Co-presented with Images
Admission starts at $5
October 21, 2023, 5pm
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA
Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Saturday, October 21 at 5pm for a screening of films by Gabi Dao, Yuula Benivolski, Erin Johnson, Zaina Bseiso, and Nadia Shihab guest-curated by and co-presented with Images. The screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Images’ programming director Jaclyn Quaresma.
The artists in this screening consider multiple forms of nourishment, sustenance, and cultural transference across bodies, territories, and generational lines. Alongside these works, the garden extends beyond the plot to include those porous spaces in our lives that require tending to the growth of (one) another, allow entanglements to flourish, and where fruit, flower, and seed demand attention and care—not from a master gardener—but through each cultural leakage, slippage, spill, and spoil.
Films
Gabi Dao, Coco Means Ghost (2019, 25 minutes)
Gabi Dao’s video-poem layers archival fragments, individual and family recollections, and lingering questions linked to Vietnam, unfolding narratives about intergenerational memory—both its legible recordings and its deeply visceral textures. How we remember, less so what, becomes a gateway into somatic residues, which spill from the gaps of official archives and constructed histories.
Yuula Benivolski, Eclipse in the Garden (2021, 6 minutes)
Yuula Benivolski’s mother always wanted a garden, and now she has one. Eclipse in the Garden is a poem about the relationship between a name and a place. Tatars and other non-Russian communities in the USSR were forced to go through Russification—the spread of Russian language, culture, and people into non-Russian cultures and regions. Forcing the many minority groups within the USSR to accept the Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determination and separatism. As a result, many people including the filmmaker’s mother weren’t able to use their mother tongue, eventually forgetting it.
Erin Johnson, Oranges (2023, 3 minutes)
A group of artists engage in collective queer, desirous, and improvisational exchanges while eating tomatoes in a field. The video reflects on feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies.”
Zaina Bseiso, When Light is Displaced (2023, 6 minutes)
Interested in its parallels with the fate of the Jaffa oranges, the filmmaker speaks to her father about her intention to film the last orange grove in Los Angeles. Their disagreement transforms the grove into a space of contemplation on the politics of storytelling in the multi-generational experience of Palestine in exile.
Nadia Shihab, Sister Mother Lover Child (2022, 18 minutes)
In her 18-minute, present–day slice–of–life film, Nadia centers the home as a place of assembly where a family of women seem to be both in a state of preparation and maintenance in the aftermath of an unnamed event.
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 that leads into the e-flux office space. The 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.