134 followers
Share on Google+
795 likeMagmart festival VIII edition is over, and is time of an appraisal. Along this years, often fighting against many difficulties, we have seek the goal to support videoart, to widen the opportunities of cultural exchange between artists and countries. I think with a bit of success. But now is time for some changes. The festival risk to become just a ritual, and on the other side new ways, new horizons opens.
In my opinion, the festival remain relevant; it is still an important appointment for international videoart community, and for italian artists in particular, so we don't think to drop out it. Becoming biennal, we think the festival can increase its significance. But, at the same time, we want explore the new ways that can bring to the same goal.
The experience of 100x100=900 Project is must important, for us. It has show us the relevance of a new approach. The project is still on the run, and so is too-early for an appraisal; but it has stimulated some relevant reflections, and I want continue to explore this way. So, even if the festival become biennal, we'll organize something each year, alternating with festival itself. And something is already on work-in-progress for 2014. I hope to find all you again, on these new roads... So, keep in touch!
To celebrate 50th of videoart in 2013, Magmart Festival has launched the project 100x100=900. The Project has involved 100 artists from worldwide, and has reach many locations in the world, with it's international tour - realized thanks to a partnership program.
Read more at our projects page, or visit the project website.
Waiting for next edition of Magmart Festival, that will start on autumn of 2014, we have launched a new, exciting project: F.I.V.E. - Feelings International Videoart Experience.
This new project, with an international call, want realize a collective work on five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Discover more at our projects page, or visit the project website.
The 100x100=900 catalogue (214 pages, A4) finally available!
100 artists, 57 partners, 40 curators from around the world, for the project which celebrated 50 years of video art.
Order now your copy of printed catalogue!
(posted on 2014-03-09)
Since the 80s, Georgian art has undergone an evolution, which ran parallel to the predominant, hegemonic discourse of the socio-cultural reality. Within this context, it has created artifacts in various forms of media, which were novel to the social reality and circumstances of the respective time, but did not trigger any adequate analyses of these impulses. The political and economical conditions of the 90s, which marked the aftermath of the Soviet breakdown, complicated actions directed towards categorization and preservation as well.
Today, in the time of independence and re-orientation, the necessity of an archive, which is reminiscent and serves the mediation of knowledge of the beginning and development of the Georgian art movement, is unequivocal. Furthermore, it is the preliminary step towards a rethinking of the latter. With time passing by, the risk of these artifacts falling into oblivion or into irrelevance is steadily increasing, which is why the independent platform „Active for Culture' initiated the creation of the very first Georgian video art archive, which is being introduced through „Descriptions'.
By 'descriptions' we often mean to refer to objective, plain truths. Georgian video art, which has widely developed in the undercurrent before establishing itself as a separate medium, offers us various descriptions – but from a very subjective and alternative point of view. Although a comprehensive contextualization might only be possible from a retrospective, the exhibition aims to compile and illustrate 23 years of Georgian video art – exemplified by audiovisual works from 21 artists.
This project is the first step of reconsideration of the respective material, which is crucial for the clarification of what we should call Georgian art history, which stages it has undergone, and ultimately, how it has shaped the cultural identity. The conduction of comprehensive research about Georgian moving image and video art as well as the setup of an archive, which up to today consists of more than 400 video works by 80 artists, can be considered the first stage of the project. On the one hand, this is due to the current presence of video art in the field of contemporary art and its evident feature of perceptive accessibility, on the other hand, the financial as well as material resources currently limit the venture to this stage.
Future plans include the constant update and further development of the online archive, the selection of video artifacts and their exhibition in various corners of the world as well as the print of a publication which approaches Georgian video art from a theoretical perspective.
Participants: Ana Martiashvili / Ana Chaduneli / Gegi Khaburzania / Gio Sumbadze / Dimitri Tsutsqiridse / Vasil Macharadze / Tamar Maglapheridze / Tamar Chaduneli / Temo Javakhishvili / IARE / Iliko Zautashvili / Koka Ramishvili / Konstantin Mindadze / Koka Vashakidze / Levan Chogoshvili / Mamuka Japharidze / Niko Lomashvili / Niko Tsetskhladze / Nino Sekhniashvili / Sophia Tabatadze / Wato Tsereteli / + Documentary video material by Teona Japharidze
Curators: Aleksi Soselia / Galaqtion Eristavi / Giorgi Spanderashvili / Tamar Muskhelishvili
Active for Culture Tetelashvili 08 0102 Tbilisi Georgia
(posted on 2014-03-09)
'I Dreamt of You so Much That...' film by Stefan Constantinescu (RO/SWE), 90’ 2009 - 2019 work in progress
Friday, March 14, 2014, 7-9pm
Dock 18, Seestr. 395, Rote Fabrik, Zurich a selection of 3 short films by artist Stefan Constantinescu from his ongoing 7-part series followed by an artist talk and reception.
I Dreamt of You so Much That...a series of seven short films that together present one vision from different perspectives, examines intimate moments in the lives of seven couples, who question, challenge and push the limits of their relationship, while blurring the lines between private and public spaces, often to potentially disturbing yet uncertain conclusions. The stories treat the violence and complexity of interaction between men and women, alienation, and the illusion of true connection with the other.
Featured films:
Troleibuzul 92 (Bus no. 92), 2009 (8 min) - A man sits down on a bus and calls his wife or girlfriend. The conversation that ensues becomes more and more threatening and violent, turning the audience, like the other passengers, into unwilling participants.
Family Dinner, 2012 (14 min) - What lies behind the mask of the model Swedish family? While husband and daughter prepare dinner, the mother engages in cell phone sex with a co-worker, only to return to her normal role minutes later.
6 Big Fish, 2013 (14 min) - Two Swedish artists are in Bucharest on a residency and suddenly find themselves responsible for 6 large live goldfish. Their different perspectives on life and art inform their approach to what to do with the fish, and ultimately test their relationship.
Stefan Constantinescu (1968, Bucharest), is a visual artist and film director living in Stockholm, Sweden and Bucharest, Romania.
In 2009 he represented Romania at Venice Biennial. He explores the issues of identity and memory through films, books and paintings. His fictional movies are shot in a seemingly documentary style, revealing the violence underlying human relationships in contemporary society. Currently, Stefan is working on a feature film titled Viking Story Line produced by Atmo Stockholm and co-produced by Parada Film Bucharest.
Itinerant Projects is the platform for our curatorial and programmatic initiatives. We developed this nomadic and roving curatorial model because we believe in bringing together emerging, mid-career, and established artists, with a diverse audience base, and unusual or alternative spaces. Our nomadic nature permits us to create relationships between seemingly disparate constituencies, and thereby truly build a bridge between the public and the art community.
Dock 18 Seestr. 395 Zurich, 8038 Switzerland
(posted on 2014-03-08)
( Bogotá, México DF, Buenos Aires, Huelva, Cuzco y Lima )
"Para el existente, la distancia es conocimiento, memoria y analogía”
en La Velocidad de Liberación, Paul Virilio.
El proyecto artístico de Carlos Gomes y Fran López Reyes, UMA desarrollado entre el 2011 y el 2013 y presentado hasta la fecha en Portugal, Grecia, España, Francia, Brasil y Cuba ha comenzado una gira que les llevará a mostrar su trabajo por América Latina, comisariado por Mario Gutiérrez Cru, director de PROYECTOR, Festival Internacional de Videoarte.
El proyecto se presentará en dos formatos:
> Video-instalación tri-canal en pantallas envolventes gigantes. 34min
> Documental. 61 min.
Además se realizaran otras actividades tales como:
> Mesas redondas y presentaciones.
> Laboratorios y Talleres.
Sinopsis del proyecto
En el sur de Portugal, a 50 km de Lisboa, existe un territorio de rara belleza natural, situado en una de las líneas de costa menos intervenidas por el hombre de toda Europa. Escenario idílico de una carrera casi única en todo el mundo: 43 km corridos por la arena de la playa a lo largo del Océano Atlántico. Un desafío que requiere actitud, fuerza mental, preparación, mucho entrenamiento y sacrificio. Los atletas desafían sus propios límites, enfrentando la distancia y atravesando por todos nosotros aquel territorio. El record, verdaderamente impresionante, de esta carrera es de 2h45m, realizado por Eusébio Rosa. Pero, para la mayoría de los atletas, el desafío es apenas llegar al fin. Seguimos ocho de ellos, de diferentes orígenes y condiciones, hablándonos sobre sus motivaciones para correr, sobre lo que piensan mientras corren y sobre lo que significa para ellos y para su vida, ser corredores.
SEDES Y FECHAS
> COLOMBIA. 3-17 MARZO 2014
En Bogotá, bajo la organización de La Decanatura se presenta el proyecto dentro una muestra relacionada con el ocio y el deporte, que ha tenido el apoyo de IDARTES (Ministerio de Cultura Colombiano).
- 3 al 5 de marzo, 17h. Los laboratorios de "Ocio, deporte y algo más" que realizará Carlos Gomes y Mario Gutiérrez Cru en La Decanatura.
La Decanatura. Carrera 13, 44-31. Local 103. Bogotá
- 4 de marzo, 8h. Presentación de UMA PROJECT en la Universidad de Arte Los Andes en Bogotá.
Dirección: Carrera 1 N° 18A 12 Bogotá..
- 5 de marzo, 20h.Encuentro con artistas sobre UMA PROJECT y presentación de los resultados del taller. Junto a una comida Transiberian Food realizada por Carlos Gomes y Mario Gutiérrez Cru en El Parche Artist Residency.
Carrera 4A No.26 B-12. Piso 4, Barrio La Macarena, Bogotá.
- 6 de Marzo, 19h. Presentación del documental y mesa redonda en la Cinemateca Distrital.
Carrera 7 N 22 79, Bogotá
- 7 al 17 Marzo. 19h. Video-instalación en Sala Cabeza de Ratón de la Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño.
Calle 10 # 3 - 16, Bogotá
> MÉXICO. 20-29 MARZO 2014
El espacio ExTeresa Arte Actual será será el encargado de hospedar UMA PROJECT dentro de su programación del mes de Marzo.
- 20 de Marzo inauguración de la Video-instalación.
- 26 Marzo proyección del Documental en La Noche de los Museos de México DF.
Licenciado Verdad 8. Centro Histórico
> ARGENTINA. 6-18 ABRIL 2014
El Festival VideoBardo, bajo la coordinación de Creo Producciones, nos lleva:
- 7 al 11 de Abril. Video-instalación en el Centro Cultural de España - CCEBA.
- 9 de Abril. Proyección del documental y mesa redonda Centro Cultural de España - CCEBA.
Florida, 943 - Buenos Aires - Argentina
> ESPAÑA. 7-25 MAYO 2014
Sala S.XXI (Diputación de Huelva, área de Cultura) Museo Provincial de Huelva.
- 7 de Mayo: Inauguración de la Video-instalación.
Alameda Sundheim, 13 Huelva
> PERÚ. 15 MAYO - 15 JUNIO 2014
Y el recorrido terminará en Perú con doble sede:
>Cuzco, organizado por la empresa Electro Sur Este y por la Asociación Cultural "Charlie Quispe & Co" se presentará UMA PROJECT tanto con la video-instalación y como con el documental y charlas en la Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, Extensión Cusco
- 15 de Mayo 2014. Video-instalación.
- 16 de Mayo 2014. Documental.
Calle Pampa del Castillo 405 - Cuzco
>Lima, Del 20 Mayo al 15 Junio 2014 se presentará el proyecto entero en la Fundación Telefónica de Lima
- 20-23 de Mayo 2014. Taller Territorios Visuales.
- 21 de Mayo 2014. Proyección del documental + charla en torno sobre Territorio.
- 22 de Mayo - 15 Junio 2014. Video-instalación
Av. Arequipa 1155, Lima
(posted on 2014-03-08)
Screenings
Performances
Round tables
19>22.03 / CLERMONT-FD (FRANCE)
PRIX VIDEOFORMES 2014 - 9 programmes - 58 videos - 22 countries
AWARDS / PALMARES : 22/03 - 19.30 - Maison du Peuple
FOCUS PROGRAM : The Lost/ Reynold Reynolds - PICO (reMix)/John Sanborn - Ambiancé/Anders Weberg - Exquisite Corpse Video Project -
Volume 4 Porn / Politics (curator : Kika Nicolela)
VIDEO LOUNGE : Cage Suite VIDEOFORMES 2014 - E-Migrations/Karen Guillorel & Yann Minh - Videocollectifs -
Concours Jeunes Publics 1 Minute - Atelier d'art thérapie
PERFORMANCES & NUIT DES ARTS ELECTRONIQUES : Digital music & Video performances
PERFORMANCES :
Thomas Israël 21.03 - 20.30 - Salle des Frères Lumière
Gauthier Keyaerts 21.03 - 22.00 - Maison du Peuple
NUIT DES ARTS ELECTRONIQUES : 22.03 - 22.00 Maison du Peuple
Andromakers, Panoptic : Pierce Warnecke / Christoph Limbach / Yaïr Glotman, St4lk, Temps réels : bunq&e-b
ROUND TABLES / TABLES RONDES : 21>22.03 - Maison du Peuple
21.03 - Fabs Labs-Art Labs : New way of production / Fab Labs-Art Labs : les nouveaux modes de production
22.03 - Social and digital innovation : from consumer society to collaborative society / Innovation sociale et numérique : de la société de consommation à la société collaborative
(posted on 2014-03-08)
The Tate Modern, London’s influential modern art museum, will hold a special exhibition later this year of the definitive works of the late Paik Nam-june, the Korean artist revered as the father of video art.
The display is a project in partnership with Korea car maker Hyundai Motor, which in January announced an unprecedented 11-year commitment to funding the space, starting with the Paik exhibit.
In a news conference in Seoul, Friday, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota expressed hopes that the museum’s partnership with Hyundai will help it broaden the range of international works displayed in its spaces, including The Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall.
“We look forward to working together with Hyundai, exploring the most innovative and creative ideas from around the world,” he said.
The Tate Modern, a branch of the Tate Group, is one of the busiest contemporary art museums in the world, attracting over 5 million visitors a year since opening in 2000. The building was a power station before it was converted into a gallery and the Turbine Hall is named as such because it had been where the turbines were located.
The hall has been used to display innovative and occasionally provocative works from artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei, who were grouped in a series called The Unilever Project, named after the consumer goods company that sponsored the space from 2010 to 2012. There was no new commission in 2013.
The innovative and even provocative artworks at the Unilever Project, such as Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project, raised awareness of space and time and received critical acclaim and resulted in a good publicity of the consumer goods company.
Hyundai’s 11-year partnership is the longest initial commitment from a corporate sponsor in Tate’s history as the norm has been a three-year deal.
Hyundai says its partnership with Tate comes from its aim to become a “lifestyle company” rather than just a vehicle manufacturer. The company sponsored the museum to acquire nine of Paik’s media artworks, which will highlight the exhibition that will open sometime in autumn.
“At Hyundai, we understand that cars can provide much more than transportation. They can connect with people emotionally and it is this feeling that connects people to great art. This is the nature of our partnership with the Tate. We are excited about the new possibilities that lie ahead and are very privileged to be working together with the Tate on this inspiring collaboration,” Hyundai vice chairman Chung Eui-sun said in a statement.
Hyundai also signed a 10-year partnership with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Arts, Korea worth 12 billion won ($11.3 million) last year.
(posted on 2014-03-08)
Live Drawing "Contaminazioni" di Cristiano Baricelli e visual di Valerio Visconti. Un incrocio di sinestesia tra suono e visione, che mette in comune le ricerche artistiche dei vari componenti di Duplex Ride. Un crocevia in cui gli elementi fondamentali di musica e immagini, sotto forma di concerti e proiezioni video, s'intersecano con altre forme di espressione creativa, dal reading poetico alla performance, dall'installazione al disegno dal vivo. NOS e' formato da Marco Cacciamani, Claudio Ferrari e Riccardo Canessa, che, tra le rispettive diverse passioni artistiche, qui condividono quella che hanno in comune: la musica eletttronica. Essenzialmente improvvisate, le loro performances sono integrate con videoproiezioni curate da Gianriccardo Scheri ed aperte ad interventi di ospiti. Si definiscono un gruppo d'improvvisazione elettrotecnica, i cui diversi incontri in studio e i concerti dal novembre 2008 hanno finora fruttato 2 CD autoprodotti. La performance vedra' il contemporaneo live drawing di Cristiano Baricelli. Fra techno e natura, casualita' e sequencer, ritmi decisi e voci parlate. Questo e' sostanzialmente MODUS (Massimo Pegoraro) classe 1981, da sempre dedito alla ricerca ed allo studio in ambito musicologico. Rassegna a cura di Duplex Ride, Casa della Musica - Genova, Comune di Genova, Genova Palazzo Ducale, Fondazione per la Cultura.
MUSEO D'ARTE CONTEMPORANEA DI VILLA CROCE via Jacopo Ruffini, 3 Genova
(posted on 2014-03-07)
Over the course of one year, the IBB-Videolounge will present 12 artists who have drawn attention to themselves with innovative use of the media film and video in recent years. The selected artists are both established representatives of contemporary video art as well as emerging artists who have scarcely made their mark on Berlin’s active art scene. A new, changing programme of different works will be compiled each month.
In March (05.03.–31.03.2014) IBB-Videolounge shows two works by Patrycja German (*1979, Wroclaw/Poland). She devises situations which require counterparts to join her in ‘playing the game’. This enables her to address complex themes around intimacy and detachment, the physical body and gender roles. Video as a medium is not central to her art, but rather a means for recording her performances.
Patrycja German has been awarded a number of prizes and grants, including a working bursary from the Senate of Berlin, the Schindler Scholarship LA and the HAP Grieshaber Award. She lives and works in Berlin.
Works shown at IBB-Videolounge:
100 vs. 100, 2006, video, colour, 46 mins.
In 100 vs. 100 German challenges a man of the same size and weight to a wrestling match. The two participants wear nothing but (identical) shorts. Their tussle, which begins cautiously and gradually turns increasingly passionate and embittered, is filmed as a single continuous sequence. The male wrestler in particular is at first inhibited about touching his opponent, let alone attacking her, but after a while sexual differences lose relevance. Stereotyped gender images are thus called into question. The spectator is both referee and voyeur, left to his or her own devices – an observer observing him/herself.
80 vs. 3, 2006, video, colour, 20 mins.
In 80 vs. 3 the artist has cast three men able to support an 80-kilo weight for a lengthy period. The weight is actually the artist, who has herself carried naked through a gallery space by the men and handed in the process from one to the next. This straightforward task permits reflections about the body language of the participants and the power structures that unfold in this simple experiment: one of the men assumes a more dominant role than the other two; the men are motivated by social pressure to keep going even when their strength begins to fade. As in 100 vs. 100, inhibitions about touching someone else’s naked body are gradually overcome, until eventually this becomes a mere object which just happens to form a routine part of the task.
Opening 5th June 2014
Berlinische Galerie Alte Jakobstrasse, 124-128, Berlin
(posted on 2014-03-07)
John Cage, Henri Chopin, Patrick Coyle, Ian Giles, Marlene Haring, Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamila Johnson-Small, Patrick Hough, Jacob Kirkegaard, Liz Magic Laser, Lina Lapelyte, Hassan Meer, Nástio Mosquito, Laure Prouvost, Ryder Ripps, Alex Schweder, John Stezaker, Jon Wozencroft
Graduating RCA Curating Contemporary Art students present an international group exhibition that explores the indistinct spaces which lie between chatter and silence.
Taking its title from Samuel Beckett's Not I (1972), ... all silent but for the buzzing ... aims to transport the distant whispering of Beckett's play into the exhibition space. Viewers are invited to experience a variety of mediums, scales and spectra of sounds through artists' installations, sculptures, collages and performances.
Distant whispering becomes overwhelming chatter as John Stezaker's charged video collage creates a sensory bombardment of repetitive images. Omani artist Hassan Meer's video installation immerses the viewer in a contemplative experience of both physical and psychological suppression. Patrick Hough investigates the construction and representation of historical objects and their narratives in the present, while the provocative videos of Angolan artist and musician Nástio Mosquito creates an audiovisual cacophony to question stereotypes of communication and cultural identity. Liz Magic Laser further emphasises the performative and political strategies of media rhetoric.
Viewers can participate in Marlene Haring's Solo Show (Face Up) (2012), a bar for one guest at a time. The internal and personal experience of sound defines Jacob Kirkegaard's installation Labyrinthitis (2007), as well as an interactive audio guide, including Turner Prize winning artist Laure Prouvost's Pink Cloud (2012). The audio guide will also feature an integration of sound art and performance by Lina Lapelyte, whom Brian Eno recognises as 'working right at the edge of what popular music could become'.
... all silent but for the buzzing ... includes sound + gesture, a weekend of free events with workshops, talks and performances on 15 and 16 March. Includes a restaging of John Cage's seminal work 4’33”; contemporary dance by Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamila Johnson-Small and a live performance by African multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito.
6 - 23 March 2014
Royal College of Art Galleries Kensington Gore London SW7 2EU
(posted on 2014-03-07)
A spectacular installation by Douglas Gordon in permanent collection, "Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now". Acquired in 2003, Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now has just been considerably enriched with 43 new videos by the artist. This makes the museum the world's largest holder of Gordon's video works. This presentation is a significant addition to such other major ensembles as Raoul Dufy's Magic of Electricity, Henri Matisse's two Dances and Christian Boltanski's Reserve des Enfants.
MUSEE D'ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS - MAM
Paris 11, avenue du President Wilson
(posted on 2014-03-07)
Ogni venerdì del mese di marzo alle ore 18.00 la Galleria Nuvole presenta la rassegna Videovisioni, la cui selezione degli artisti è stata affidata a Rita Casdia.
Sono quattro gli appuntamenti alla scoperta della video arte in Italia che mettono a confronto un ventaglio di video-artisti diversi, due per volta, con lo scopo di presentare al pubblico le diverse e possibili declinazioni che la video arte ha assunto oggi come pratica artistica.
Le opere di ciascun artista si connotano sia per la loro unicità dettata dalle tematiche affrontate, sia dai generi esplorati con un voluto e consapevole uso sperimentale del mezzo stesso.
Claudia Maina utilizza la video arte inizialmente come documentazione delle proprie perfomance e prosegue il suo percorso con protagoniste le sue sculture/installazioni.
Barbara Brugola indaga il tempo e la molteplicità dei punti di vista con l’uso delle multi proiezioni che dilatano la percezione della visione in atmosfere sospese e intime.
Valeria Proserpio con una scelta minima e radicale offre un unico punto di vista. Sua è la preferenza di utilizzare una camera fissa e scoprire nello stato d’immobilità soggettivo un flusso esterno vitale e perpetuo.
Assila Cherfi sperimenta diverse tecniche video digitali con uno sguardo documentaristico che si dirige anche verso un’analisi sociologica, il suono è un ulteriore elemento guida che si concatena alle immagini.
Annamaria Di Giacomo registra la sua osservazione con l’uso di materiali d’archivio oppure analizzando frammenti di vita vissuta.
Marta Roberti sviluppa la sua ricerca simultaneamente su un piano teorico-filosofico e su un piano pratico-artistico. Il punto di approdo è quello di superare il confine tra arte e filosofia lavorando a concetti propri della tradizione filosofica, quali la ripetizione e il divenire. Non a caso utilizza la tecnica dell’animazione per i suoi video.
Giulia Giannola osserva situazioni quotidiane della vita collettiva o personale creando visioni irreali o suggerendo realtà alternative.
Calendario:
7 marzo - Barbara Brugola e Marta Roberti
14 marzo - Giulia Giannola e Valeria Proserpio
21 marzo - Claudia Maina e Assila Cherfi
28 marzo - Annamaria Di Giacomo e Rita Casdia
Nuvole Galleria Vicolo Ragusi, 35 (angolo via del Celso 14) - Palermo
(posted on 2014-03-07)
Convocatoria abierta para realizadores peruanos y latinoamericanos
Cierre de la convocatoria: Martes 11 de Marzo 2014
El año 2008 elgalpon.espacio creó LA VIDEADA, espacio de difusión de propuestas experimentales en video, que apuesten por un lenguaje de ¨riesgo¨, realizados por ciudadanos en general.
La Videada se creó con el objetivo de generar un espacio en el cual se encuentren, se conozcan y se formen redes entre creadores autónomos e independientes, fortaleciendo un circuito poco desarrollado de este tipo de propuestas en Lima.
Además desde la edición Vol.05, la videada ya no sólo ha sido presentada en nuestra ciudad, sino también en espacios culturales y galerías de diferentes ciudades como Berlín, México DF y Quito; ampliando las redes entre artistas de distintos países y difundiendo el trabajo de diversos creadores especializados o no en la realización de videos.
Es por eso que abrimos la convocatoria a la Videada Vol.06 para todos los realizadores y ciudadanos interesados tanto a nivel nacional como sudamericano.
Cierre de la convocatoria: Martes 11 de Marzo 2014
Bases de la propuesta:
- Se seleccionaran videos de formato video arte, video performance, video poesía o video experimental. No se aceptarán propuestas de registro de performance, video clips musicales ni video danza.
- La temática es Libre.
- La duración máximo de cada video es de 5min (incluidos los títulos o créditos). No se aceptarán las propuestas que superen este tiempo.
- El video tiene que incluir Título y nombre del realizador (dentro del mismo video). No se aceptarán videos que no cumplan con este requisito.
- Se aceptarán propuestas realizadas en cualquier tipo de dispositivo de grabación (Cámaras profesionales, semi profesionales, celulares, etc. ) No necesariamente se le dará prioridad o preferencia a la calidad técnica de la grabación.
- Formato de entrega AVI. o MOV. (No se aceptan Mp4 ni similares)
- Se le dará preferencia a los videos que conceptualmente estén más acorde con las imágenes propuestas.
- Se le dará preferencia a creadores emergentes.
- Se le dará preferencia a creadores peruanos (se escogerá un total de 60% de videos peruanos y 40% latinoamericanos).
- Se seleccionaran videos que en su mismo lenguaje audiovisual tengan una propuesta de ¨riesgo¨ buscando escaparse de los estándares establecidos incluso dentro del video experimental.
- Se seleccionaran videos con diferentes estéticas con la intención de mostrar un panorama ecléctico de la creación visual actual.
Formas de envío:
- Se recibirán las propuestas en DVD con sobre cerrado indicando breve reseña del autor y del video (tema, descripción, año de ejecución y ficha técnica) a la siguiente dirección: Cipriano Dulanto (Ex. Av. La Mar) - 949 - Pueblo Libre.
Dirección postal: Cipriano Dulanto (Ex. Av. La Mar) – 949. Lima 14. Perú.
- Se recibirán propuestas enviadas vía virtual en alta calidad (.AVI o .MOV) a la dirección elgalpon.espacio@gmail.com indicando breve reseña del autor y del video (tema, descripción, año de ejecución y ficha técnica).
Difusión:
- Se darán a conocer los resultados entre los días 8 y 11 de marzo.
- Se seleccionarán entre 14 a 18 propuestas que serán proyectados el día Jueves 20 de Marzo 2014 en elgalpon.espacio.
- Postertiormente se informará a los seleccionados sobre su posible difusión en otros espacios culturales fuera de Lima.
Mayores consultas a elgalpon.espacio@gmail.com
(posted on 2014-03-06)
Join Anne Spalter as she talks about her exciting work involving art and technology. Her video pieces are based on original footage shot in remote locations, from moving vehicles. Be prepared to see adventure, the unexpected, and serendipitous moments that you would’t expect. Anne will show material from and discuss the backstories of several works, as well as some of the computer-based methods of creation.
The pieces are location, weather, and time-specific videos shot from cars, high-rise buildings from the air, and underwater. These images fold in on themselves and abstract forms and patterns emerge.
Anne Morgan Spalter was trained as a traditional painter now she incorporates media tools, digital video and oil paint. Her work channels the actions painters who have been engaged physically in the environment and the moment. Anne’s work draws from painting, mathematics, and Buddhist and Islamic art. She shows widely in the US, Europe and the Middle East. Anne created the first fine art digital courses at RISD and Brown University. Her book “The Computer and the Visual Arts”, has become a standard.
Spalter is a long-time member of the Advisory Board of the Digital Art Museum, Berlin and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematics and Art, and the ACM SIGGRAPH Committee for Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art. She has a BA from Brown University in Mathematics, Visual Art, and an independent major, as well as an MFA in Painting from RISD.
Wednesday, March 26th, 7:30pm
Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St., Jamaica Plain, MA
(posted on 2014-03-06)
El CIDV es una espacio dedicado a la investigación y al archivo del vídeo arte y la experimentación audiovisual, un lugar en el que confluyen artistas, críticos, comisarios, galerías, plataformas, festivales e instituciones que promuevan este medio. Un lugar de encuentro para investigadores y un espacio para la conservación y archivo de este patrimonio.
Para formar parte del archivo es necesario enviar por correo postal:
-*Dossier de artista.
-Vídeos en Alta Calidad (FORMATO)
-Publicaciones y catálogos del artista. (Bibliografía, links, etc…)
-Documentación de prensa.
-Imágenes vídeos. (alta calidad).
A la dirección:
LA NEOMUDEJAR CIDV (Centro de Investigación y Documentación del Videoarte) C/Antonio Nebrija S/N 28007 Madrid España
Por correo electrónico a la dirección: cidv@laneomudejar.com. En el Asunto del correo por favor especificar, nombre de artista + CIDV.
* Documento para elaboración del dossier de artista en aqui (En español y en inglés)
(posted on 2014-03-06)
Da giovedì 6 a domenica 9 marzo, Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana ospita per la prima volta al Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi una selezione di nove film della sesta edizione dello Schermo dell’arte Film Festival, la rassegna internazionale tenutasi a Firenze lo scorso novembre.
Una collaborazione ideale, quella tra il Festival nato a Firenze nel 2008 e il Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi che nella presentazione al pubblico di video e film d’artista concentra molta parte della propria programmazione culturale.
Nel ricco programma, film realizzati da artisti, tra i quali il Turner Prize 2005 Simon Starling con Black Drop (2012), in cui l’artista britannico ricostruisce le relazioni fra cinema e ricerche astronomiche attraverso le osservazioni dei transiti di Venere sul Sole (7 marzo ore 20.45); lo scultore lituano Deimantas Narkevicius con Restricted Sensation (2011), ambientato nella Lituania sovietica degli anni Settanta che racconta dell’intolleranza del regime contro intellettuali e omosessuali, primo film a soggetto di Narkevicius, che introdurrà la proiezione, (8 marzo ore 19.30); le sorelle inglesi Jane e Louise Wilson, con The Toxic Camera (2012) che tratta delle irreversibili conseguenze delle radiazioni causate dal disastro nucleare di Chernobyl (8 marzo ore 19.00).
Saranno proposti anche film sulla vita e l’opera di artisti contemporanei, quali: Memories of Origin-Hiroshi Sugimoto (2011) di Yuko Nakamura, sul fotografo giapponese che proprio in occasione dello Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival 2013 ha ripreso, dopo quindici anni nei quali non vi aveva più lavorato, la sua celebre serie dei “Theaters” immortalando la sala Liberty del Cinema Odeon (9 marzo ore 17.00); il pluripremiato Fifi Howls From Happiness (2013) sullo scultore e pittore iraniano Bahman Mohassess, che sarà introdotto dalla regista iraniana Mitra Farahani reduce dal Festival di Berlino al quale ha partecipato come membro della Giuria (6 marzo ore 18.00); Sol Lewitt Homage (2012) alla presenza del regista olandese Chris Teerink (7 marzo ore 18.00), Sculpture: Constantin Brancusi (2013) realizzato da Alain Fleischer, fondatore di Le Fresnoy Studio national des arts contemporaines (8 marzo ore 18.00), Open Field–Gabriel Orozco (2013) sull’artista messicano girato nell’arco di dieci anni dal regista Juan Carlos Martin (7 marzo ore 19.30) e Meeting With Olafur Eliasson (2011) del brasiliano Marco Del Fiol, girato durante l’installazione della prima personale in America Latina dell’artista islando/danese (8 marzo ore 18.30).
Lo Schermo dell’arte Film Festival è un progetto nato a Firenze nel 2008 dedicato a esplorare, analizzare e promuovere le relazioni tra arte contemporanea e cinema. In sole sei edizioni ha saputo conquistare un ruolo di primo piano nel panorama dell’arte contemporanea italiana e internazionale e collabora con istituzioni, centri d’arte, accademie e università italiane e straniere. È sostenuto dalla Regione Toscana e dall’Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze e si svolge nell’ambito della rassegna “50 giorni di cinema internazionale a Firenze” organizzata dalla Fondazione Sistema Toscana.
Venezia, 6-9 marzo 2014
Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi San Marco 3260 – Venezia
(posted on 2014-03-04)
The most devastating scene in “12 Years a Slave” – a movie filled to the brim with devastating scenes, and one that rightly won the Best Picture Oscar at Sunday night’s Academy Awards – comes near the end. It speaks of director Steve McQueen’s background as a gifted video artist. (He won the Tate Museum’s Turner Prize in 1999, chiefly for his video installation, “Drumroll”).
The scene shows only Solomon Northup, the free black man who has been abducted into slavery’s unspeakable world of physical, emotional and spiritual atrocities, all chronicled in excruciating, sometimes unexpected detail over the previous two hours. Northup is framed close-up and off-center at the left side of an otherwise blank screen. The scene is filmed as a proscenium shot, where the camera does not move and the rectangle of the movie screen mimics the fixed frame of a theater’s proscenium arch.
Nothing much happens – save for a very slow, very long sequence in which Northup casts his eyes around the space in which he exists. We watch as he silently scans the visual field, and gradually becomes aware that, like a mirror, we are doing just what he is doing. A creeping recognition dawns of commonality between us.
So does an awareness of exactly where Northup’s eyes will inevitably land. You see it coming a mile away, like a freight train bearing down: The lengthy visual sojourn leads straight into the camera’s lens, his vision squarely fixed.
Through the camera, the slave makes direct, deliberate and unhurried cinematic eye contact with the viewer, passively watching in the dark. The depth and breadth of shared humanity, which is one of art’s great gifts, italicizes the story’s manifold brutalities.
The proscenium shot has been a video art convention since the late 1960s, when newly portable television technology gave individual artists access to a formerly cumbersome, costly medium once reserved for corporate culture. Video art’s use of it became prominent less for dramatic than simply practical reasons: An artist in the studio typically works alone, without a crew, unlike the collaborative process of a Hollywood movie or television show.
A stationary camera on a tripod was a standard set-up. McQueen used a version of it throughout “12 Years a Slave,” as he also did – sensuously and suggestively – in “Shame,” his 2011 movie about obsessive sexual compulsion.
Ironically, the proscenium shot is also one of the oldest techniques in the film-making arsenal, dating to the birth of the movie camera more than a century ago. As directors were groping their way through the narrative and visual capacities of the new moving-picture technology, setting up a camera to film a proscenium play was one obvious place to start.
Alfonso Cuarón, who won the directing Oscar Sunday night, marshalled the most technically advanced techniques to make the airless environment of outer space a virtual character in “Gravity,” his otherwise conventional “woman in peril” film. McQueen has likewise experimented with camera vision in his video art, albeit in a rather more ad hoc and improvisatory way: The three-screen “Drumroll,” his Turner Prize knockout, was made with three video cameras mounted on the two ends and one side of an ordinary metal oil drum that he rolled through Manhattan streets.
But McQueen’s extraordinary “12 Years a Slave” went back to film’s Square One. The result is a formidable Hollywood movie that exploits a basic tradition in independent video art.
Christopher Knight, Times art critic
(posted on 2014-03-04)
Nell'ambito delle manifestazioni oranizzate dal Comune di Venezia Do.Ve. e in collaborazione con Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival alla Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi onlus di Venezia
venerdi 7 marzo dalle ore 15.00
Incontri con videoartiste Debora Vrizzi, Elisabetta Di Sopra e Maria Teresa Sartori, a cura di Angela Mengoni (Università Iuav di Venezia) e Stefano Jacoviello (Università di Siena)
In collaborazione con Ikono tv
Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi onlus | San Vidal 2893 - 30124 Venezia
(posted on 2014-03-04)
Michael E. Smith / A cura di Simone Menegoi e Alexis Vaillant
Ian Cheng / A cura di Filipa Ramos
La Triennale di Milano è lieta di presentare, per la prima volta in un'istituzione italiana, i due giovani artisti americani Michael E. Smith e Ian Cheng, con due mostre personali che dialogano nello spazio espositivo con elementi risonanti e tematiche comuni. I due artisti, sia pure molto diversi nei linguaggi espressivi, condividono un approccio visionario; entrambi analizzano le tensioni contemporanee e immaginano possibili modalità di reazione e di resistenza attraverso logiche d’opposizione e di scardinamento dell’ordinario.
Michael E. Smith utilizza materiali poveri e industriali, spesso alterati sino a non lasciar traccia della propria funzione originaria; Ian Cheng disloca corpi fisici nello spazio virtuale per esplorarne le potenzialità d'azione e le possibili interazioni. Da queste rielaborazioni derivano esiti stranianti e processi imprevedibili, che invitano lo spettatore a rivedere le proprie idee di limite e di possibilità.
Edoardo Bonaspetti, curatore Arti visive e Nuovi Media, Triennale di Milano
Michael E. Smith
Michael E. Smith (1977) è uno degli artisti americani più interessanti della sua generazione. Dopo aver studiato scultura alla Yale School of Arts sotto la guida, fra gli altri, di Jessica Stockholder, ha cominciato a esporre in spazi pubblici e privati negli Stati Uniti e in Europa. Nel 2012, il suo lavoro è stato incluso nella prestigiosa Biennale di arte americana del Whitney Museum di New York.
Prodotta in collaborazione con il CAPC – Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, e curata da Simone Menegoi e Alexis Vaillant, capo curatore del CAPC, la mostra è una versione completamente rielaborata della personale che Smith ha appena tenuto nel museo di Bordeaux. In particolare, rispetto alla mostra francese, quella italiana include una serie di nuove opere create per l’occasione, fra cui un’installazione tra le più grandi che l’artista abbia mai realizzato, il cui elemento principale è una saracinesca da garage.
Smith crea piccoli dipinti dalla superficie tormentata; video che ritraggono frammenti di paesaggio urbano degradato, animali in cattività, gesti che sembrano appartenere a rituali incomprensibili; ma soprattutto sculture, le sue opere più note e caratteristiche.
Realizzate con una gamma di materiali che include quasi qualunque cosa, dalla resina sintetica agli indumenti usati, da ossa animali a parti di elettrodomestici, le sculture di Smith sono oggetti quasi sempre di modeste dimensioni ma dalla intensa, conturbante presenza. La loro forma e le loro dimensioni richiamano spesso quelle di arti umani; i materiali con cui sono fatte mostrano frequentemente i segni del tempo, dell’usura, di azioni vandaliche; l’inclusione di oggetti semidistrutti e di parti di animali evoca scenari post-apocalittici.
Altrettanto intenso delle opere, è il modo in cui l’artista le allestisce. I lavori – sempre pochi per volta, e molto isolati l’uno dall’altro – raramente occupano il centro delle sale; per lo più sono confinati negli angoli, seminascosti dietro elementi funzionali come radiatori o tubazioni, o addirittura appesi al soffitto. La critica li ha paragonati ad animali in agguato, o che si nascondono; il loro rapporto con l’architettura dello spazio espositivo è simbiotico. L’artista non crea mai due volte lo stesso allestimento, e la mostra alla Triennale non fa eccezione. La disposizione delle opere, completamente diversa da quella del CAPC di Bordeaux, risponde alle caratteristiche specifiche dello spazio milanese, e al momento non è possibile anticiparne le caratteristiche. Lo stesso vale per le nuove opere che saranno in mostra: l’artista le creerà sul posto nei giorni dell’installazione.
Smith dedica inoltre una particolare attenzione alle condizioni di illuminazione delle sue mostre. Che rimuova tutte le lampade, lasciando lo spazio in balia delle condizioni mutevoli della luce atmosferica, o che aumenti l’illuminazione artificiale al massimo, trasformando le sale di un museo in un abbagliante limbo bianco, Smith cerca di creare ogni volta un’atmosfera luminosa specifica. Per la mostra alla Triennale, l’artista ha scelto di isolare completamente lo spazio dalla luce naturale e di sostituire le luci a incandescenza con tubi al neon dalla tonalità molto più fredda.
L’immaginario di Smith ha le sue radici in un’America suburbana e provinciale, impoverita dalla crisi economica e messa a dura prova dalle emergenze climatiche. In particolare, l’artista è profondamente legato alla sua città d’origine, Detroit, uno degli esempi più impressionanti di quelle che vengono chiamate “shrinking cities”, le città che, per ragioni economiche o di altro genere, si restringono, implodono su sé stesse. Dopo una radicale de-industrializzazione, e dopo aver più che dimezzato la propria popolazione rispetto al picco toccato negli anni Cinquanta, Detroit è ora in larga parte una distesa di fabbriche in rovina e case abbandonate che offre, come ha scritto il critico americano Chris Sharp, “un’anteprima inquietantemente convincente della fine del mondo” (“a disturbingly convincing sneak peek of the end of the world”). È in questo scenario che ha preso forma il lavoro di Smith, ed è da esso che l’artista prende – a volte letteralmente – gli oggetti, i materiali e le immagini con cui realizza le sue opere.
L’opera di Michael E. Smith riflette le preoccupazioni e le ansie della nostra epoca, ma la sua cupezza di fondo è tutt’altro che monolitica. Il suo lavoro non parla solo di avversità, ma anche della tenace resistenza umana ad esse. Può concedersi guizzi di humour o aprirsi a inattese oasi di lirismo, come ad esempio accade in Untitled (2013), una delle opere in mostra: una multipla proiezione video in cui una brevissima ripresa di Miles Davis in concerto, rallentata e manipolata, si trasforma in una sequenza quasi astratta, di misteriosa bellezza.
Ian Cheng
L'arte non è una cosa del mondo.
È una percezione inventata dentro di noi usando le cose del mondo.
A cura di Filipa Ramos
Ian Cheng presenta una serie di simulazioni animate al computer che cambiano in modo dinamico, all'infinito, senza mai ripetersi.
Una simulazione rappresenta un insieme di cose.
Una simulazione rappresenta un ecosistema della mente.
E un video mostra una coreografia del comportamento inconscio umano.
Queste opere nascono dalla domanda: che sensazione si prova a navigare tra il caos e l'incertezza dentro e fuori di noi? Possiamo sviluppare questa sensazione all'interno dell'arte.
Dichiarazione della curatrice della mostra: Ian Cheng s’interessa agli stati di coscienza. Attraverso il suo lavoro esplora le possibili relazioni fra corpi e stati percettivi.
Per la sua prima mostra personale in Italia, l’artista presenta un video e una serie di simulazioni animate al computer come parte di un'installazione che si rapporta alle caratteristiche ambientali della Triennale e alle sue modalità espositive.
Realizzata attorno a una pedana dalle proporzioni esagerate, l’installazione di Cheng funge simultaneamente da supporto, display e dispositivo di mixaggio. I visitatori hanno l’opportunità di osservare le opere singolarmente o di concepirle come diversi organismi costituenti un unico corpo emergente, i cui suoni e movimenti alterano la struttura dell’insieme.
Le figure che abitano le varie opere assomigliano a oggetti e forme riconoscibili: esseri umani, animali, piante, pianeti, rocce. I loro movimenti, gesti e suoni sono vagamente familiari e, tuttavia, anche profondamente sconcertanti e inquietanti.
Nonostante la virtualità di questi ambienti, c’è un forte senso di vitalità in tutta la mostra. Questa sensazione deriva dal fatto che ogni momento osservato è il risultato di una combinazione casuale, unica e irripetibile, che una volta apparsa è persa per sempre.
L’installazione, le opere o i suoi elementi espandono i concetti d'improvvisazione e performatività in un flusso temporale che non conosce né inizio né fine.
Triennale di Milano viale Alemagna 6 20121 Milano
(posted on 2014-03-03)
animateCOLOGNE – Cologne Art & Animation Festival
launched in September 2012 successfully as new branch of Cologne International Videoart Festival is now open to receive submissions for the 2014 edition.
animateCologne – Cologne Art & Animation Festival would like give the animation more attention, relevance and space as a particular artistic expression by using a new festival format based on an exceptional permament collection of animated art contents to be extended once a year via a new festival edition.
As a part of ” CologneOFF 201XX – videoart in a global context” – a world wide unique nomadic festival project, animateCologne will be travelling 12 months a year around the globe to the best venues.
venues – in order to demonstrate the diversity of the creative potential of “art and moving images” transported via the global medium of “video”.
animateCOLOGNE is looking
– for animated art contents in digital video in all its variety on the themes “memory & identity”
– for new and experimental approaches in transforming artistic concepts via animation into the language of the “moving images”,
- and is inviting film & video creators – to submit up to 3 works of experimental forms of film and video art – (exclusively) online by using the entry form
Regulations
- Deadline: 05 May 2014
- Welcome are mono-channel videos by film and videomakers from all countries on the globe
- Theme: memory & identity The festival is looking for innovative and experimental approaches in dealing with contents and technology
- Duration: max 10 minutes (exceptions possible on request)
- The full-length films/videos may originate from the years 2004-2012.
- Excerpts of videos or films are not accepted!!
- Max 3 films/videos can be submitted.
- Productions using language and/or text other than English need English subtitles.
- The preview copy should be uploaded for download by using upload platforms like SENDSPACE www.sendspace.come or WE TRANSFER www.wetransfer.com, both are free upload services , after upload please send the link, and CologneOFF will download the film then.
- elegible: only Quicktime . mov (mp4 and H264 codec only), Windows Media .wmv, mpeg2 or Flash video flv – [Size HD or minimum720x 576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC)]
After selection the artists/directors will be invited to send a hardcopy of the selected video on DVD in best screening quality
(posted on 2014-03-03)
The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture is a Beirut-based, non-state body disbursing money to individuals and institutions devoted to, as its name suggests, Arab cultural production. By AFAC’s reckoning, it has supported over 150 films since it began awarding grants in 2007, and assists more than 25 film projects yearly.Over the past few years, regional and international film and fine art platforms have exhibited a range of AFAC-supported audio-visual works, from feature films and documentaries to short-form video art. To contribute to the diffusion of these works – and to help publicize its work – the fund has launched AFAC Film Week, an event to be staged yearly in a different Arab country.
The first edition opens this week in Beirut with an 11-work program of films, feature- and television-length docs and video art pieces from 2012-14, none of which has yet been projected in Beirut. Issuing from younger talents, these works are marked by innovative approaches.
Both features of the film week have arisen from independently minded young Egyptians.
“Rags and Tatters” (2013), the third feature of Ahmad Abdalla, tells the story of one of Mubarak’s prisoners – arbitrary detainees held outside Cairo – who made a break for freedom in the early days of the Tahrir Square demonstrations.
At the center of the story is an unnamed man (Asser Yassin) who carries with him a dying prisoner’s video testimony of his state’s criminality, which he’s been asked to bring to the man’s family.
The follow-up to “Microphone” (2010), Abdalla’s critically lauded musical paean to Alexandria, “Rags and Tatters” is an intriguing hybrid of fiction and documentary. The camera of Tarek Hefny follows Yassin’s character as he first tries to get back to the poor Cairo neighborhood where the dead man’s family lives, then through the chaos of disorder that characterized the margins of Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
One of the more intriguing experiments to emerge from DIFF, where it premiered in 2012, “Chaos, Disorder” (Harag w’Marag), the feature film debut of director Nadine Khan, is social satire-cum-love story set in an unidentified, barely fictional Cairo neighborhood.
The three 20-somethings at the center of the story’s love triangle are neighborhood beauty Manal (Iyten Amer), daughter of the fellow who facilitates long-distance telephone calls; Zaki (Mohamed Farag), the neighborhood sports star; and Mounir (Ramzy Lehner), a rakish thug who spends his days lounging with his pals in the neighborhood’s central square.
The triangle eventually resolves into a football match between Zaki and Mounir’s teams, with the winner taking Manal as his bride.
Two of AFAC’s feature-length documentaries also hale from Egypt.
Fresh from its world premiere at the Berlinale, Viola Shafik’s “Scent of Revolution” examines Egypt’s revolutionary heritage through the experiences of four people who were activists in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolution and the 21st century movement in Tahrir Square.
“Waves” (2013), Ahmed Nour’s documentary, deploys live-action and animation to tell a story of Egypt’s 2011 revolution from the perspective of the place where it started – not Midan al-Tahrir but the port city of Suez. Embraced by international critics, the Suez-born Nour’s melancholic portrait offers a poetic meditation of the place and its residents and a bittersweet reflection on the revolutionary dreams dashed by the vagaries of local and national politics.
Lebanese production is well represented by poetic works by Sara Francis and Ali Cherri.
Cherri’s 20-minute “The Disquiet” (2013) spins a visually powerful work of video art from Lebanon’s long, catastrophic relationship with the four geological fault lines upon which the country has been erected.
Conventionally, the artist’s voiceover muses, “catastrophe” is seen to be as unexpected as it is comprehensively destructive. Yet a catastrophe can be slowed down. When an event of this magnitude is sheathed in language, it can even acquire a seductive quality.
One of the notable discoveries of the last Dubai film festival, Francis’ “Birds of September” (2013) examines the streets of Beirut from the Plexiglas back of a wandering advertising truck.
At times, the slow-moving vehicle acts as a dolly, framing the passage of the shop fronts lining urban neighborhoods – or the razed landscapes abutting empty expressways. At others, the lens gazes upon the human figures made to sit within the glass box – posturing or performing, looking self-conscious or bored – seemingly suspended above the vista unfolding before the camera.
The Palestinian presence in the AFAC week is as strong, or stronger, than the Lebanese.
“My Love Awaits Me by the Sea,” the first feature-length documentary of Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker Mais Darwazah, is a lyrical conflation of the work of Palestinian writer and illustrator Hasan Hourani (who died in 2003), specifically his book “Hasan is Everywhere,” with Darwazah’s own travelogue.
Her filmic journey of discovery through the land of Palestine is made more poignant by the fact that Darwazah had never seen her homeland before. The voyage takes her from Amman to Damascus’ Yarmouk refugee camp, to Jerusalem, Nazareth, Hebron and ultimately Jaffa, drawing upon the ruminations of the cluster of extremely well-spoken Palestinians the filmmaker encounters.
One of the highlights of the cycle will be the Beirut premiere of Larissa Sansour’s nine-minute video “Nation Estate” (2012). The artist has been celebrated for her ironic application of film genre to the Palestinian condition. In 2009 she incorporated science fiction into her oeuvre with “A Space Exodus,” which imagines Palestine’s first moon landing.
With “Nation Estate,” she erects an elaborate, absurdly amusing dystopia from the never-ending, ever-unsuccessful effort to negotiate a fair peace between Palestine and its occupier: an urban public housing-style skyscraper to house a Palestinian population utterly displaced.
AFAC Film Week is being staged at Metropolis Cinema-Sofil March 4-11. For more information, see www.metropoliscinema.net/2014/afac-film-week.
(posted on 2014-03-02)
Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present Sound Speed Marker by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler. The three video installations and related photographs, covering a span of five years of work, explore film's relationship to place and the traces that movie making leaves behind. The exhibition includes the premiere of Giant (2014), a work commissioned by Ballroom Marfa. The exhibition will be on view at Ballroom Marfa until July 31, 2014 and will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue to be published in December 2014. Sound Speed Marker will travel to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in December 2014 and the Blaffer Museum in Houston in May 2015.
Grand Paris Texas (2009) considers the physical and social space of a dead movie theater, a forgotten song and the inhabitants of a small town. The Grand Theater, an abandoned, pigeon-filled movie theater in downtown Paris, serves as the protagonist in a narrative that explores Paris as a meta-location constructed through celluloid and soundtrack. Grand Paris Texas connects three seminal movies of the Southwest: Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984), Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies (1983), and King Baggot's classic silent film, Tumbleweeds (1925).
In Movie Mountain (Méliès) (2011), Hubbard/Birchler explore the site of a mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert near the town of Sierra Blanca. The project generates several narrative strands that interweave memory and forgetting. Movie Mountain (Méliès) features a script-writing cowboy as well as local residents whose relatives performed in an original silent picture filmed at the mountain. The project also encounters a possible link between Movie Mountain and Gaston Méliès, the brother of famous filmmaker George Méliès.
Giant (2014) interweaves signs of life and vistas of a decaying movie set built outside of Marfa: the Reata mansion from the 1956 Warner Bros. film Giant starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean. After filming was completed the three-sided facade was left behind in the landscape. Hubbard/Birchler explore the skeletal remains of the set as seasons change, day turns to night and parts of the structure swing and fall off. Scenes of a film crew recording the current conditions are juxtaposed with a Warner Bros. office in 1955, where a secretary types up the location contract for the motion picture that has yet to be created.
Teresa Hubbard, born in Dublin, Ireland 1965 and Alexander Birchler, born in Baden, Switzerland 1962 have been working collaboratively in video, photography and sculpture since 1990. Their work is held in numerous private and public collections internationally. Work in this exhibition appears courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin.
It is part of Ballroom Marfa's mission to enable artwork that would be impossible to realize elsewhere. This project—with its roots in the landscape that we call home—brings Hubbard/Birchler's trilogy to a close, and clarifies Ballroom Marfa's role as an organization committed to commissioning new work.
This program has been made possible by the generous support of Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; L & M Charitable Foundation, Inc.; National Endowment for the Arts; Texas Commission on the Arts; the Aargauer Kuratorium, Switzerland and The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston. With underwriting support provided by Charles Attal; Suzanne Deal Booth; Travis Capp; Molly Kemp; Jeanne & Michael Klein; John Thornton; Melba & Ted Whatley and Ballroom Marfa members. Additional support provided by the Bill & Bettye Nowlin Research Fellowship in Photography at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ballroom Marfa 108 East San Antonio Street, Marfa