Category Archives: Films

Program 2018: Tutorial: How To Make A Short Video About Extinction, by David Blandy

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As part of the program on May 18 in Kristianstad we’ll be screening Tutorial: How To Make A Short Video About Extinction, by David Blandy.

Extinction still 8David Blandy, Tutorial: How To Make A Short Video About Extinction. Courtesy the artist.

“Tutorial: How to make a short video about Extinction” (2014) is a step by step tutorial showing you how to make a short video about extinction, using just the internet and video editing software.

David Blandy is an artist who works with the moving image in the digital world, from YouTube tutorials, music videos, television series, anime and the narrative sections of computer games; highlighting our relationship with popular culture and investigating what makes us who we are.

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David Blandy, Tutorial: How To Make A Short Video About Extinction. Courtesy the artist.

David Blandy (b. 1976) has exhibited at venues nationally and worldwide such as Bloomberg Space, London, UK; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo, Japan; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland; Tate Modern, London; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; Random Acts on Channel Four; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; MoMA PS1, New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China. He co-wrote the graphic novel Out of Nothing, published by Nobrow Press. He is represented by Seventeen Gallery and his films are distributed by LUX.

www.davidblandy.co.uk

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David Blandy, Tutorial: How To Make A Short Video About Extinction. Courtesy the artist.

 

 

 

Program 2018: How To Civilize A Waterfall, By Hanna Ljungh

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As part of the program on May 18 in Kristianstad we’ll be screening How to Civilize a Waterfall by Hanna Ljungh.

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Hanna Ljungh, How to Civilize a Waterfall, (still). Courtesy the artist.

“In the video How to Civilize a Waterfall, artist Hanna Ljungh performs an authoritative confrontation with nature, an indifferent and independent force. Inspired by the dramatic expressiveness of hard rock music, Ljungh challenges a waterfall and tries to persuade it to turn into a hydroelectric power plant. The text used in the video is based on the information about hydroelectric power distributed by one of Sweden’s largest power companies. The work reveals humanity’s comical and paradoxical relationship with nature.”  – more info over at the artist’s website

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Hanna Ljungh, How to Civilize a Waterfall, (still). Courtesy the artist.

 

 

Program 2018: The Fall Of Communism, By Hannah Black

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As part of the program on May 18 in Kristianstad we’ll be screening The Fall Of Communism by Hannah Black.

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Hannah Black, Fall Of Communism, 2015 (still). Courtesy the artist and Arcadia Missa.

Quoting the Open Source website:

“The Fall of Communism is a video initially made for the Whitney Independent Study Programme in New York. The work is a body falling into a hole into the ground and transforming into different people, expressed as remembered moments of different lives, as it falls deeper in towards the centre of the earth, but based very loosely on the life of Whitney Houston — her famous long notes become the cry of someone falling.”

Quoting Mousse Magazine:

“In The Fall of Communism (2015), the melismatic first syllables of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” chorus are aggressively chopped up as the camera plummets forever into a sinkhole that becomes a wet bodily passage that becomes a furry wormhole. We never get beyond that broken ‘and I’.”

Quoting Hannah Black from her Vimeo page:

“A person falling into the centre of the earth/of their body becomes another person and that person becomes another person and so on as they fall. Everyone becomes everyone else, it’s utopia or a disaster, or just everyday Life.”

We will be screening more works by Hannah Black this summer. Check the blog for more info!

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Hannah Black, Fall Of Communism, 2015 (still). Courtesy the artist and Arcadia Missa.

Hannah Black is an artist and writer from the UK, living and working in New York. Her work has been recently exhibited at Centre D’Art Contemporain (Geneva), mumok (Vienna) and Chisenhale (London) and in a number of galleries including Real Fine Arts (New York), Arcadia Missa (London), Château Shatto (Los Angeles) and W139 (Amsterdam). Readings and performances have taken place at the New Museum, Interstate Projects and Cage (New York) the Whitechapel, the Showroom, and Cafe Oto (London). Her writing has been published in Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Harpers and frieze d/e, among other magazines. She is the author of two little books: Dark Pool Party (Dominica/Arcadia Missa, 2016) and Life (a collaboration with Juliana Huxtable (mumok, 2017).

 

 

Summer Prog (7)

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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, and Krabstadt, from the early 1970’s up to the present. If you want to receive up-to-date emails about our activities, like info on screening dates, you can sign up here (Swedish) or here (English).

Now here’s an introduction to Whaled Women, by Ewa Einhorn and Jeuno Je Kim.

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SchlopSchlop (SS) and KK are two annoying women who work at the Office of Developement in Krabstadt, a small town located in an undefined Arctic region where the Nordic countries have sent their Unwanteds.

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One day a group of Whaled Women are stranded on Krabstadt’s shores,
after fleeing their sunken island. It is up to SS and KK to handle the situation. The Whaled Women are placed in Krabstadt’s Refugee Program that focuses on integration through work. However, things don’t work out as planned and when a group of Norwegian whale hunters are called in to the rescue, the inhabitants of Krabstadt have to face some tough decisions.

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Whaled Women is the first in a series of short films to take place in Krabstadt.

Krabstadt is an edgy animated series that reflects current topics and events. Situated in the overlap between sitcom, animation and the fine arts, the project uses the potential of animation to be subversive, innovative and complex, while appealing to a broad audience.

Whaled Women was made in 2013, 9 min. Sweden

 

Summer Prog (6)

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Next up in our program this summer: Soft Materials, by Daria Martin, “is a 16mm film shot in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Zurich where scientists research ’embodied artificial intelligence’. This cutting edge area of AI produces robots which, rather than being programmed from the head down by a computer brain, instead learn to function through the experience of their physical bodies. ” – quoted from the website of the Showroom, London.

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“Soft Materials introduces the robots to two performers, one man and one woman, trained in body awareness and acutely sensitive to the nuances of movement. These performers shed skins of soft fabric, bearing their joints like the frank structure of a machine, and then, naked, they perform a series of dances with the robots. Creating intimate relationships that are in turn tender, funny and eerie, they bend flexible human fantasy around tough materials.” – quoted from the website of the Showroom, London.

More info found here.

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Original artwork: 16mm film. Presented here as a digital projection for the purposes of this screening only.

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Summer Prog (5)

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Continuing the presentation of our program for the summer, we’d like to introduce World Brain by Gwenola Wagon and Stéphane Degoutin.

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website of World Brain

World Brain is a film with chapters spread out over a website, “like a carpet map”. World Brain also includes numerous links to texts, images and filmclips which exist independently of the film and outside of the site, connecting the film to the communal brain of the web.

The film sways between documentary, fiction and a how-to guide, and is made up mostly of found footage. The main protagonists are scientists who’ve dropped out, moved into the woods, and are trying to set up an organically functioning world brain, connecting living matter in a way similar to how the www connects images, thoughts and information.

“World Brain treats the architecture of data centers, the collective intelligence of kittens, high-frequency trading, the law of the jungle in the Wikipedia era, and the adjusting of transhuman rats…” – quoting the press kit of the film

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film still from World Brain

We’ll be screening an uncanny and disturbing section from the film, in which a telemarketer tries to convince a customer that ‘it’ is not a robot which simply responds to the customer according to ‘its’ programming.

According to a spokesperson for the association of Swedish telemarketers, SWEDMA, robots do have been used to make calls in the USA but never in Sweden, since it goes against “the ethical rules of the telemarketing industry”. They are however sometimes used as operators which can take, log and record calls from customers, providing replies based on word recognition.

still from World Brain

film still from World Brain

The film has sometimes been shown in an installation replicating the campsite of the scientists in the forrest – check out this review of World Brain, from Swedish Daily newspaper Sydsvenskan – but we’re keen on seeing what an outdoor setting can do for the viewing experience.

For more info, and to see the whole film (including links), visit the site of World Brain here.

 

 

Summer Prog (4)

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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 continue introducing them here on the blog over the next week, so check back for more details. If you want to receive up-to-date emails about our activities, like info on screening dates, you can sign up here (Swedish) or here (English).

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Photography: © CHROMA

Space Refugee by Halil Altindere is a film about the former Syrian cosmonaut Muhammed Ahmed Faris, who in 1987 with the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-3 went on a seven-day journey to the space station Mir. Today the former hero of the USSR and supporter of the democratic opposition movement against Assad lives as a refugee in Istanbul.

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Photography: © CHROMA

“When in 2000 al-Assad died and his son Bashar succeeded him, Faris was the head of the Syrian Air Force Academy and a military advisor. To The Guardian, Faris describes both father and son as enemies of the people, who ruled by maintaining their population as uneducated and divided as possible. In 2011, when the revolution in Syria broke out, he marched in Damascus, calling for reform; the next year he defected to Turkey, becoming one of the five million Syrian refugees to leave the country.” – quoting Orit Gat, Art Agenda.

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Photography: © CHROMA

The film is both a documentary about the life of Muhammed Ahmed Faris, and a proposal of outer space as a haven for displaced refugees. “I hope we can rebuild cities for them in space, where there is freedom and dignity and where there is no tyranny, no injustice” says Faris in the film. This idea is then explored through interviews with scientists discussing the practicalities of establishing a colony on Mars, illustrated with footage of Martian-looking landscapes and underground halls from the Cappadoccia region of Turkey.

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Photography: © CHROMA

The film Space Refugee has previously been shown as part of an installation presented in a heroic Socialist Realist style, reminiscent of an old-fashioned space museum. The installation included a virtual reality video, which placed the viewers immersed in an alien landscape on Mars, as colonisers or refugees. More info on the exhibition presented at n.b.k. in Berlin can be found here>>

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Photography: © CHROMA

Summer Prog (3)

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The Yugoslav Black Wave of films from the 1960s and early 1970s were characterised by their critical examination of Yugoslav society. Notable works from the Black Wave include the early works of filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. This summer, we’ll be screening his Black Film (1971).

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Still from Black Film, by Želimir Žilnik

The film opens with the director addressing the camera directly, speaking of how one of his earlier films about the situation of homeless people seems to have had no discernible effect on the problem. In what appears to be a spur of the moment decision, he gathers a group of homeless men and takes them to his apartment, which seems to surprise his wife and child.

“One night Zilnik picks up 10 homeless men from the streets of Novi Sad and brings them home. While they enjoy the hospitality of his family, Zilnik tries to “solve the homeless problem’” – bringing along the film camera, as a witness. He talks to different social services, common citizens, even the police. Everybody close their eyes in front of the “problem”.

This film depicts the misery of abstract humanism. It is a reckoning with anarcho-liberalism, with false avant-gardism, with social demagogy, with left-wing fraction.　
The author sees this film as an example of filmmaker’s exploitation of others’ misfortune, believing as they do that, they belong to a higher social class than the victims.” – quoted from the press kit of the film

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Still from Black Film, by Želimir Žilnik

More info on the films of Želimir Žilnik can be found here>>

 

Black Film is accompanied by a manifesto:

MANIFESTO > BLACK FILM

YOU ARE WATCHING:

THE CLASS STRUCTURE OF YUGOSLAV SOCIETY

LUMPENPROLETARIAT AND “HUMANIST INTELLIGENTSIA”

TECHNOLOGY OF THE PURPOSEFUL ABUSE OF THE POOR

IN THE FILM A LESSON OF THE HUNGRY, DIRTY, STINKING,

GIVEN TO THE ZILNIK FAMILY

THE CHILD IS TO BE SHOWN WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT.

 

IN THE LAND THAT IS IN DOUBT WITH ITS OWN NAME,

ITS OWN HAND AND ITS OWN POWER

IN THE MOMENT WHEN THE BARE NECESSITIES

/ BREAD, MILK AND DOLLAR / BECOME MORE EXPENSIVE BY THE DAY,

THE FILM CASE OCCASIONALLY ENJOYS THIS TREATMENT OF THE SUFFERINGS

OF THE WORKING CLASS AND THE PEASANTS.

THAT GIVES IT – THIS PART OF THE MIDDLE CLASS STRUCTURE –

AN ILLUSION OF COMMITMENT AND SYMPATHY.

 

ONE SHOULD MAKE BULLSHIT OUT OF EVERYTING INCLUDING ONESELF!

ONE SHOULD START WITH THE DECONSTRUCTION OF ONE’S OWN MARRIAGE BED!

WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF THE POOR HAD DRIVEN US ALL INTO THE ASSHOLE?

FORTUNATELY, THAT WON’T HAPPEN.

 

FILM MUST BECOME CRITICAL OF SOCIETY.

I MUST WRESTLE AGAINST TWO ENEMIES: AGAINST MY OWN MIDDLE CLAS

NATURE WHICH TURNS THIS COMMITMENT INTO AN ALIBI AND BUSINESS AND

AGAINST THOSE WHO MANIPULATE, WHO OWN THE POWER AND THE CAPITAL,

WHO BENEFIT FROM THE SILENCE.

THAT’S WHY I FUCK ABOUT MY FEELING OF GUILT.

 

FILM – WEAPON OR SHIT?

 

 

 

Summer Prog (2)

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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.

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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)

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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.

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“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”.

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