Christos
Linou
b. June 8, 1962, Sydney, Australia.
BIOGRAPHY:Christos
Linou was born in Sydney, raised in Adelaide and lives and works in Melbourne.
Christos Linou’ career, a cross-disciplinary body based artist, choreographer
and experimental filmmaker has spanned thirtyyears.Since graduating in dance from the Centre for
Performing Arts in Adelaide in 1987, he has worked as a choreographer /
director and performer working in experimental theatre arts and film. He has
integrated performance, literature, visual imagery with new and traditional
technologies to create new and absurdist dance theatre, experimental opera and
film. He has toured one-man shows to Amsterdam, Singapore, Paris, New York,
Malaysia and Australia and has appeared and choreographed for TV and feature
films.
In
1989 he developed an interest in how filmmaking could be applied to live
theatre and devised, directed and perform his own hybrid solo works using
dance, theatre and super 8 film projections. The films are directly related to
the theme of the performance and crafted to the choreographed sequences on
stage.He came across the Melbourne
Super 8 Film Group in 1994 and became an active member and later was on the
board of management for three years. In this time he was able to screen a range
of his films amongst a ‘happening’ film going culture and develop his own style
of Super 8 filmmaking. He went on to help produced and present other films
screenings including Ultraprojections films screenings in Melbourne from 1999 –
01. Since the demise and availability of super 8 film and its screening
opportunities Linou has been making digital films on MDV and editing on Final
Cut Pro. He has worked with a stop frame techniques and animating paper cut
outs, claymation and 3D objects. He has made short documentaries, which reflect
social lifestyles through politics, food and culture. His films and animations
have screened in Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Amsterdam and Toronto.
Naked Peel: 2014 (performance)
He choreographed
and performed for IHOS Opera in a 21 year collaboration with the first work in
1992, Days and Nights with Christ until the final work, The Barbarians at the
Moma Foma festival in Hobart of 2012. In 1998 he co-established Intertextual
Bodies and made a series of performative installations, using his body as a
metaphors for trespass, occupation and public site intervention. Film recorded
the activity and documented the passerby’s experience, which was projected in
the gallery installation. Linou has performed for companies including, The
Australian Opera, One Extra Dance Theatre, Mixed Company, BalletLab and
Companies in Space and he has directed experimented physical theatre, directed
experimental cabaret, curated visual art exhibitions, mentored artist’s and was
one of the second wave of artist's who helped establish Dancehouse, where he
made experimental works, taught contemporary dance and on the board from
1994-2002. He has appeared in TV and films, Neighbours, Embassy, Death in
Brunswick and Sniper and choreographed for the AFI award wining children's TV
series Short Cuts. His community and (CALD) works include; choreographing for
Footscray Community Arts Centre choir’s, directing the Greek Antipodes,
Williamstown and CERES festivals, The Rice Project, The Proxy of Antigone,
Best Foot Forward and Flamin’ Kitchens DVD, broadcast
on Channel 31.
In
2013 he was awarded with an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship to undertake a
Masters of Fine Arts (dance) researching durational performance at Melbourne
University. He produced four incarnations of his work Naked Peel as six, eight
and twelve hour works in Melbourne, Amsterdam and Melaka, Malaysia. The Marina
Abramovic Institute (MAI) in New York recognised his work as, 'highly original
a deeply personal' and published Naked Peel on IMMATERIAL, a digital journal
for durational performance. He presented his research at the Singapore World
Dance Alliance Symposium in 2015 and the video of Naked Peel: pt3 was screened at
the 2016 As One festival in Athens by (MAI). He formally graduated with a first
class honors in a Masters of Fine Arts in 2016.
Currently
he is making films from a purely absurdist form, which have no correlation to
dialogue, narrative or plot but from the premise of object abstraction, the
motif is based on the ontology of the action as constructions without
conclusions, such as filming cracks in wall or taking an empty leash for a
walk.
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW: "I generate my
ideas through embodiment practices, exploring a somatic alertness to the sub-
conscious and concrete body, in the role of the performer and practitioner.
Where I engage heuristic findings in cycles of practical exploration,
determining further prompts and provocations."C.Linou.
Naked Peel: 2014 (performance)
“Film transposes
intimate notions of action and abstraction, expanding the language of the live
stage whilst able to engage as an independent aesthetic.” C. Linou.
Linou
is interested in the intimate boundaries of private and public space and
examines parodies of human behaviour under the skin of our personal
representation of self in public space. Linou’s
films reflect a curiosity with choreographed action whether it’s the body of
objects landscape or architecture. His films have a quality, which engage the
viewer through its rhythmic quality and punctuation of image juxtaposing theme
and sound. He uses film for the stage to suspend the body in a parody of
aesthetic abstraction and audience entertainment.
His
films for theatre have a distinct animated and percussive sensibility and are
seen as language and narrative to his live performance for which uses a dynamic
sense of action for recording imagery and projecting light. The political and
social and context of his films references issues through a comic abstraction
of the everyday, are an accurate recording of the given time.
Naked Peel excerpt (2016, 10 mins)
Till Death Us Do Part (2011, 7 mins)
FILMOGRAPHY:
Naked Peel
Hypothetical Recognition Album One – dance on film (2017, 10min, DV)
Naked
Peel – dance on film (2016, 60min, DV)
Who
Leads Who - experimental (2016, 2min. DV)
Parallel
Abandonment – dance on film. (2013, 1min, DV)
3,791
Solos - dance on film. (2012, 2min, DV)
Giraffes
in da house – 3D animation (2013, 2min, DV)
The House That Dad Built – documentary(2012, 4min, DV)
I think I can dance
Till Death Us Do Part – dance on film (2011, 7min, DV)
Spank – 3D animation (2011, 5min DV)
Dancer
in Danger – sitcom(2011, 14min DV)
Chit
Shat, Shit Chat – digital animation (2010, 6min
DV)
Flex: clay animation
(2010, 3.40min, DV)
Murder on the dance
floor – clay animation (2010. 3min. DV)
I think I can dance:
clay animation (2010, 57sec, DV)
