[Nettime-bold] FINAL

[Ian White <ianwhite@lux.org.uk>]

Dear All,

this will be the last email I'll issue from the Lux office.

There are 3 announcements:

1.
new venue for the presentation of LONG KNIVES NIGHT!!!
Victor Dashuk on a UK tour from Belarus will now present this dark
documentary about Belarus Pres. Lukashenko's coup at:

THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE

39 BELGRAVE SQUARE
LONDON SW1

on

THURSDAY 18th OCTOBER

starting at 6.30pm

Tube: Hyde Park Corner

ENTRANCE WILL BE FREE

and the screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

ALL WELCOME


2.
some of you may have read the piece that I wrote in Saturday's Guardian.
It's the nature of the beast the the editor removed a degree of syntax and
eulogy from my text, which I have pasted below in full for your information.
Please do feel free to disseminate it as you see fit.



3.
I now have a new, more optimistic-sounding email address at which I can
always be contacted:

movingforwards@hotmail.com



Thanks to everyone's letters of support and shared disappointment, shock and
disbelief. All your kind thoughts have been sincerely appreciated.

Watch this space for future developments and more programmes to rock the
world - I'll keep everyone posted by email with our future plans - rest
assured they'll be worth it.


love is all there's left


Ian




LUX "CLOSURE" 

The Lux Centre specialised in the exhibition, distribution and production of
artists film and video. It has closed its doors for the last time this
week... 

At 10am on Tuesday 2nd October all members of Lux staff were called to a
meeting with their Board of Directors with less than 24hours notice.

An ominous sign in itself, it turned out to be the last point of contact
with anything one might assume to be a working reality.

Staff were greeted in the cinema by Mik Flood, Chairman of the Board, Vice
Chair Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Secretary Roland Denning and a
representative of PricewaterhouseCoopers "Business Recovery Services".

What unfolded and its aftermath defies rational thought but not description.

We were informed that after a lengthy period of being included in the Arts
Council of England's Recovery Programme, the Arts Council had come to a
decision following meetings and presentations of papers, that they would no
longer support the organisation - seeing no way through the difficult and
precarious financial situation we'd been working under for nearly a year
without having to spend twice as much as they were prepared to.

We were to cease operations with immediate effect.

Lux staff were told to go home, without pay or periods of notice.

A two month cinema programme beginning that evening was to be cancelled in
its entirety; the current gallery exhibition to be closed immediately;
artists and editors working mid-edit told to leave; colleges and
institutions waiting for films from Lux Distribution were to cancel courses;
the organisation to vacate the building.

Images flashed of eponymous "recent events" as in the time we had to clear
desks people made frantic attempts to maintain some kind of dignity in a
state of abject shock and professional collapse.

In the midst of the ensuing farce personal belongings were stuffed into bin
liners, bulk emails sent across the world and corridors tramped in the
numbness of disbelief.

The coffee shop had a fleet of vans and local heroes within minutes removing
their stock. Contract cleaners appeared from nowhere, suddenly turning out
cupboards full of toilet rolls, bleach and numerous vacuums.

By 2pm the shutter was down and a locksmith had been called. Individuals
might be invited back to wrap up their departments, but access to the
building would be by appointment only.

The cinema hoarding still displays a text by the artist Ken Lum (due to talk
in the cinema that evening):
HALLELUJAH! 
JESUS NOW WATCHES OVER THE LUX!

It's a ridiculous state of affairs where comedy belies the imminent impact
of massive cultural loss, the extreme disrespect and utter lack of
acknowledgement that seem to have been the guiding principals of this
action. 

Cold comfort that closure came 2 days after payday. Little solace that
Europe's most important archive of artists' film and video is behind bars.

Words failed and there wasn't time anyhow when it came to cancelling a
programme that included numerous artists and filmmakers from all over the
world; Canada, America, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Belarus, memorial
screenings for the much-loved filmmaker Sandra Lahire and a week of the
London Film Festival.

Little of what I might write now could convey the debt the organisation had
to the legacies of artists and curators of the London Filmmakers Co-op and
London Electronic Arts, the obligation to and continuing passionate belief
in everyone who we worked with.

The Lux is not yet in liquidation - our man at PricewaterhouseCoopers will
be working to achieve a satisfactory arrangement with creditors that will
provide the "basis for a future Lux". It¹s just that ³the Lux² has no
employees, which somehow makes one wonder.

Little to be said but many questions to be asked of our government's
much-vaunted Film Council building a "strategy for cultural cinema" whilst
never supporting the only exhibition space dedicated to just that. Many
questions too for the Arts Council, the bfi and the National Lottery money
provided to set-up an art centre in a rented building, with increases
negotiable at open market rates.

This is a nest that through necessity will continue to unravel. Meantime and
in defiance we will prove unstoppable in our commitment to promote, exhibit,
make and distribute the work that we believe in.


Ian White is the former curator of the Lux Cinema.




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