November 17–30, 2022
e-flux Video & Film is very pleased to present Screen Takeover, the fifth chapter of the six-part Takeover program curated by Julian Ross.
Screen Takeover reflects on contemporary digital culture and how technology and media allow the lives of others to enter our world and, at times, inhabit it. In these works, artists show us the world as seen through a portable device screen, which seems to have been possessed by an invisible person, a virus, or an abstract entity. This new chapter features Simon Fujiwara, Hello (2015); Toshio Matsumoto, Relation (1982); Riar Rizaldi, Kasiterit (2019); Jesse McLean, Wherever You Go, There We Are (2017); and Tiffany Sia, Do Not Circulate (2021), streaming for two weeks from November 17–November 30, 2022.
We also hope you will join us for an online discussion on the themes explored in the Takeover program with artists Ephraim Asili, Tiffany Sia, and Sriwhana Spong moderated by film scholar and writer May Adadol Ingawanij, to be broadcast on Saturday, November 19 at 1pm ET.
Takeover
V. Screen Takeover
Thursday, November 17–Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Simon Fujiwara, Hello
2015, 11 minutes
Hello explores changes in two people’s working lives: a Mexican trash picker who separates and collects recyclable materials from landfills to sell by the kilo, and a German freelance computer-animation designer working for the advertising industry in Berlin. The double interview is controlled and manipulated by a computer-generated severed hand which Maria describes as an object once discovered in the trash while working in the violent northern town of Mexicali. This CGI hand was in turn produced by Max, who was born with no arms, and sought refuge in computer-imaging as a means to operate and manipulate a digital reality.
Toshio Matsumoto, Relation
1982, 9 minutes
In Relation, the focus of the viewer’s attention is guided (and mocked) by pointers moving through the screen.
Riar Rizaldi, Kasiterit
2019, 19 minutes
Natasha, a solar-powered A.I. voice machine, traces its own genealogy and the truth of its origin. This investigation leads Natasha to meet its ancestor: the inorganic tin extracted from Bangka Island.
Jesse McLean, Wherever You Go, There We Are
2017, 12 minutes
In this experimental travelogue, efforts to sound human and look natural instead become artificial. The scenery is provided through photo-chromed vintage postcards, displaying not only scenic North American landscapes but also the rise of infrastructure and industry. Aspiring to look more realistic by adding color to a black and white image, the postcards (already a vulnerable method of correspondence caught between private and public) are instead documents of the fantastic. The road trip is narrated by an automated correspondent (all dialogue is taken from spam emails) who is both seductive and mercurial, his entreaties becoming increasingly foreboding and obtuse, in a relentless effort to capture our attention.
Tiffany Sia, Do Not Circulate
2021, 17 minutes
This experimental short film considers the materiality of video in networked circulation, unraveling the entrails of a collective memory around a single event. Paced by an essay as a relentless voiceover, the film rips footage that challenges the ownership and legal boundaries of documentation. The film weaves a violent timeline in roughly the order that the materials were published online, including anonymously uploaded videos from Twitter and internet forums, allegedly leaked audio, and news reportage—much of which has since been erased, disavowed or forgotten. A digital media trail teeters between the seeable and unseeable, deception and truth, conjuring ghosts and occult forces on the timeline.
Watch the films here.
Saturday, November 19, 2022, 1pm ET
Online discussion with May Adadol Ingawanij, Ephraim Asili, Tiffany Sia, and Sriwhana Spong
How do artists summon past events, historical figures, and experiences of others into their work? And how do they ensure they don’t lose their own sense of self in the process? This panel will discuss the themes explored in the Takeover program: spiritual possession, obsession, translation, and embodiment.
Tune in to the online discussion and chat here.
About the program
Takeover explores the experience of letting another being—their voice, or their mind—into our own. Would we become them, or would they become us? The act of letting someone in, or of being the recipient of a possession, can involve a loss of self. But it can also be a trigger for learning, sharing, or becoming. Watching a film can operate in a similar way. In Sherlock Jr. (1924), Buster Keaton leaps into the cinema screen and enters the onscreen world. Or is it that the onscreen world has entered him? After all, we are in Keaton’s dream, which he has after falling asleep while operating the cinema’s film projector. Film can engulf us and haunt us. In questioning the limitation of understanding film experience as simply reception, Francesco Casetti suggests: “A spectator does not find herself “receiving” a film: she finds herself ‘living’ it.” (2011) Even after the screening is over and we leave the cinema, the film continues to live within us. As film viewers, we are not just a screen but also a projector, taking the film with us into the world.
Curated by Julian Ross, Takeover will unfold in six chapters, each streaming for two weeks on e-flux Video & Film between September 22 and December 15, 2022.
With films and videos by Ephraim Asili, Kurdwin Ayub, Maïder Fortuné and Annie MacDonell, Simon Fujiwara, Dora García, Gary Hill, Su-Chen Hung, Hsu Che-yu, Mako Idemitsu, Myriam Jacob-Allard, Jesse McLean, Jonna Kina, Meiro Koizumi, Natsuka Kusano, Toshio Matsumoto, The Nest Collective, Agnieszka Polska, Riar Rizaldi, Manuel Saiz, Shireen Seno, Tiffany Sia, Ghita Skali, Lisa Spilliaert, Sriwhana Spong, Pilvi Takala, Isabelle Tollenaere, Joseph Wilson.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
