Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat
- Submitting institution
-
Roehampton University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 3875709
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- London
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- April
- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
2
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Darke was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to co-curate this first UK retrospective exhibition about Chris Marker. The 2-month show drew on Darke's longstanding engagement with Marker’s work, including extensive archival research carried out by Darke in preparation for the event in film archives in London, Paris and Brussels. This archival research enabled Darke to source numerous very rare items for the exhibition from archives such as the Belgian Cinémathèque Royale, including Marker’s editing workbook and a previously un-exhibited cut of the film with a completely different opening. He also co-curated the accompanying screening programme and edited the 136-page catalogue.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Dr Darke conceived and co-curated the exhibition Chris Marker: A Grin without a Cat, the first comprehensive UK survey of Marker’s work across different media, including film, photography, books and multimedia installation. Held at London’s Whitechapel Gallery from 16 April- 22 June 2014, the exhibition attracted over 70,000 visitors and received extensive positive media coverage. It subsequently toured to Norway and Sweden. Drawing on his personal relationship with Marker from 1999-2012, and on archival research carried out from 2008-2014, Darke surveyed in the exhibition the diversity of Marker’s output, providing the visitor with a full picture of his creative achievements from the 1940s to his death in 2012. Among the works secured for the show were previously unseen items relating to La Jetée that Darke had unearthed at the Belgian Cinémathèque Royale in 2013: Marker’s editing workbook and a previously un-exhibited cut of the film with a completely different opening. The curatorial research for the show also informed Darke’s subsequent book on La Jetée (Palgrave/BFI, 2016). The exhibition was accompanied by two parallel events. A two-part international symposium entitled ‘Chris Marker: In Memory’ held at the Whitechapel and co-organised by Roehampton’s AHRC-funded Memory Network, at which Darke was one of the speakers. And a London-wide series of screenings of Marker’s films at the Whitechapel Gallery’s Zilkha Auditorium, Barbican and Ciné-Lumière, which Darke advised on and at which he introduced many of the screenings. Darke also edited the exhibition catalogue, which was conceived of as an extension of the show itself, presenting rare and previously unseen work by Marker, including two of his early texts which had not previously been translated into English. It also included the first translations of recent essays by Marker scholars Raymond Bellour and Arnaud Lambert. The catalogue sold out its exhibition print-run of 3,000 copies.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
