Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere
I. Postcards from Afar
Streaming November 24–December 7, 2021
According to Serge Daney, postcards are portable images succeeding each other in which the world has been made flat. The postcards convey signs that mean “I was there, I thought of you, that’s what I have to say here and now.” The aerial view, the cathedral, the cityscape, the marketplace. Many are views that no longer exist. The images enter into complicity with the addressee beyond colonialist exoticism or political propaganda, closer to autoethnography, and offer affective and moral matrixes where the visual resists as a form of personal memory of lives ravaged by war and conflict. As Etel Adnan wrote: “I tell myself that we are terrorists, not terrorists in the political and ordinary sense of the word, but because we carry inside our bodies—like explosives—all the deep troubles that befall our countries. And traveling doesn’t change anything in any way.”
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Ismyrna, 2016, 50 minutes
Wael Noureddine, Ça sera beau (From Beyrouth with Love), 2005, 29 minutes
Jocelyne Saab, Imaginary Postcards, 2016, 6 minutes
Hassan Khan, Blind Ambition, 2012, 46 minutes
Basma Alsharif, Ouroboros, 2017, 77 minutes
Postcards from Afar is the first of five chapters in Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere, an online film program curated by Irmgard Emmelhainz on e-flux Video & Film. The program streams in five thematic group screenings each two weeks long, and will be accompanied by two live discussions on February 2 and 15.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.