03: Marxt / Habib Allah / Halsberghe / Gaillard

24 March, 2016 - 21:00
Sphinx

 

 

SELECTION 2016

A dialogue between new audiovisual works, older or rediscovered films and videos by artists and filmmakers who work in the expanded field of moving image practice.

Captive Horizon

Lukas Marxt
,
AT, DE
,
2015
,
HD
,
15'

This spatial thriller operates on a delicate line between reality and illusion. Lukas Marxt's favourite motifs – barren landscapes, seemingly untouched by humans, but at the same time suggestively apocalyptic, and subtle changes in perception that play tricks on the observer – construct a peculiar narrative. With the use of drone photography he rescales the landscape in ways that make it difficult to distinguish between the macro and the micro.

Dag’aa

Shadi Habib Allah
,
PS
,
2016
,
HD
,
19'

A mysterious drive across the desolate land of the Sinai Peninsula led by a group of trafficking Bedouins. Habib Allah follows them behind the lines of military checkpoints, off the political, economic, and historical grid, a place where these desert outliers quietly continue their lineage. Stories, itineraries, directions, and allegiances become as blurred as the status of the Bedouins themselves, who remain unrecognized non-citizens of this no man’s land.

Sakala

Simon Halsberghe
,
BE
,
2015
,
HD
,
11'

In the Citadelpark in Ghent there’s a sculpture honouring the brothers Lieven en Jozef van de Velde, both colonial pioneers. Their relief portrait plaque is mounted on a rock. On top of that rock sits the statue of a boy, Sakala, in 1884 the first Congolese visiting Belgium. Where in reality, he immediately learned French and wore western clothing, he is being depicted nude. With this study of a forgotten sculpture Halsberghe deconstructs the filmic illusion and critically analyzes the western gaze.

Nightlife

Cyprien Gaillard
,
FR
,
2015
,
DCP
,
15'

Floating through a hallucinatory night the viewer encounters a damaged cast of Rodin’s iconic bronze sculpture The Thinker, Hollywood Juniper trees swaying as if in a trance, fireworks bursting into life above Berlin’s 1936 Olympic stadium and finally a German oak tree planted by four-time Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. In this historical-associative web Gaillard enhances the sculptural texture of the seductive 3D cinematography by looping a 9 second sample of Alton Ellis’ Blackman’s Word and later on Black Man’s Pride, which he both remixed to create a spatial feel.