08: Ana Vaz & Sasha Litvintseva

26 March, 2016 - 12:30
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.

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Ana Vaz & Sasha Litvintseva

This programma proposes a dialogue between the work of Brazilian artist Ana Vaz and Russian-born, London-based Sasha Litvintseva. Of the same generation – both were born in the late 1980s, at the end of History according to Francis Fukuyama – their distinct practices share a number of ongoing concerns and subjects. Time, memory and temporality are key concepts for both artists and their work speculatively excavates the layers of history, past and future, embedded in landscapes and architecture. Whilst Litvintseva is currently occupied with developing a new visuality for the Anthropocene, Vaz questions the relationship between language and cinema through the traces of utopian projects and colonial histories.

Occidente

Ana Vaz
,
BR
,
2014
,
16mm
,
15'

“A film-poem of an ecology of signs that speaks of colonial history repeating itself. Subalterns become masters, antiques become reproducible dinner sets, exotic birds become luxury currency, exploration becomes extreme-sport-tourism, monuments become geodata. A spherical voyage eastwards and westwards marking cycles of expansion in a struggle to find one’s place, one’s sitting around a table.” (AV)

Exile Exotic

Sasha Litvintseva
,
UK
,
2015
,
HD
,
14'

“Steeped in elliptical history and historical simulacra, Exile Exotic is set at a hotel that is a replica of the Kremlin. Narrating the exotic beginnings of my mother’s and my exile from Russia, the film serves as a platform for us to visit the Kremlin again, albeit by the side of a pool. Soundtracked by an operatic score reminiscent of the song of the sirens making Odysseus stray on his long journey home, our story reverberates throughout the scope of Russian history’s limiting of free movement of individuals. This film is a pilgrimage. This film comes in waves.” (SL)

A Idade da Pedra

Ana Vaz
,
BR, FR
,
2013
,
HD
,
29'

“A voyage into the far west of Brazil leads us to a monumental structure - petrified at the centre of the savannah. Inspired by the epic construction of the city of Brasília, the film uses this history to imagine it otherwise. I look at Brasília the way I look at Rome : Brasília began with a final simplification of ruins. Through the geological traces that lead us to this fictive monument, the film unearths a history of exploration, prophecy and myth.” (AV)

Immortality, home and elsewhere

Sasha Litvintseva
,
UK
,
2014
,
HD
,
13'

“Weaving around a theory of immortality based on the premise that our lives are a summation of all the information we consume and process, gleaned from existing theories from a number of scientific disciplines, the film draws on my personal history’s brush with a global nuclear disaster, to precipitate a meditation on the potential role of an individual in the imaginary film/event of our individual or collective death: as a protagonist, or as an extra appearing in a handful of frames at the very moment of their death.” (SL)