English and Polish language catalogue published to coincide with the residency of Matthew Noel-Tod at the a-i-r Artists in Residence laboratory, Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland. 2005-2006. The video produced during the residency, Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors (which is distributed by LUX), is discussed at length in this publication, with many contextualising illustrations designed to extend the project and underline the video. Contains an in depth analysis of the video"s reframing of Polish cinema via the films of Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kiezlowski to the Workshop of the Film Form.

Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors takes as its starting point Polish cinema. Polish actors were invited to audition in Warsaw with dialogue from a favourite Polish film. The actors in Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors perform a series of moments from the films Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Man of Iron (1981) Dekalog 4 (1988) and Sequence of Feelings (1993). Polish actress Ewa Kasprzyk was invited to join the cast and re-perform her dialogue from Sequence of Feelings. During a process of revision and rehearsals, the words and characters from the original films became recontextualised into a new narrative, including actors and characters inhabiting multiple fictions and dramatic spaces. Aesthetic, sexual, historical and dramatic senses are manipulated to create a video that is a dialogue between artist and actors, between language and image, between past and present.

Supported by an Arts Council England International Fellowship to a-i-r Artists in Residence laboratory, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland.

Essays: "Possession and Collision" by William Fowler; "A Dream of Polish Cinema": Lukasz Ronduda and Matthew Noel-Tod in conversation. Polish and English texts.

More information at
www.matthewnoel-tod.com
www.csw.art.pl/a-i-r