Monthly Archives: May 2017

Summer Prog (2)

by

We continue the presentation of films to be shown this summer. Check the blog for regular updates on the where’s and the when’s, plus more info on the films to be shown.

A couple of years ago we had the pleasure of screening a video work by Lebanese  artist Rabih Mroué, With Soul With Blood. Since then we’ve attended a couple of his performances – Riding on a Cloud and The Pixelated Revolution, both at Inkonst in Malmö, as well as last year’s extraordinary retrospective at HAU in Berlin. It’s all been most engaging. This summer, we’ll be screening another of his videos, called Shooting Images.

shooting images by Pascheit Spanned c

still from Shooting Images by photographer Pascheit Spanned (2012)

“Shooting Images by Rabih Mroué shows a performative reenactment of existing videos uploaded onto websites such as YouTube in which we see what a person is recording with his mobile phone: a Syrian regime sniper aiming his rifle at the civilian and shooting. The cameraman’s death becomes apparent when the phone, through which we witness the scene, is roughly slammed to the ground. Investigating the images produced outside of official regime media during the Syrian civil war, ongoing since 2011, Mroué became intrigued by these disturbing videos that portray the questionable reciprocal intimacy that exists in the brief moment of eye contact between the sniper and civilian when the rifle’s sight line aligns with the lens of the mobile phone.”

– quoted from Gwen Parry, Former West website

The term shot-reverse shot is used to describe an editing technique of classical Hollywood continuity in films. It features singular images of faces that are assumed by the viewer of the film to be looking at each other, taking turns talking to each other, although they are not shown together in the same image frame. The shot-reverse shot emphasizes the linear, the chronological, and the logical. In Shooting Images we see literal version of the shot-reverse shot being deconstructed.

“I had been struck by one sentence:

“The Syrian protestors are recording their own deaths”.

I found a lot of material, but one group of videos grabbed me in particular, in which we witness a cameraman being shot by a sniper or simply by one of the regime’s soldier forces.

These videos show the moments of eye contact between sniper and cameraman, when the gun’s line of sight and the camera’s lens meet.”

– quoted from the script of the film

Summer Prog (I)

by

And we’re back.

This summer we’re doing a couple of screenings at our main facility in Höja. The program will include art videos and films from Lebanon, Yugoslavia, France, Turkey, from the early 1970’s up to the present. We’ll begin introducing them here on the blog over the next week, so check back for more details. First up: Lindsay Seers.

Lindsay Seers has produced four short films for Channel 4’s broadcast commision 3 Minute Wonders, which  were aired in 2010. The films chart certain aspects of her life and artistic practice, related through a myriad of tales told by those who have known her.

3mw strip numbers 800

“Lindsay Seers uses a combination of performance, film and installation to create highly personal narratives that interweave influences from history and literature and concepts from philosophy. Her works are all founded on truths that are established through both the act of performing and the effect of filming.” – quoted from the Channel 4 website.

Part one (Serios/Seers) features an occult photography expert who recalls meeting psychic photographer Ted Serios and how this led him to the work of Lindsay Seers. Ted Serios claimed to be able to create photographic images solely by ‘projecting his thoughts’ onto film.

In part two (The Necromancers) a theatre director talks about the pervasive  influence of Seers’ aunty Barbara, a female ventriloquist, and her Uncle Patrick, a stage performer with alternative personas.

Part three (The Paramnesiac) recounts the total memory loss of Seers’ stepsister Christine after a moped accident which makes her confuse her identity with that of the seventeenth century Queen Kristina of Sweden.

Finally, part four (The Projectionist) witnesses Seers’ journey unfold towards becoming a performance artist. She talks intimately of her inability to speak until the age of 8 and of her photographic memory. In an act clearly linked to this troubled relationship to language, she later becomes a human camera, taking photographs with her mouth. Eventually, Lindsay Seers also attempts to become a human projector – “to move forwards in time emanating light”.

film_still_3mw__5 800

To learn more about the work of Lindsay Seers, please visit her website.