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| Night
1: Thursday March 2, 2006 |
| TIME |
TYPE |
NAME |
TITLE |
LANGUAGE |
| 21h00
- 22h30 |
Video
Screening 1 |
Xen[on]tologies,
Rotterdam - Netherlands |
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Xeno_tech
is a research project, which departs from the premise that
technology
and media function as an index of power. Its main interest
is to examine how cultural difference in relation to media and technology
affect artistic practices and cultural representation within
situated contexts. The selection presented here covers complex
identitarian and political matters, and considers the
convergences of gender, ethnicity, political and technological
instances of “otherness”, with a main focus on how the latter
is performed.
Videos
selection |
|
Kamal
Aljafari, “Visit Iraq”, Palestine (2003), 25’
‘Visit Iraq’ is a poetic document that exposes stereotypical thinking
many socio-political clashes throughout the world. Aljafari
exploits an urban fragment of present-day Geneva: the
abandoned office of Iraqi Airways. Through interviews
Aljafari presents the viewer with a number of suppressed
clichés about world power. Through the windows of the
deserted agency, the camera registers dusty remnants
of what once must have been a sumptuous interior. |
|
Sharif
Waked, “Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints”,
Palestine (2003), 7’15”
The
most salient feature of Palestinian life has become the
Israeli-imposed closure. Through hundreds of checkpoints,
the Israeli occupation forces curtail people’s movement,
and subject them to humiliating surveillance. Today, Israelis
regard the individual Palestinian body as the most dangerous
weapon. In order to pass through checkpoints, Palestinians
are forced to lift their clothes and reveal their abdomens,
to prove that they are not carrying explosives; that they
are not walking human bombs. ‘Chic Point’ (a play on the
word ‘checkpoint’) is a video shot in a fictional location:
the occupational catwalk. Employing all the conventional
codes of a fashion show, models reveal their abdomens
in outfits designed especially for that purpose. |
|
Jackie
Salloum, “Planet of the Arabs”, USA/Palestine (2003),
9’
‘Planet
of the Arabs’ is a movie trailer-esque montage spectacle
of Hollywood's relentless dehumanization and vilification
of Arabs and Muslims. It is inspired by Jack Shaheen's
book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. |
|
Shahram
Entekhabi (Iran/D), “Gold”, video, 2005 (47”)
In
"Gold" Entekhabi transports the figure of
the "migrant" - always embodied himself -
into a desert-like landscape, in which the migrant disappears
in the falling sun on the horizon. The work ranges from
bringing up for discussion the problem of the illegal
refugees from Africa and Asia on the Canaries as a component
of the European Union and the new development of the
numerous German unemployed into various countries of
Europe, in order to find an occupation here. |
|
Shahram
Entekhabi, “Islamic Star”, Iran (2005), 5’30”
In
“Islamic Star” a male figure (Entekhabi) walks the streets
of a German city. On his shirt he is wearing the stigma
of the Islamic star, with the “M” for Muslim, similar
to the ones Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi
regime. Prayer beads in hand and dress conform to Western
ideas of what a Muslim fundamentalist looks like, bystanders
act with unease when confronted with this hyperbolic
instance of their Islamophobic prejudices. |
|
MxHz.org,
“Magnitudes (fucked in a grand reading Ulrike
Meinhof on a Monday Afternoon), BE/SK (2005),
13’ 6”
'Magnitudes'
is a movie recorded realtime, like in a performance,
artificially combining recordings from 2 rooms dominated
by the presence of an old grand piano, situated in two
different parts of Berlin, the former East and West.
The controversial text by Ulrike Meinhof describes views
of networking for change through the deployment of city
guerilla techniques, and is relevant these days for
the understanding of activities by terrorists, artists,
activists, politicians, and educators. The audio and
video synthesis was done in the max-msp-jitter language,
featuring artist ‘nonlinear’ for the spoken word evocation. |
|
Hatice
Guleryuz, “Round up the Usual Suspects”, Turkey
+ Netherlands (2003), 7’
Filmed
at the annual police parade in Istanbul, Guleryuz treats
the police men, lines up as toy soldiers as objects
of desire. She strips them of their masculinity and
military power, by having her camera slowly gaze over
them, objectifying them, aestheticising them. They
seem almost vulnerable: a stark contrast with the reality
in Turkey, which is still despite its many reforms a
police state. |
|
Corine
Stübi, “Working Girl”, Switzerland + Germany (2004),
4’56”
Working
Girls are automata / robots / clones who know only one
thing: how to do their job. A job which is predominantly
feminine. They represent the clichés which turn
them into consumer goods. But beneath the standardized
automated images lurks the possibility of disfunction.
A disfunction which can only flow from the restricted
nature of the job or activity. They are ideal "machines"
who, under the veneer of their hyperfunctionality, come
within a hair's breadth of a hysteria which bursts out
for a brief moment only to be quickly repressed again. |
|
Ana
Bilankov, “Pleasure”, Croatia + Germany (2005),
4’2”
“Pleasure” is a work about cultural and gender constructions, and the
difficulties of communication. The format is reminiscent
of an old mute film, combining moving image with a textual
script. The text disturbs the continuity of the image
on a visual, but also on a semantic level: communication,
class, culture and gender identities are deconstructed. |
| |
Khaled
D. Ramadan, “Trap”, DK/LB
(2004), 4’
From
the serial People and Urbanity.
On
those who became tourist in their own countries. |
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Total
running time: 81 min.
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(c) FIFVC 2004-08
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