Blanchot).
Sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars | 2014 | 2 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Tokyo - Ebisu | 2010 | 5 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Shibuya - Tokyo | 2010 | 10 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Time’s Wake (Once Removed) | 1987 | 12 minutes | Vincent Grenier
For the closing event of the exhibition Altogether Without, we will be screening a programme of 16mm short films that explore the tension between still and moving images.
Co-curated with Cici Peng, the programme is centred around filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa, who passed away in April of this year, and seeks to honour his playful experimentations on 16mm. The screening features Nishikawa’s Tokyo Ebisu/Shibuya duology with in-camera visual effects that document Tokyo’s busiest metro line, as well as his short film “Sound of a Million Insects, Light of a Thousand Stars”, in which Nishikawa buried a 100ft roll of Tungsten film underneath fallen leaves nearby the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, from sunset until sunrise. Nishikawa conversely awakens the potential for chance through rigid structure, as traces of light, commuters and cars emerge as rogue surprises before his methodologically positioned cityscapes.
We will also screen Vincent Grenier’s Time’s Wake (Once Removed). Grenier, a colleague of Nishikawa at Binghamton University, describes his own film as “a strange contradiction between liveliness and frozenness”. Making use of home movie footage and an ‘earlier version’ of his film that remains unseen, Grenier patches together an ‘endearing but removed artefact’ of his personal past. The play between intimate encounter and orchestrated distance draws our attention to the nature of the image as “altogether outside, without intimacy, and yet more accessible and mysterious than the thought of the innermost being” (Maurice Blanchot).
Sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars | 2014 | 2 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Tokyo - Ebisu | 2010 | 5 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Shibuya - Tokyo | 2010 | 10 minutes | Tomonari Nishikawa
Time’s Wake (Once Removed) | 1987 | 12 minutes | Vincent Grenier