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KINOBOX is a micro-cinema – an intimate screening space dedicated to showing artists’ moving-image in Tromsø. It is a little kiosk in the entrance of Prostneset havneterminal – the public transport hub.
The films play on a loop from 07:00 in the morning until 00:00, and can be experienced through a back projected screen and directional speaker, and holds two people.
The photobooth/kiosk-style cinema gives free access to film works. You can return, over and over, building up a relationship to a film, an artist or artists’ moving image more generally. Or you can pop in, while waiting for a bus, a boat, a person.
KINOBOX is initiated, run and curated by Ruth Aitken and Sarah Schipschack.
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About the programme
Why is artists’ moving image important? We exist in a media-saturated landscape, with screens utilised for the majority of tasks, present in our streets, our supermarkets and our pockets. Artists’ moving-image asks us to reflect on how we read, create and distribute imagery, the materiality of our media, the impact of our stories, words and images. It asks us to reflect on an integral aspect of how we build, reveal and consume reality.
KINOBOX screens a broad range of works and artistic approaches, selected with consideration for their material, political and aesthetic sensibilities, but central to our curation is this belief in the importance of AMI to question how we consume and are consumed by our media landscape.
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About the curators
Sarah Schipschack has extensive experience as programmer and film curator. She has worked for the independent arthouse cinema Kinobar Prager Frühling in Leipzig for 5 years. She was head of programming for her video store/ archive Filmgalerie Alpha60, and as curator for Reihe Experimentalfilm, she put together more than 50 programs, including more than 400 films and over 200 film makers and artists. In the years 2017–2019 Schipschack is Film Curator in Residence and in charge of building up an artist moving images program for artists run initiative Kurant. In October 2017 she was guest curator for the second edition of AMIFF – Arctic Moving Image & Film Festival in Harstad, Norway where she put together a mini-retrospective of renowned female artists Lene Berg, as well as commissioning a work by young artist Ørjan Amundsen. Schipschack taught an Artists’ Moving Image course at the Nordland Film- og kunstfagskole, Kabelvåg, Norway. Polar Film Lab, an analog film lab in Tromsø, was established in 2016 together with Lithuanian film maker and artist Emilija Skarnulyte. Sarah currently is associated producer with Ic e-9 in Tromsø.
Ruth Aitken has a BA(Hons) in Time-Based Art and Digital Film (2012) from the University of Dundee and an MA in Contemporary Art from Tromsø Kunstakademiet (2018). In addition to working with moving-image within her own practice she has been producing artists’ moving-image projects through Generator Projects, Dundee (2013) and latterly with Kurant Kino for Kurant Visningsrom, which she has been running since 2018. Curatorially and artistically, these have been geared towards serving their local community and meeting the cultural needs of the local art scenes, which are often underserved due to their distance from large art capitals (such as both Dundee and Tromsø).
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Thanks
We are grateful as this project has been made possible with help from funding from Tromsø Kommune, Kulturradet, Havneterminalen/Tromsø Havn, Rådstua, Kurant Visningsrom, Polar Film Lab, Tromsø Kunstforening, Ørjan Amundsen & Malin Nordström.