Zin Ex: Body and Architecture / Chris Kraus: Films Before and After

Tabakalera presents two new exhibitions: Zin Ex: Body and Architecture and Chris Kraus: Films Before and After. Both exhitibions are complementary and analyse the relationship between film and art. The first proposes itineraries that focus on film and video art, and the second explores the limits between film and literature through the film and literary work of cultural icon Chris Kraus. 

Zin Ex: Body and Architecture 
This is the second showing of the exhibition cycle that began in 2020, exploring the connection between contemporary art and film in an expanded sense, while coinciding with the San Sebastian Film Festival. As with the first edition of Zin Ex, this exhibit curated by Florian Wüst is the result of a work process shared between the San Sebastian International Film Festival and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, in collaboration with the Goethe Institut. 

In the words of its curator, “this second edition of Zin Ex contemplates a more social and geopolitical theme. More figurative and concrete than the last, this showing brings together an international selection of films, installations, photographs, sculptures, experimental drawings, and contemporary documentaries”. Specifically, Zin Ex. Body and Architecture analyses the physical relationships between the body, the technology, and the environment, both natural and constructed; expanded film and feminist art from the late 1970s and 1980s that abandoned the traditional film space and liberated the bodily image from its commodification, as well as a group of historical experimental architectural design references that incorporate audiovisual effects into the exhibition. 

With all of this, Zin Ex intersects contemporary works with historical materials, museum collections, and archives from different eras that are presented naturally in a room to provide a rich and diverse experience for the public. Some thirty artists are participating in the showing: Federico Adorno, Marjoleine Boonstra, Stephanie Comilang, Katja Davar, José Miguel de Prada Poole, Discoteca Flaming Star, Pepe Espaliú, VALIE EXPORT, Yona Friedman, Haus-Rucker-Co, Laura Henno, Sky Hopinka, Hsu Che-Yu, Sohrab Hura, Ricardo Iriarte, Michelle-Marie Letelier, Dóra Maurer, Ana Mendieta, Lygia Pape, Alice Anne Parker (Severson), Rory Pilgrim, Sergio Prego, Victoria Santa Cruz, Tomás Saraceno, and Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca.

More information here. 

Chris Kraus: Films Before and After
Chris Kraus. Films Before and After presents all of the film work by writer, editor, and art critic Chris Kraus (New York, 1955), as well as a selection of her textual production connected to image.  

Chris Kraus is a cultural icon who has influenced several generations through books and texts, and her approach to art and film. Kraus started her cultural production through a series of films made primarily in New York between 1982 and 1995. The films were an absolute failure in terms of distribution and presentation, but they became a major starting point for the artist’s incorporation into the world of literature, with her books being a continued dialogue with her films. One could say that, in the case of Kraus, film and text act as two faces of the same coin. According to exhibition curator Martí Manen, “Chris Kraus’ history is one of failure. While her male colleges achieved success through their films, she failed in this attempt, but used this failure to reinvent herself and begin her literary production”.

More information here.