VIDEONALE.scope #8

Segunda Vez revolves around the figure of the Argentine psychoanalyst Oscar Masotta, whose thoughts and artistic practice had a lasting impact on the cultural life of his country in the 1960s, until the Perón dictatorship forced him to go into exile. García restages several of his happenings as well as texts by his contemporary Julio Cortázar, thus prolonging them into our present time. An emphatic filmic engagement with the power of the gaze and the subjection to observation and suspicion that leaves no secure place for us viewers either.

Dora García, Segunda Vez [Second Time Around], BE/NO 2018, Color, digital, 94’ (Span. OV with Engl. subtitles)

Five films about the sensual experience of space and bodies in time. Optic Nerve combines the fragility of the filmic medium with the fleetingness of our sensations to a contemplation on memory and empathy. UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS navigates the limits of what can be perceived: How can we show what our eye doesn’t see, and how can we narrate what we don’t remember? Ears, Nose and Throat reconstructs a crime at night from the memories of a female witness. At the center of Losing Sleep is a programmer and his inability to turn his back on the world in sleep. Walled Unwalled provides evidence of the political implications of sound and the resistance of hearing.

• Anouk De Clercq, Black, BE 2015, b/w, 35mm, 5’ (silent)*
• Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve, US 1985, Color, 16mm, 16’30’’ (no dialog)
• Vika Kirchenbauer, UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS, DE 2020, Color, digital, 12’30’’ (Engl. OV with German subtitles)
• Kevin J. Everson, Ears, Nose and Throat, US 2016, b/w, digital, 11’ (Engl. OV)
• Doug Porter, Losing Sleep, CA 1996, Color, digital, 14’30’’ (Engl. OV)
• Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Walled Unwalled, UK/DE 2018, Color, digital, 21’ (Arabic OV with Engl. subtitles)

*This film is presented as 35mm film print and therefore cannot be shown at this online edition of the film series.

A program on grasping the body in and as an image. In The Pips, we follow the choreography of a gymnast to inaudible music: an exercise in dissolution. In Her + Him, a found nude photograph offers the occasion for a portrait of the artist in whose studio it was taken. A dialog, also between media. Rosebud feels its way along the roughly processed surfaces of photographic images on the threshold between inside and outside, seeing and touching. Sanctus works on historical X-ray images and thus illustrates the tension between contemplation and violence. A Rough History… reflects on acts of effacing as live-saving measures.

• Emily Wardill, The Pips, UK 2010, b/w, digital, 4’ (silent)
• Akram Zaatari, Her + Him, LB 2001, b/w, digital, 32’ (Arabic OV with Engl. subtitles)
• James Richards, Rosebud, UK 2013, b/w, digital, 13’ (no dialog)
• Barbara Hammer, Sanctus, US 1990, Color, 16mm, 19‘ (no dialog)
• Ayesha Hameed, A Rough History (of the Destruction of Fingerprints), UK 2014-2017, Color, digital, 10’ (Engl. OV)

A program on the body in its relation to the world of things and values. Cornucopia plays with the sensual charging of objects in art and its myth-making power. Trigger Warning is an inventory of things that illustrate the vulnerability of the body. Less Lethal Fetishes looks at different forms of being an object and the emancipation from objectifying conditions. In Quella che cammina, a female film character serves as the starting point of an associative self-questioning of the author. Ein Film über den Arbeiter tells of the existence as an artist and worker between economy and empathy from the first person perspective. A Short Video about Tate Modern shows the museum as a producer of merciless visibility. Portrait of Karl Marx… and Ink in Milk unfold narratives about the origin of politics in the constellation of bodies.

• General Idea, Cornucopia, CA 1982, Color, digital, 10’ (Engl. OV)
• Scott Fitzpatrick, Trigger Warning, CA 2017, Color, digital, 5’ (no dialog)
• Thirza Cuthand, Less Lethal Fetishes, CA 2019, Color, digital, 10’ (Engl. OV)
• Eli Cortiñas, Quella che cammina [The One Who Walks], IT 2014, Color and b/w, digital, 9’30’’ (French, Italian, Span. OV with Engl. subtitles)
• Gernot Wieland, Portrait of Karl Marx as a young god, DE 2011, Color, digital, 1’ (Engl. OV)
• Stefan Hayn, Ein Film über den Arbeiter, DE 1997/98, Color and b/w, 16mm, 19’ (German OV)
• Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, A Short Video about Tate Modern, UK 2003-2005, Color, digital, 5’ (Engl. OV)
• Gernot Wieland, Ink in Milk, DE 2018, Color and b/w, digital, 12’ (Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles)

Films about the afterlife and survival of bodies. Industrial Synth compiles images of death and obsolescence that lend pop culture and its (digital) media their paradoxical vitality. Towards the Sun describes an idiosyncratic tour of the National Museum in Beirut and encounters with its exhibits. The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets reconstructs the dispossession of the prehistoric “Kennewick Man” by American archaeologists: a study in indigenous sovereignty. Interregnum reflects the afterlife of notorious national leaders in the collective rituals of their former subjects. Impressions for a Light and Sound Machine is a real physical test, a proxy attack on the body of the film.

• Seth Price, Industrial Synth, US 2000-2001, Color, digital, 16’30’’ (Engl. OV)
• Nour Ouayda, Nahwa al Shams [Towards the Sun], LB 2019, Color, digital, 17’30’’ (Arabic OV with Engl. subtitles)
• Adam Shingwak Khalil & Zack Khalil, The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets, US 2018, Color, digital, 10’ (Engl. OV)
• Adrian Paci, Interregnum, AL 2017, Color, digital, 17’30’’ (no dialog)
• Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Impresiones para una Máquina de Luz y Sonido [Impressions for a Light and Sound Machine], MX 2017, b/w, digital, 7’ (Span. OV with Engl. subtitles)

A program peopled by doubles, alter egos and double agents. The Multitude Is Feverish narrates in the first person the possibility of a multiple body and existence. There Is No Is is an attempt to get closer by speaking that comes up against the resistance of  the body. Cable Xcess plays with language as a medium surplus that obfuscates the borders between real and virtual bodies. It’s in the Game `17 questions the representation and exploitation of Black bodies in digital media and musealized memory. Please step out of the frame is a performative experiment in telepresence. In Have You Ever Killed a Bear…, a film double explores the ethical limits of identifying with a revolutionary agenda.

• Vika Kirchenbauer, the multitude is feverish, Color, digital, 18’ (Engl. OV)
• Katarina Zdjelar, There Is No Is, NL 2006, Color, digital, 2’ (Engl. OV)
• Kristin Lucas, Cable Xcess, US 1996, Color, digital, 5’ (Engl. OV)
• Sondra Perry, It’s in the Game `17, US 2018, Color, digital, 16’30’’ (Engl. OV)
• Karissa Hahn, Please step out of the frame., US 2018, b/w, digital, 4’ (no dialog)
• Marwa Arsanios, Have You Ever Killed a bear?, or Becoming Jamila, LB 2014, Color, digital, 25’ (Arabic OV with Engl. subtitles)

The camera as a confidante and chronicler reflecting personal experiences and recording them for an imagined vis-à-vis. In If Every Girl Had a Diary, the author criticizes the society in which she tries to live as a young queer woman and which she simultaneously seeks to resist. Hand Movie is a minimalistic performance on the sick bed, an ordinary dance in an exceptional state. DANNY is based on video material of a man who, after being diagnosed with leukemia, decides to videotape his life. In the face of his own fragility, his dialogs with the camera vacillate between disarming openness and self-assured staging.

• Sadie Benning, If Every Girl Had a Diary, US 1990, b/w, digital, 8’ (Engl. OV)
• Yvonne Rainer, Hand Movie, US 1966, b/w, digital, 5’ (silent)
• Aaron Zeghers & Lewis Bennett, DANNY, CA 1993/2019, Color, digital, 60’ (Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles)