January 24, 2011
Between January and May, e-flux is pleased to present a series of film and video screenings in our storefront on Essex Street. Considering the various modes of circulation and reception of the moving image, we have invited several exhibitors, distributors, independent collectives, and publications to program an evening of film and video in conjunction with their ongoing activities. This international program includes presentations from Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin), LUX (London), MAP Magazine (Edinburgh), The Media Burn Independent Video Archive (Chicago), and Xposeptember (Stockholm). This series is organized by Laura Barlow and Tim Ridlen. All screenings are free admission.
MAP Magazine | Monday 24 January, 7 pm
Difficult Gifts
MAP magazine presents Difficult Gifts, a screening of artists’ film and video that examine the idea of art as gift. The gift first requires a willing giver, although it is questionable whether that giver is ever able to give freely, and whether the sharing of the gift is necessarily different from mere demonstration or display. The gift also requires a receiver who is able to freely accept, one who is perceived to be in the position of reciprocity. From Andrea Büttner’s exchange with a closed order of nuns, and Shahryar Nashat’s incorporation of peer art works, to Stephen Sutcliffe’s presentation of fragments from his personal archive of video, Difficult Gifts takes the view of what is on offer and what can be shared.
The programme features work by Andrea Büttner, BS Johnson, Duncan Marquiss, Shahryar Nashat, Laure Prouvost, and Stephen Sutcliffe.
MAP is a contemporary art quarterly, published in Scotland and distributed internationally. The screening Difficult Gifts marks the launch of #24, the winter issue which includes artist pages by Shahryar Nashat, an artist text by Matt Keegan, as well as features on BS Johnson, Audrey Reynolds, Tom Burr and more. www.mapmagazine.co.uk / twitter.com/MAP_magazine
Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art | Sunday 27 February, 7 pm
The World Will Devour You, So You Better Taste Good
Inspired by the split screen video as a format that doubles the sphere of power to create a world of fantasies and ghosts, this program presents a selection of works that consider the encounter of two or more elements that fight and seduce each other, playing out the politics of power. In Shelly Silver’s video 1, 2001, about longing threat, power and seduction, a group of cops laugh and talk, while scanning the street for suspicious activity while an extreme close-up of a sensuously exposed neck; a soft pink fleshy ear turns to reveal an inquisitive hostile eye. The camera therefore functions as an aggressor, the mediator and a confessor, employing sound, image and text as accomplices in doing so.
The programme features work by Florian Zeyfang, Maria Tereza Alves, Martin Ebner, Maite Abella, Judith Hopf, Deborah Schamoni, JB Rathke and Shelly Silver.
Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, based in Berlin combines cinema (the Cinema Arsenal), festival (the Berlinale Forum & Forum Expanded), distribution, film archive, dvd and book publishing, and offers research opportunities for curators, academics and other cinepiles. www.arsenal-berlin.de
Curated by Nanna Heidenreich and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus; inspired and presented by Shelly Silver, with special guest, Florian Zeyfang.
LUX | Monday 28 March, 7 pm
The Artists Cinema
Benjamin Cook, Director of LUX, London presents a selection of new and old favorites from the Artists Cinema, a UK commissioning program organized by LUX and The Independent Cinema Office. Each year a selection of international artists are commissioned to produce 35mm short films that are inserted between commercials and features to consciously respond to, comment on, interrupt and reflect on the cinema context.
The program features work by Bonnie Camplin, Keren Cytter, Aurélien Foment, Amar Kanwar, Deimantas Narkevicius, Rosalind Nashashibi, Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Shamini, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Akram Zaatari.
LUX is a UK-based arts agency which supports and promotes artists working with the moving image. www.lux.org.uk
Xposeptember | Monday 25 April, 730 pm
Image at Work
Curator Helena Holmberg presents a selection of films including Tamas St. Auby’s Centaur (1973–75), and Geta Bratescu’s The Studio (1978), from the Image at Work exhibitions on view at Index and the Romanian Cultural Institute, and from the accompanying film screening series at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (October 2010 and February 2011).
The exhibition Image at Work and its accompanying film and seminar program looked at the notion of work, regarding it as an activity that structures and transforms the world around us, setting boundaries and defining the self and the society. Starting with the idea of work as a fundamental human activity used to handle the world around us, the exhibition explored various aspects of the meaning of work. The exhibition examined issues of the changing structures and conditions of labor in our contemporary age, as well as issues concerning the artist’s work and how work is represented through images. It also aimed to view the meaning-creating processes that build contexts and a critical potential within an artistic work.
Image at Work was initiated by Xposeptember, a biannual art event in Stockholm, and realized in collaboration with Baltic Art Center, Iaspis, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Moderna Museet and the Romanian Cultural Institute. Helena Holmberg is the curator of Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm and director of Xposeptember. www.xposeptember.se
Media Burn Independent Video Archive
Monday 30 May
Pop Video Test
7 pm, free admission
“The Pop Video Test” was a joint effort by Scott Jacobs and Tom Weinberg of the Chicago Editing Center, and the Video Group of the Bell and Howell Corporation in 1980. This cooperative effort between the independent video community and a corporate video distributor was intended to test the viability of the home video market. The videomakers assembled ten hours of video pieces meant as an alternative to available pre-recorded programming (i.e. Hollywood movies). Fifty VCR owners in the Chicago area agreed to examine and review the tapes. Test viewers then received the programming two hours at a time, in groupings labeled Video Art, Documentary, Entertainment, and Potpourri.
Inspired by The Pop Video Test, this program includes TVTV’s Adland, Juan Downey’s Information Withheld, and selections from the early community-based TV show Greetings from Lanesville.
Founded by Tom Weinberg, the Media Burn Archive is a collection of over 6,000 independent, non-corporate tapes that reflect cultural, political and social reality as seen by independent producers, from 1969 to the present.
www.mediaburn.org
For inquiries about any of these events, please write to contact [at] e-flux.com.