“Give a man fire and he is warm for the day.

But set fire to him and he is warm for the rest of his life.”

Terry Pratchett

Lilli Hartmann’s semi auto-biographical film-making is characterised by humour, colour and sheer ingenuity. Much of her work has previously been produced from the immediate resources of her own home. Attempts to get to the bottom of Lilli Hartmann’s practice can be frustrating: the artist is evasive, the most committed response to be found online is where she defines her practice as “basically trying not to get bored”. An unwillingness to describe the work does not preclude aims, objectives and targets.

In this case the process will gravitate around the human need to understand or ‘make sense’ – the process whereby we bring preconceptions and knowledge to any given situation. To unpick the human ordering system is the inspiration, glue and anchor for Inside-out Cave: to squeeze logic, to confuse the boundaries between language and the pictorial and, ultimately, to ask whether things need a meaning in order to make sense.

text excerpt from press release by Naomi Siderfin
(Artist Director/ Beaconsfield Vauxhall)

collaborators/ performers: Jiska Morgenthal, Stephan Barette, Nick Brooks, Tom Woolner, Lara Garcia-Reyne and Cecilie Gravesen

Commissioned performance and video for TestBed 1/ Beaconsfield Commissions 2010