“It is my belief in a world full of people claiming to ‘represent’ everyone but themselves, the small, the fragile, the unfinished voice—that which searches and refuses to be anything but that—is a kind of resistance.”
Laura Waddington, The Small, the Fragile, the Unfinished Voice
Installation of ‘Border’ in a barn on the Belgium-France border, ‘Nous le Passage’, Watou, 2005 (curated by Cis Bierinckx). © Dirk Pauwels.
BioGRAPHY
Born in London in 1970, Laura Waddington has lived around the world. She is half British and half Irish. After studying English literature at Cambridge University, she moved to New York where she worked in independent cinema and began to make short films. Fascinated by how technology, and the internet, were about to transform our perceptions, she embarked on a series of experiments, learning to film without using her eyes. Her early videos of the 1990s—Zone shot on a cruise ship, with a spy camera sewn into her jacket and The Lost Days, directed via the internet with friends and strangers filming on her behalf in fifteen countries—experimented with the frontiers of the medium, creating fictional journeys out of intricately reworked documentary footage.
A series of pivotal encounters during those years (in which she lived in the US without residency papers), including the sinister reality glimpsed when she was detained in an immigration cell on the Canadian-US border, contributed to a deepening preoccupation with tales of people stranded in liminal spaces, and issues of statelessness and migration…
Clockwise from top left: Cargo, the ship at a standstill, the engines off during ten days; Drawing M‘s Story, Istanbul; Writing on the cargo ship; Recorder used in Amman to gather testimonies of the Iraq war.
Selected Screenings and exhibitions
- Vidéo et après : Laura Waddington, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
- Exilés – cinéma d’urgence, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France [on demand streaming of Border in the reading rooms of the library]
- Internationalist Cinema for Today: Laura Waddington, Anthology Film Archives, New York [curated by Nicole Brenez]
- Laura Waddington, Mostra Video Itau Cultural, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Instituto de Artes do Pará, Bélem do Pará, Brazil [curated by Andre Brasil, Institut Itau Cultural, São Paolo]
- Special: Laura Waddington, 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany
- Omaggio a Laura Waddington, 41st Pesaro International Film Festival, Italy
- La Intratable Belleza del Mundo, The Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, Havana, Cuba [curated by Christine Van Assche (Centre Georges Pompidou)]
- A Nomadic Camera: Films by Laura Waddington, Curzon Cinema, London, UK [curated by Cinémathèque de Tanger, Morocco (Yto Barrada and Bouchra Khalili), and The Photographers’ Gallery, London]
- Tres Cortos de Laura Waddington: Mujeres en la Resistencia / Women in the Resistance, travelling showcase: Sala Armando Robles Godoy del Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Museo de la Nación, Lima, Peru; La Paz, Bolivia; and Cuenca, Ecuador [curated by Desistfilm, Lima and Nicole Brenez (Cinémathèque Française)]
- The Current Convening #2, Fort Kochi, Kerala, India [event of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21-Academy) Vienna, curator: Stefanie Hessler] [films curated by Shanay Jhaveri (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)]
- Turbulence: The 3rd Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and other venues, Auckland, New Zealand [curated by Victoria Lynn]
- Cinémathèque de Tanger: Explorations in Film and Video, The Photographer’s Gallery, London [guest curated by Yto Barrada and Bouchra Khalili (Cinémathèque de Tanger), exhibition programmed by Christine Van Assche (Centre Georges Pompidou)]
- Mujeres en la Resistencia / Women in the Resistance I: Laura Waddington [online cycle in response to the COVID-19 quarantine] [curated by Desistfilm, Lima (José Sarmiento-Hinojosa and Mónica Delgado), and Nicole Brenez (Cinémathèque Française)]
- Outside In: Alternative Narratives in Contemporary Art, University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China [curated by Tina Yee-wan Pang]
- In Person: Laura Waddington, Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna, Austria [curated by Brigitta Burger-Utzer, Sixpack Film]
- Crime & Punishment, Kunsthalle Tallinn, Tallinn, Estonia [curated by Anders Härm]
- Centre Pompidou Collection Nouveaux Médias, Institut français d’Izmir, Turkey [curated by Christine Van Assche]
Bibliography: Selected BookS and Articles
- Didi-Huberman, Georges. Survivance des lucioles. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2009
- Mościcki, Paweł. “The Image as Common Good: On Laura Waddington’s Border.” View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, no. 14 (2016)
- MacDonald, Scott M. “Night Light—The Modern Cine-Nocturne.” In Comprehending Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024
- Cortez, Iggy. “Nabua and Other Nocturnal Peripheries.” In Night Fever: Film and Photography after Dark, edited by Shanay Jhaveri. Cologne: Walther König, 2024
- Jacobs, Bidhan. Esthétique du signal: Hacker le filmique. Milan: Éditions Mimésis, 2022
- Smith, Alison. “Anachronism, Survival and Filmic Fireflies.” In Georges Didi-Huberman and Film: The Politics of the Image. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020
- Didi-Huberman, Georges. Survival of the Fireflies. Translated by Lia Swope Mitchell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press/Univocal, 2018
- Khalili, Bouchra. “The Pain of Seeing: The Videos of Laura Waddington.” In The 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen Catalogue. Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen, 2005
- Möller, Olaf. “The Days and Years of My Travels.” In 41a Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema Pesaro Catalogue. Rome: Fondazione Pesaro Nuova Cinema Onlus, 2005
- Ross, Christine. Art for Coexistence: Unlearning the Way We See Migration. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022
- Marcheschi, Elena. “Oltre la rappresentazione, dentro la vita in Border di Laura Waddington.” In Videoestetiche dell’emergenza: L’immagine della crisi nella sperimentazione audiovisiva. Turin: Edizioni Kaplan, 2015
- Larsson, Chari. “Suspicious Images: Iconophobia and the Ethical Gaze.” M/C Journal, vol. 15, no. 1 (Suspicion) (November 4, 2011).
- Lessa Filho, Ricardo, and Frederico Vieira. “Entre travessias e escuridão: Notas sobre os espectros (i)migrantes em Border.” Logos 52, vol. 27, no. 1, PPGCom da UERJ, Rio de Janeiro (2020)
- Hohlfeldt, Marion. “Betwixt and Between: Displacement and Liminality in Laura Waddington’s Border.” Interventions (Borders and the Global Contemporary) (January 2013)
- Rimini, Stefania. “Frammenti di cinema resistente.” La Rivista di Engramma, no. 84 (“Lucciole malgrado tutto,” special issue devoted to Georges Didi-Huberman), October 2010
- Waddington, Laura. “Abdullah and the Fireflies: On Reading Survivance des Lucioles.” La Rivista di Engramma, no. 84 (“Lucciole malgrado tutto,” special issue devoted to Georges Didi-Huberman), October 2010
- Bima, Cecilia. “Lacune visive: Bassa definizione per un’etica della testimonianza.” Università Iuav di Venezia, 2019/2020 (124-page Master’s thesis on Laura Waddington’s work)
- Mościcki, Paweł. “Obraz-dzielenie: Laura Waddington.” In Migawki z tradycji uciśnionych. Warsaw: Biblioteka Le Monde Diplomatique, 2017
- Kuhn, Eva. “Border: The Videographic Traces by Laura Waddington as a Cinematographic Memorial.” In Images of Illegalized Immigration: Towards a Critical Iconology of Politics. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2010
- Azoury, Philippe. “Caméras libres.” Libération, Paris, August 11, 2004
- Nicklaus, Olivier. “Les yeux de Laura.” Les Inrockuptibles, no. 394, Paris, June 18, 2003
Selected Awards and Residencies
- 2014 Artist in Residence, Villa Hellebosch, Belgium
- 2013 Artist in Residence, Foundation Obras, the Netherlands (May–July)
- 2013 Artist in Residence, Foundation Obras, the Netherlands (March–April)
- 2012 Artist in Residence, Villa Hellebosch, Belgium
- 2006 Production Award, Transat Projects / Transat Vidéo, France
- 2005 Grand Prix Essai / Art Vidéo, Festival Coté Court, France
- 2005 First Prize Videoex 2005 – International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Zürich, Switzerland
- 2005 Special Mention of the Ecumenical Jury, 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany
- 2002 ARTE Prize for Best European Short Film, 48th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany
- 2002 First Prize ex aequo, Videoex 2002 – International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Zürich, Switzerland
- 2000 International Film Festival Rotterdam ‘On the Waterfront’ commission
- 1998 Artist in Residence, CICV Pierre Schaeffer, France
- 1996 Arts Council of England Artist’s Film and Video Production Award
Selected Public Collections
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
- Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France
- Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France
- BFI National Archive (British Film Institute), UK
- BFI Heritage 2022 Project (British Film Institute), UK
- International Short Film Festival Oberhausen Archive, Germany
- The International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands
- Es ist schwer das Reale zu berühren. Video Archive, Grazer Kunstverein, Austria
- Invideo Archive, Milan, Italy
- Cinémathèque de Tanger, Morocco
Selected Film Polls and Best-of Lists
- Border: “Desistfilm’s Top 50 Films of All Time” (Choice of Nicole Brenez). Desistfilm Online Film Journal, Peru, 2012.
- Border and Cargo: “Nicole Brenez’s 50 great avant-garde films/events 2000-2009.” In “Best of the Decade: Avant-Garde, 2010.” Film Comment, New York.
- Still: “Top Ten Films of 2009” (Choice of Federico Rossin). Il Manifesto, Rome.
Festivals and Presentations
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