An event of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art
September 3, 2017, 8pm
The Department of Art, Goldsmiths is pleased to announce its cooperation with Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. on their on-going series “Vaginal Davis presents Rising Stars, Falling Stars” at silent green Kulturquartier. Initiated by Arsenal as part of the Living Archive project, Vaginal Davis has been screening rare films, classics and gems from the archive for the past decade.
Vaginal Davis is an American gender-queer performing artist, painter, curator, composer, writer and originator of the homo-core punk movement. “I was always too gay for the punks and too punk for the gays. I am a societal threat,” she states, while her blog has over a quarter of a million faithful readers. Set apart from high-polish, low-substance Hollywood movie production, Vaginal Davis’ low budget—often no budget!—performance, experimental video and film practice critiques exclusionary conceits from the outside.
For this iteration of “Rising Stars, Falling Stars, Sweet 16 mm, Never Been Kissed,” Vaginal Davis will be presenting her latest analogue finds alongside Daniel Hendrickson at silent green Kulturquartier, followed by drinks and music and DJ Nancy.
For Davis, the work of an archivist is not hermetic or confined, but a way of actualizing and re-contextualizing the material of the archive for the present, not in order to rewrite the past, but to excavate the hidden or unrealized. This performative DIY approach to the archive—to quote, borrow, copy, revere, re-make, re-present and re-fictionalize—forms the basis for Goldsmiths’ new summer school Stealing Together, taking place at silent green Kulturquartier in Berlin this late summer.
Davis joins the course convenors—Susanne Sachsse, actress and artist, and Katya Sander, artist and filmmaker—as a guest speaker and performer along with a broad spectrum of the leading practitioners and theorists from the expanded field of art film and performance. Together with the convenors and the course participants they will work on the theme of “Stealing Together”: alternative, collective and DIY strategies for filmmaking in the context of contemporary art, theatre and performance.
The excellent guest speakers for 2017 are: Ed Atkins, Yael Bartana, Pauline Boudry, Vaginal Davis, Stephan Geene, Bibbe Hansen, taisha paggett, Gail Pickering, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Ashley Hans Sheirl, Jackie Shemesh, Marc Siegel, Wu Tsang, and Anton Vidokle.
Together we will investigate, copy, re-enact, re-produce, practice, reflect and test materials, images, ideas and methods of both participants and guests; working individually and collectively, obtaining immediate feedback and input in order to broaden and explore the possibilities of each other’s practices, and an exploration what it means to steal together.
For more information about the speakers, programme please visit the website: gold.ac.uk/berlin-summer-school/
How to apply
If you are interested in attending the full programme, you can apply by emailing your CV and a short statement of interest (100–200 words) to shortcourses [at] gold.ac.uk with the subject title of the email “2017 DIY Film Summer School.”
Please note that the application deadline is July 30, 2017, and early application is advisable as places are limited.
The full programme fee is 2,200 GBP
