06: Wilkins / Baga / sag

30 March, 2017 - 22:15
Sphinx cinema

 

 

SELECTION 2017

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.

_______________

 

In the presence of belit sag.

Indefinite Pitch

James N. Kienitz Wilkins
,
US
,
2016
,
DCP
,
b&w
,
23'

A pathetic movie pitch set in Berlin slips into the murkiness of memory, and histories best forgotten or purposely ignored. Beautiful black and white still images of coastal New Hampshire are being juxtaposed with a voiceover that toys with the conventions of a corporate powerpoint presentation and playfully explores the many meanings of the word ‘pitch’, sonic and otherwise. Wilkins reflects upon the production process’ influence on the eventual (non-) product, the film world in the Amazon age, a vanished TV series from the 1920s, urban violence and racism and the very idea of filmic memory.

The Voice

Trisha Baga
,
US
,
2016
,
video
,
colour
,
25'

The Voice is an abstract narrative following the road trip movie format. Employing 3-D effects, Baga creates a stratified narrative that aims to find logic in the viewer’s own processes of association: an approach where consciousness becomes the protagonist. Investigating in the artist’s own words, “my family history, the history of the Philippines, layers of colonization as seen through representation and appropriation, the convergence of Catholic and American pop culture sensibilities, what happens to a mountain made of clay when it gets hit by a typhoon, and what happens when a van tries to drive up it.” Her intricate videos operate on several levels of experience, mimicking the manner in which our perceptual landscape now weaves between digital and physical.

Ayhan and me

belit sağ
,
NL
,
2016
,
HD
,
14'

belit sağ’s background is rooted in alternative video-activist/ artist groups in Ankara and Istanbul, where she co-initiated groups such as VideA, Karahaber, and Videoccupy. The overarching themes in her recent work are the ‘violence of images’ and ‘images of violence’. Most of her works revolve around the role of images in the media and issues of representation and visibility. sağ tries to address larger political issues in a personal way, making them accessible to a broad public and playing with their proximity to daily life. Explicitly discussing its own production and censorship at the hands of Turkish officials, belit sağ’s Ayhan and me is an incisive examination of the power of images, the roles and responsibilities of representation and sanctioned history-making, and the charged relationship between art and state control.