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Performance videos 

Stephen Bain & Gabriel White

Shot for performance seasons between 2022 and 2024, these collaborations between multimedia artist Gabriel White and myself are part of an ongoing body of work that combines performance, video, text.

Variable

Men

Video produced for From Scratch improvisational music group for their 50 year celebration performance series in Sept 2024. Shot in one take, the video was accompanied by live musicians, lead by Chris O'Conner.

Container Homes

Created for performance series 'Null Island' at Old Folks hall, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2023. Video was accompanied by performers Stephen Bain & Gabriel White.

Music Videos

Shot mostly for friends, these are experiments in cinematic framing, directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain

I'm Calling - Leila Adu & Band

My first ever video, shot with a handycam and a library copy of how to use FCP. Leila's first video and her first album, shot in and around Wellington.

Performers - Leila Adu (with Chris Palmer, Francesca Montfort, Tom Callwood)

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Dark Joan - Leila Adu

Shot under a bridge in Rome where Leila was living and working at the time in a primary school. The school film club played the army of cardboard warriors.

Performers - Leila Adu (with students of ?? school)

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

30 degrees on the rocks - Loudhaler

Performers - Kristian Larsen

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Wellington electronic musician Loudhaler with vocals by Hinemoana Baker, shot in and around Wellington with mystery man Kristian Larsen.

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The Garrulous Sax

Animation artist Nestor Aprile-Muresan together with musician Jeff Henderson on solo saxophone. Released Nov 2022.

Animator - Nestor Aprile-Muresan

Music - Jeff Henderson

Editor - Stephen Bain

SMASH HIT!

Fertility Festival, a large ensemble led by Jeff Henderson based in Wellington, came out of the music venue HAPPY during the 2000s. The video was shot in Albany in 2009.

Music - Fertility Festival - Jeff Henderson, Julian Taylor, Isaac Smith, Warwick Donald, Ian Downer, Dan Beban, Gerard Crewdson, Blair Latham

Shot, directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

What would you know about beautiful?

The Winners debut single, released in September 2024. Shot by Josh Rutter & Polly Davidson at Josh's dance studio in Berlin, featuring Willow & Tilly. 

Music - The Winners - Stephen Bain (guitar, melodica, string programming, additional keyboards), Isaac Smith (double bass), Julian Taylor (drums), Kate Telford (vocals, keys)

Shot - Josh Rutter & Polly Davidson

Edited - Stephen Bain

Fantasize (open your arms and I'll open mine)

The Winners second single, shot with performers Ruby Read, Tallulah Holly-Massey, Alistair Moore (and friends of K Rd)

Music - The Winners - Stephen Bain (guitar, melodica, string programming, additional keyboards), Isaac Smith (double bass), Julian Taylor (drums), Kate Telford (vocals, keys)

Shot, directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Video Portraits - Falling Unseen, 2022

Falling Unseen is a series of videos created for Pyramid Club in 2022, all shot, edited & directed by Stephen Bain. The interior lives of artists are revealed everyday actions. A short essay accompanies the films on the Pyramid Club website. These videos were shot entirely on a Huawei 5T mobile phone.

PART I

Cleaning The Old Folks Ass.

Cleaning is time to think and to dream. The radio is our portal to other times and spaces. 

Performer - Jade Daniels

PART II

Katie Saves Lives

Dancer & choreographer Katie watches over Parnell pools.

Performer - Katie Shaw

PART III

Voyagers

Can we be travelling in two places at the same time? A conversation takes place in a tram travelling through the city, meanwhile our computers are portals to other worlds.

Performers - Jeff Henderson & Grace Verweij

Music featured - Phil Dadson, Hermione Johnson, Rachel Shearer and Simon Allen

PART IV

Balancing Time with Geoff in Eight Minutes

When you hang around trees, you have to readjust your sense of time. Human time has a tendency to stretch in and out, depending on the task. 

Performer - Geoff Gilson

PART V

The Situationist

Gabriel White speaks about the ideas and works of experimental sound artist Alvin Lucier and his relationship to The Situation. Gabriel is a film maker and essayist, I spent the afternoon observing him at work.

Performer - Gabriel White

PART VI

Katie & Oli think about the future

Katie and Oli went to dance school together, they get together frequently to share experiences of a life of art and how to sustain it. Performance clips are from 'Others' choreographed by Carla Harre.

Performers - Katie Shaw & Oli Mathiesen

Music featured  - Tobyn Gregory & Floating Points

Falling, Unseen (work and art)

 

"There is a strange distinction that distorts this action beyond the walls, I am paid to do this. Every hour I spend cleaning I get 25 dollars in my bank account, a simple transaction. Is this the work, or another layer of fiction to enable the work to begin? More enabling than destabilising? Does this make cleaning more real than unreal? Does cleaning enable a future that could not be realised otherwise? An economic arrangement that defines a life of art, from a life of not-art? Is cleaning taking me closer to myself or further away from it?"  (Stephen Bain)

Experimental shorts & projection videos

A collection of short films made in the past few years in Aotearoa, Taipei and Brussels.

Fête de la rue Vanderweyer

Shot in Schaerbeek, Brussels in 2010. The neighbourhood fête takes place at the end of summer. This was shot from the window of my apartment in during the course of the day.

SHORT FILM

Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain

7:36

40 degrees & so-many minutes

VIDEO DANCE

Dance-theatre film created in 2005 featuring dancers Justine Cooper & Solomon Holly-Massey. A young man finds himself trapped in a prison-like room confronting past decisions and an ambivalence to life. He finally ventures out but his anxieties following him back to his cell in the morning, embodied as a potential partner.

Directed & edited by Stephen Bain

Music composed by Leila Adu

Performers Justine Cooper, Solomon Holly-Massey, Jeff Henderson

32:00

Everybody Performs Taipei (excerpt)

FILM EXCERPT

The changing of the guard at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The large crowds that gather daily to witness this ceremony create a performance of their own.

(Excerpt from 60min film Everybody Performs Taipei, 2015)

Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain

12:00

Blueroom 

Short video exploring the blueroom studio of French artist Jacques Halbert in Brussels. I was fortunate to sublet Jacques studio for 4 months in Schaerbeek during a study trip in 2010.

EXPERIMENTAL

Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain

Best listened to with Headphones

6:40

Drifting Floating / Rising Falling

The house floats with ease, but what comes up must come down. A contemplation on the NZ housing market.

VIDEO STUDY

Directed, shot & edited by Stephen Bain

music is by Kenny Graham from the film The Small world of Sammy Lee (1963)

7:00

Live Performance Documentation

These videos were made to document live performances.

The Drifting Room

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2020, performance documentation during Nowhere! Festival, filmed in and around Wynyard Quarter. 

Performers - Stephen Bain

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Cameras - Matt Gillanders & Jess Quaid

Music - MWIMWIM (Marija Dimitrijevic & Stephen Bain)

The Floating Theatre

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2017, entering into the harbour from the Whau river. Additional cameras, Campbell Farquar, Matt Gibons

Performers - Jeremy Randerson & Jen McArthur

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Music - Jeff Henderson

THIS MEANS YOU

Recurring performance for a transforming plastic bag in and around the streets of Taipei, Taiwan in 2015.

Performers - Stephen Bain

Directed & Edited - Stephen Bain

Additional Camera - Anne-Flor Cabanis

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