Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art

e-flux Screening Room presents Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art, a four-part series of screenings and discussions inspired by the works of the French filmmaker duo Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.

With Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Marwa Arsanios, Pedro Costa, Harun Farocki, Liam Gillick and Anton Vidokle, Louis Henderson, Laura Huertas Millán, Deimantas Narkevičius, Rosalind Nashashibi, Uriel Orlow, Marion von Osten, Matt Peterson, Matías Piñeiro, Marta Popivoda, Martha Rosler, Keith Sanborn, Deborah Stratman, Oraib Toukan, Ana Vaz, Clemens von Wendermeyer, Nele Wohlatz, and more to be announced

Curated by Lukas Brasiskis

“What we try to explore are things that are outside ourselves. We address ourselves to texts that offer us resistance. We try to test them out; we make audiovisual objects out of them, which consist of movements, movements within a visual frame, movements of light and sound.”
—Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

The series is conceived as a way of initiating discussion about the reverberations of Straub-Huillet's ideas in contemporary moving-image art. “The aesthetics of resistance”—a concept associated with Straub and Huillet as well as with Peter Weiss—is defined here as an opposition to both: the spectacularization and the uniformization of complex issues. In contrast to the idea of political filmmaking as the production of closed and easy to identify narratives that aim at instilling consensus among audiences, this series showcases works by artists and filmmakers who openly and audaciously examine the political potential of the film form and of post-dramatic storytelling. The screenings and discussions in this series will scrutinize ways of reenacting the past in the present; performing the archeology of historical texts; treating landscape as a depository of traces of colonialism and class tensions; making films together with local communities; and pushing the limits of the direct use of voice and sound; among other politically motivated strategies of filmmaking that bear either direct or indirect lineage from, or function as parallel vectors to, the works by Straub-Huillet. 

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art unfolds in four, multi-day chapters taking place at e-flux Screening Room from December 2022 through March 2023, each consisting of screenings of works by contemporary artists and filmmakers, and a screening of a select film by Straub-Huillet, accompanied by discussions. 

The series opens with the first chapter, titled “In the Present, the Scripted Past Is Performed,” with events on Thursday, December 1; Saturday, December 3; and Tuesday, December 6. Scroll down for more details on the program, times, and participants.

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art is produced and organized by e-flux, with the support of the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films.

I. In the Present, the Scripted Past Is Performed
​Get tickets

Thursday, December 1, 2022 at 6pm and 8pm
Double feature and discussion: Straub-Huillet and Matías Piñeiro 

Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 5pm
Screening and discussion: Clemens Von Wedemeyer 

Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at 7pm
Screening and discussion: Louis Henderson, Keith Sanborn, Liam Gillick and Anton Vidokle, and Rosalind Nashashibi

Between the words written in the past and the bodies reciting them in the presence of a camera, an abyss widens. The voices of the readers serve neither to psychologize them nor to take over the place in which they are heard. Rather than the model of narrative chronology, the films and videos presented in this chapter depend on the model of productive dissociation, which does not need to establish the perceptual solidity of space in linear time. Offscreen is nearly entirely represented by what is onscreen. The ruins and traumas of the past are absorbed into the modern setting, texts of the past are appropriated by the bodies through speech. There is no exterior to what one sees. The characters are not shown as fictional constructs. They reenact historical texts over the cacophony of everyday life, separating what the narrative was about from what it is now. Following Straub-Huillet’s pursuit of radical materialism, the artists and filmmakers featured in this chapter do not tell stories about the past that are typically based on temporally situated flashbacks and flashforwards; instead, relying on direct images and sounds and aesthetically struggling with the texts they attempt to reenact, they bring history to life in the present. Read more about the films and program here.

II. Colonial Histories and Landscapes to Be Deciphered 
January 24–28, 2023 (detailed program forthcoming)

III. On Communities, Labor, and Class Relations 
February 16–21, 2023 (detailed program forthcoming)

IV. Films to Be Made and Unmade 
March 7–11, 2023 (detailed program forthcoming)

Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website, or subscribe to our events mailing list here.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility            
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.          
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.          
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.