KINSHIP
Underground/Overseas
5-6 October (6-12pm)
Location: Muhka_media — Waalsekaai 47 — BE-2000 Antwerpen
In autumn 2007, Extra City launches a film program organized at and with Muhka_media Antwerp which sets out to re-evaluate the heritage of underground and experimental film, and two solo exhibitions that deal with the way the history of social and aesthetic experiments is being written, questioning their status in collective memory and future imaginaries.
KINSHIP
Film program in collaboration with Mukha_Media
5-6 October (6pm – 12pm)
KINSHIP is a long term collaboration between Extra City Center for Contemporary Art and Muhka_media in Antwerp which aims at presenting a comprehensive overview and re-evaluation of experimental film history of the 60s and 70s and beyond. The program is designed in the form of a growing “map”, connecting the various centers of experimental and underground production world wide, accompanied by writers, researchers and public debate, and it will take place approximately
every two month.
The opening program “Underground/Overseas” sets out to trace the connection between New York circles such as Jack Smith and Andy Warhol to the “Zanzibar” group in Paris. “Underground /Overseas”, compiled by Marc Siegel (Film Scholar, Berlin), presents rare and never seen material next to classics and cornerstone work of both art and film history, this first weekend introducing newly recovered Jack Smith films, next to some of the most remarkable works from the “Zanzibar” scene. Live guests of “Underground / Overseas” include Jerry Tartaglia (Filmmaker/Archivist, Fleetwood, Pennsylvania), Jackie Raynal (Filmmaker, Paris), Patrick Deval (Filmmaker, Paris), Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Director of Friends of the German Cinemathèque, Berlin).
“Underground/Overseas” part II will take place December 7/8.
The opening lecture for the KINSHIP program is delivered by Branden W. Joseph from Columbia University New York on October 5 at 6pm. A panel discussing the current re-evaluation of experimental film history will take place the following day, October 6, at 6 pm, with the guests indicated above.
Please downoad the detailed program at www.extracity.org
KINSHIP is conceived by Anselm Franke (Extra City) and Edwin Carels (Muhka_media). A collaboration with the Friends of the German Cinemathèque Berlin.
Further dates: December 7/8: “Undergound/Overseas” part II.
Also at Extra City in October: SOLO EXHIBITIONS BY JOACHIM KOESTER AND LUKE FOWLER
Opening October 11th, 7 pm
Luke Fowler pesents “The Nine Monads Of David Bell” (2007). Living and working in Glasgow, Luke has become known for his elaborate and poetic portrayals of past radical social experiments. Luke’s installation departs from his film “What you see is where you’re at” (2001), a portrait of the Kingsley Hall community (Philadelphia Association 1965-1969). This beacon of the anti-psychiatry movement provided a counter model to the mental institution, breaking down notions of treatment and the doctor/patient hierarchy. Focusing on one of Kingsley Hall’s residents, “The Nine Monads Of David Bell” furthers an investigation into his world. David Bell was a mathematician who moved to London in the 1950 s to work as a computer programmer. After an unexplained accident at a nuclear firm Bell became a patient of Dr. Leon Redler, a young American Psychiatrist working at Kingsley Hall. Despite their clinical characterization as pure “schizophrenese”, David Bell’s words were valued and recorded at Kingsley Hall. Recordings now woven through the sound work presented alongside the Fowler’s original film, “What you see is where you’re at” (2001) to make up “The Nine Monads Of David Bell”.
Joachim Koester’s solo exhibition entitled “Numerous Incidents of Indefinite Outcome” brings together four recent and a new work. Joachim Koester uses strategies of montage, archiving and storytelling to illuminate historical events. In the past few years he traces the invisible and forgotten histories of transgression, exploring the legacies and remains such as of occult movements and psychedelic experiments. The exhibition departs from the better known film “Morning of the Magicians” (2005), in which Joachim visits a house in Cefalù, Sicily, that once served as a communal home for the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley and his group of devotees, called the “The Abbey of Thelema”. “One + One + One” (2006) takes the artist’s engagement with the “The Abbey of Thelema” further. By placing a girl playing the drumbeats of “Sympathy for the Devil” in the house’s garden, he weaves together the histories of counter-culture, the aesthetics of transgression, subjective transformation and political revolt. The title of the work is also a reference to Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 film “One +One”, which was titled “Sympathy for the Devil” in the United States. In a third work, Joachim Koester uses the drawings Belgian poet and painter Henri Michaux made under the influence of Mescaline. “My Frontier is an Endless wall of Points” is a 16mm film in which these drawings are being animated, as if coming back to life again, thus addressing the question of translatability of something physical and material (that of the psychoactive substance, but as well the materiality of the drawing) into mental images, ideas, and states of mind. Finally, “Numerous Incidents of Indefinite Outcome” is also the title of a newly produced multi-channel monitor work, which draws on H.P. Lovecraft. A cult figure in the canon of the horror genre, Lovecraft published his unrealized stories and ideas in a book called “The Notes and Commonplace Book”. By processing the notes of the book through a computer program, a series of new outlines are generated and displayed on the monitors. Joachim Koester turns Lovecraft’s ideas into a mental theatre, confronting the tradition of horror narratives introduced by Edgar Allan Poe with the experimental text tradition and the cut-up method of William Bouroughs and Brian Gysin.
The exhibition of Luke Fowler is made possible through the generous support from The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Joachim Koester’s exhibition is supported by Jan Mot Gallery, Brussels.
Extra City benefits the support of: Ministerie van Cultuur, Jeugd, Sport en Brussel, Stad Antwerpen, Klara, Bureau Bouwtechniek, OCMW, Triodos Bank, Forest & Bold
Extra City centrum voor hedendaagse kunst
Klamperstraat 40 (entrance Tulpstraat)
BE-2060 Antwerpen
+32 (0)484 42 10 70
info@extracity.org
