Theo Tennant (4D)

I’ve always been quite envious of people who can say with full confidence that they’re a painter or a sculptor. My ‘practice’, if I can call it that, seems to be constantly changing in terms of the medium I work with. There are a few key themes which I always come back to, within which there will be ideas which will influence and drive the way in which I choose to work. The one constant for me seems to be a desire to make films, everything I make is in some way either thought about cinematically or it will be a film or an apparatus to facilitate a film. My work LeisureLand is the starting point for creating a huge physical geography/map of a fictional, stagnant and decaying Utopia of the middle class within which I will eventually set a film. I’m also beginning to play around with making music which I’m really excited to eventually incorporate into my work.

The films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Elem Klimov have had a huge impact on me, as well as more recently the films of Armin Linke, Joanna Hogg, Ben Rivers, Pedro Costa and Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. Pretty much anything contemporary that is rightly or wrongly labelled as ‘Slow Cinema’ has been a big influence on me.

I’m keen for my work to be communicating outside of an art sphere so the main process for me is to get out in the world and meet people. My entry point into art school was photography and documentary film, so this as a continuous process is key to me being able to do anything remotely creative, even if what I end up making is an installation. The process of filming and taking photos has almost always taken place beforehand. I can’t make work by myself in a vacuum. I need collaboration and if I can’t find it with people in university, I try and find it in the subjects I film and photograph.I’m currently working on a large scale multi-screened documentary film that I’m hoping will act as an anthropological and ontological study situated in various locations across London. The camera functions – as a mapping apparatus for these spaces – form a cinematic geography in which the subjects of the film are bound. My plans for the future are to continue enjoying making stuff and not lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day it’s just art, so chill.