Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told
Edited by María Palacios Cruz
The Visible Press, June 2019
Telling Invents Told is the first collection of writings by artist and filmmaker Lis Rhodes. It includes the influential essay Whose History? alongside texts from works such as Light Reading, Pictures on Pink Paper and A Cold Draft, together with new and previously unpublished materials. Since the 1970s, Rhodes has been making radical and experimental work that challenges hegemonic narratives and the power structures of language. Her writing addresses urgent political issues – from the refugee crisis to workers’ rights, police brutality, racial discrimination and homelessness – as well as film history and theory, from a feminist perspective. An important figure at the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, Rhodes was also a founding member of Circles, the first British distributor of film, video and performance by women artists.
Paperback
336 pages, with b/w & colour images throughout
ISBN: 978-0-9928377-4-7
190 x 150 x 22 mm
Embossed cover
Individually shrinkwrapped
Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told
Edited by María Palacios Cruz
The Visible Press, June 2019
Texts
Prologue (2017)
Unfolding a Tale – On the Impossibility of Recovering the Original Meanings (2009)
Light Music – Now and Then (2013)
Aside
Riff (2004)
from Journal of Disbelief
In the Kettle (2010)
Aside
Whose History? (1979)
Light Reading (1978)
Aside
Amanuensis Unwinds
Her Image Fades As Her Voice Rises (1982)
A Cold Draft (1988)
Deadline (1991)
from Journal of Disbelief
New Forms in Non-Narrative Film (1985)
Orifso (1999)
from Journal of Disbelief
Pictures on Pink Paper (1982)
Noise of Memory (2012)
from Journal of Disbelief
Hang on a Minute (1983-85)
Aside
from Journal of Disbelief
Running Light (1996)
Just About Now (1993)
Reading in Time
from Journal of Disbelief
Epilogue (2018)
Afterword
On Reading Lis Rhodes: Writing for the Eye and the Ear (2019)
by María Palacios Cruz
Lis Rhodes Bibliography
Lis Rhodes Filmography
Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told
Edited by María Palacios Cruz
The Visible Press, June 2019
Lis Rhodes makes radical and experimental films and videos that challenge the viewer to reconsider the moving image as a communication medium. She uses film, performance, photography, writing and political analysis to explore the impact of language on perceptions, interactions and social relationships. Rhodes attended North East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, and has taught at the RCA and the Slade. A key figure at the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, where she was the cinema programmer, she was also a founding member of the feminist film distribution network, Circles. She served as Arts Advisor to the Greater London Council from 1982 to 1985. Rhodes’ works are in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Tate Modern and Arts Council England, and have featured in The Video Show (Serpentine Gallery, 1975), WACK!: Art and The Feminist Revolution (MOCA LA, 2007), The Tanks: Art in Action (Tate Modern, 2012) and Insomnia (Fundació Joan Miró, 2013). The publication of Telling Invents Told coincides with the major exhibition Lis Rhodes: Dissident Lines at Nottingham Contemporary (May to September 2019). A previous career survey, Lis Rhodes: Dissonance and Disturbance, was held at the ICA in 2012. Rhodes received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2012 and the Freelands Award in 2017. She lives and works in London.
London-based film curator María Palacios Cruz is a co-founder of The Visible Press, Deputy Director at LUX, and a programmer for the Punto de Vista and Courtisane festivals. She is the course leader for the Film Curating programme at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian) and has previously taught at Kingston University, Central Saint Martins, École de Recherche Graphique and Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. Her writing appears in numerous exhibition catalogues and publications such as L’art même, art-agenda and Sight & Sound.
Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told
Edited by María Palacios Cruz
The Visible Press, June 2019
“Lis Rhodes’ writings, like her films, are precise and cutting, using language to dismantle language, to question its relation to power, legal frameworks and gender. Anyone who has heard Lis speak knows that her voice is disarmingly quiet but profound and powerful – her words ring clear with an urgency that continues to be as pressing now as it was decades ago. This long overdue collection provides a unique opportunity to read and re-read her practice.”
—– Aura Satz, artist
“Whose history? It is hard to think of a question more central to our moment, or an artist who has posed it more insistently and urgently than Lis Rhodes. Her films comprise one of the most radical rethinkings of experimental film and politics of the last fifty years; they are like flashbulbs, exposing the physiognomies of power in the cracks of everyday experience. Her writing is both an integral part of her extraordinary filmmaking and a continuation of it. Partisan and sceptical, lyrical and hopeful, it is a voice of resistance to reality as it has been told or sold to us.”
—– Mike Sperlinger, Oslo Academy of Fine Art
“Lis Rhodes is an artist who takes words seriously, whether spoken, on the page or on the screen. Telling Invents Told draws together texts and images from across a career committed to unpicking the power relations of language. The book provides a rich inventory of texts written for a range of purposes: to accompany film images, to question established histories and advocate for the women left out of them, and, in extracts from her recent visual essay Journal of Disbelief, to call out injustices in all of their many forms. This indispensable volume offers a valuable opportunity to appreciate the inventiveness of Rhodes’ writing and its vital role in understanding her art.”
—– Dr. Lucy Reynolds, University of Westminster, London
Lis Rhodes: Telling Invents Told
Edited by María Palacios Cruz
The Visible Press, June 2019
Lis Rhodes Filmography
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