João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva: Papagaio

João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva
Papagaio
Camden Arts Centre

Cross Section of a Revolution

Cross Section of a Revolution
Allora & Calzadilla, Broomberg & Chanarin, Liu Xiaodong, Haroon Mirza, Rashid Rana, Wael Shawky, Santiago Sierra
Lisson Gallery

Rashid Rana’s Red Carpet, 2008 [detail]

«This group exhibition of Lisson Gallery artists explores global aspects of trade, trauma, religious belief systems and contested territories, via a number of intersecting political practices, across photographic, sculptural, painterly and filmic media.» [...MORE...]

Rashid Rana’s Red Carpet, 2008

Allora and Calzadilla, The Bell, the Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy, 2013

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Divine Violence, 2013

Christian Jankowski: Heavy Weight History

...after three days enjoying Christian Jankowski's artworks, a catalogue on the Heavy Weight History and many others!

Institute of Contemporary Arts

Artists' Film Biennial 2014: Christian Jankowski Programme 1 : Reframed

This first part of a three-part retrospective programme offers a glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years.

Christian Jankowski (born 1968, Göttingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibition include Heavy Weight History, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2013); The Eye of Dubai, The Pavilion Downtown Dubai, Dubai, UAE (2013) and Casting Jesus, MACRO (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), Rome. He has participated in numerous group shows including Tears and Politics: Works by Phil Collins and Christian Jankowski, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2014);Christian Jankowski and Guga Ferraz, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Mexico (2012); What Happened to God?, Halle 14, Leipzig (2012) and The Beauty and the Distance, 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010).

This three-part retrospective programme offers a generous glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years from 1992 to the present. Each programme is structured around a theme, defining a distinct strand of his practice.

The first programme, Reframed, draws on the absurdity that often arises when contexts are juxtaposed or realigned. Puppet Conference, 2003, sees a line-up of familiar puppets, synonymous with childhood pursuits, engaged in a very different dialogue. Lycan Theorized, 2009, takes a cinematic tone to explore Lacanian theory through the lens of the horror genre.

Programme 1: Reframed

• Discourse News, 2012, SD video, colour, sound, 5 min 45 sec
• Ebbe in Freedom, 1992, SD video, colour, sound, 8 min 58 sec
• Lycan Theorized, 2006, 35mm transferred to SD video, colour, sound, 23 min
• Puppet Conference, 2003, SD video, colour, sound, 25 min
• Rosa, 2001, SD video, colour, sound, 18 min 54 sec

Total duration: 82 min

Artists' Film Biennial 2014: Christian Jankowski Programme 2 : Learning the Absurd

This second part of a three-part retrospective programme offers a glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years.

Christian Jankowski (born 1968, Göttingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibition include Heavy Weight History, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2013); The Eye of Dubai, The Pavilion Downtown Dubai, Dubai, UAE (2013) and Casting Jesus, MACRO (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), Rome. He has participated in numerous group shows including Tears and Politics: Works by Phil Collins and Christian Jankowski, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2014);Christian Jankowski and Guga Ferraz, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Mexico (2012); What Happened to God?, Halle 14, Leipzig (2012) and The Beauty and the Distance, 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010).

This three-part retrospective programme offers a generous glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years from 1992 to the present. Each programme is structured around a theme, defining a distinct strand of his practice.

This second programme, Learning the Absurd, draws together a diverse selection of works that connect childhood with adult pursuits and vice versa. The humorous The Matrix Effect, 2000, features a cast of children, each playing the role of an artist from the late 20th Century. In contrast, Rooftop, 2007 features an adult cast who give advice on the most effective approaches to hula hooping.

Programme 2: Learning the Absurd

• Cleaning Up the Studio, 2010, HD video, colour, sound, 9 min 33 sec
• When I Was Cuisillo, 2009, SD video, colour, sound, 2 min 57 sec
• Rooftop Routine, 2007, SD video, colour, sound, 4 min 30 sec
• Let’s Get Physical/ Digital, 1997, SD video, colour, sound, 37 min 32 sec
• The Finest Art on Water, 2011, HD video, colour, sound, 10 min
• The Matrix Effect, 2000, SD video, colour, sound, 24 min 54 sec

Total duration: 90 min

Artists' Film Biennial 2014: Christian Jankowski Programme 2 : Believe Me + Q&A

This last part of a three-part retrospective programme offers a glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over twenty years.

Christian Jankowski (born 1968, Göttingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibition include Heavy Weight History, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2013); The Eye of Dubai, The Pavilion Downtown Dubai, Dubai, UAE (2013) and Casting Jesus, MACRO (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), Rome. He has participated in numerous group shows including Tears and Politics: Works by Phil Collins and Christian Jankowski, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2014);Christian Jankowski and Guga Ferraz, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Mexico (2012); What Happened to God?, Halle 14, Leipzig (2012) and The Beauty and the Distance, 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010).

This three-part retrospective programme offers a generous glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years from 1992 to the present. Each programme is structured around a theme, defining a distinct strand of his practice.

The final programme, Believe Me, takes a focused look at belief structures, in particular those of the art world. Jankowski’s Telemistica, 1999, sees a host of TV psychics advise the artist on his participation in the 2009 Venice Biennale. The recent Heavy Weight History, 2013, takes the form of a television sports report. A group of Eastern European weight lifters take up the challenge of attempting to lift monuments symbolic of the region's past.

The screening is followed by a Q&A with artist Christian Jankowski and ICA Associate Curator of Artists’ Film and Moving Image Steven Cairns.

Programme 3: Believe Me

16-mm Mystery, 2004, 35mm transferred to DVD, colour, sound, 5 min

The Hunt, 1992, SD video, colour, sound, 1 min 11 sec

Telemistica, 1999, SD video, colour, sound, 22 min 8 sec

The Holy Artwork, 2001, SD video, colour, sound 2001, 15 min 52 sec

No One Better Than You, 2004, SD video, colour, sound, 3 min 1sec

Heavy Weight History, 2013, HD video, colour, sound, 25 min 46 sec

Der Malteser Blick, 2014, HD video, colour, sound, 1 min 49 sec

Total duration: 76 min + 30 min Q&A

Curated by Steven Cairns, ICA Associate Curator of Artists’ Film and Moving Image.

Since the early 1990s, German artist Christian Jankowski has tested the boundaries between high art and mass-culture. Often co-opting the space of commercial television and cinema, he continuously subverts and pokes fun at the role of mass culture in the everyday, paralleling the structure of the art world with that of organised religion or the cult of the celebrity.

Christian Jankowski (b. 1968, Göttingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include “Heavy Weight History”, Lisson Gallery, London (2014); “Heavy Weight History”, CCA Tel Aviv (2014) and Wasser, Käse, Feuer. Christian Jankowski. “25 Editionen und ein anonymes Original” Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition, Berlin (2014). He has participated in numerous group shows including “Tears and Politics: Works by Phil Collins and Christian Jankowski”, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2014); “Room Service”, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2014); “Real Emotions: Thinking in Film”, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014) and “Things we discover alone (Independent Learning)”, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (2014).

Please note that all films are 18+ unless otherwise stated.

Aesthetics of the Non-visible

Image by Edson Chagas, Found Not Taken, 2014. Courtesy the artist and A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy

After seeing on the internet the Russian Ark (2002), a film by Akexander Sokurov, in where "a 19th century French aristocrat, notorious for his scathing memoirs about life in Russia, travels through the Russian State Hermitage Museum and encounters historical figures from the last 200+ years", the first thought that came into my mind was the idea of Noah's Ark being a big, transitional USB pen packed with data; or, an aesthetic white cube, in where data is storage and displayed for buyers, just like the data storage centres are immaculate spaces free of that amazing external and timeless thing that dust is. The second significant idea derived is towards works by such artists as, Andreas Schmidt, who creates books that function as physical archives for non-physical images; Dina Kelbermann, who display images contaminated by the non-visible, through associations that are mediated by the archive in itself; or, Mishka Henner' confrontation and creation of new subjectivities. All playing with photography and the act of not take photographs, as well as, instead of a "find the differences" between two 'equal' images, we have to find what relates and connects together in what seems to be different images, i.e., find what is 'equal'. Establishing an alternate archive and interfere in how we set our gaze.
Following the ICA' Artists' Film Biennial 2014 Symposium on Aesthetics of the Non-visible...

[Lunch for £11 at the ICA bar]

A private view of Erik van Lieshout's work(ers)

Erik van Lieshout
Private View
Maureen Paley

Helmond Hollywood (colour copies on wood, works on paper on wood and mixed media), 2013-14 (detail)

«In his work van Lieshout immerses himself within the rituals and norms of the communities he describes. Oscillating between documentary and fictional perspectives he tells stories...» [PR] about a pink wisdom, memory and the power of perseverance over the middle class. Bringing a combination of ripe fruits on a golf course and florals (green apple, tropical fruits and stone fruits, like peaches and nectarine) shirts and robes, with a heady perfume and creamy body (honeysuckle, blossom and gingerbread) from time spent in an cheap-exotic distance destination. The work is often described as hedonistic, meaty and salacious like the cloths they wear. Just another reflection of a pink elephant in a middle class, suburban world! As Erik says, "Real Luxury is Buying Nothing".

Erik van Lieshout's Private View at Maureen Paley

Exhibition view

Untitled (3 colour copy on wood works, plasterboard and wood), 2013-14 (detail)

House of Guilt (colour copies on wood, glass and mixed media), 2013-14 (detail)

Film Production Plan (19 works on paper on plasterboard and wood), 2013-14 (exhibition view)

The Workers (HD film, colour, sound with carpet installation, 53'), 2014

The Workers (HD film, colour, sound with carpet installation, 53'), 2014

Born in Deurne, The Netherlands in 1968, Erik van Lieshout lives and works in Rotterdam. Previous solo exhibitions include Commission, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 2012; Erik makes Happy, BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna, 2011; How Can I Help You, Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, 2011; Im Netz, Ludwig Museum, Cologne
, 2009; Homeland Security, Projekt am Museumsplatz, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 2007 and Guantánamo Baywatch, Hammer Projects, Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, 2007. Recent group exhibitions include The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2013; Manifesta 9, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Genk, Limburg
, 2012 and Melanchtopia, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2011. Forthcoming projects include Manifesta 10, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Kasper König, St. Petersburg, The Crime Was Almost Perfect, Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam and a solo exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery, New York, all in 2014.

Filmarmalade presents...

Leaves Fall in All Seasons

It all started in southern Spain, in Andalucia, with Flamenco; it all started with cante, toque, baile and palmas moving forward into what it is now! A new shopping mall around a big black box in the centre of a round square.

«Cinema on the Steps: Curated by Ahmed Mater
The final night of Cinema on the Steps features artist Ahmed Mater's Leaves Fall in All Seasons, a talk with Abdullah AlTurki about his work, and a screening of the newly restored classic of Egyptian cinema The Mummy/The Night of Counting the Years (Al Momia).

Programme
Leaves Fall in All Seasons, Ahmed Mater, 2013, 20 mins
This film is made up of mobile phone footage shot by immigrant workers on building sites in and around Makkah between 2008 and 2013. Most of the footage was shot for the benefit of the workers’ families. The files were transferred to the artist’s phone using Bluetooth while other material was originally uploaded to YouTube. Some contributors have asked to remain anonymous.

The Mummy/The Night of Counting the Years (Al Momia), Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969, 103 mins
Considered one of the greatest Egyptian films of all time, Al Momia/ The Night of Counting the Years was recently restored by filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. Set in 1881, and based on a true story, the film follows two brothers from an Egyptian clan, and their involvement in the looting of a recently discovered tomb, subsequently selling the artefacts on the black market. When one of the clan reports the looting to the Antique Services, underlying themes of Egyptian identity and lost heritage are brought to the fore. Unique for its stylised edits and unusual camera angles, this newly restored print captures the unique archaeological locations and artefacts, all set to an original score composed by Italian musician Mario Nascimbene.

'The carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the desolate settings, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene – they all work in perfect harmony and contribute to the feeling of fateful inevitability. I am very excited that Shadi Abdel Salam’s masterpiece has been restored to its original splendor'. - Martin Scorsese

Curator
Ahmed Mater co-founded the non-profit organization Edge of Arabia. Since then his work has attracted an international audience and has been collected by, among others, the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Mori Museum of Art in Tokyo. His art practice, encompassing photography, painting, installation, performance and video, explores the narratives and the invention of radical concepts of urban space in Islamic culture in a transformative era of globalisation and consumerism. It is informed by his daily life as a medical doctor in Abha and his Islamic traditional upbringing framing the issues of contemporary landscape with equal measures of documentation and metaphor. His most recent work combines video, photography and online social activism to present an unofficial and subjective commentary on some of the most contested and poignant transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia today. Mater currently lives and works between Abha, Jeddah and Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Presented in association with Qatar Museums Authority. Part of Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture.»

The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni

«Cinema on the Steps: Curated by Alia Al-Senussi and Abdullah AlTurki
The second night of Cinema on the Steps screens Manal Al Dowayan's silent mix of belly dancing The Legends, three short films by Ziad Antar, and the main feature, Rania Stephan's The Three Disappearences of Soad Hosni.

Programme
The Legends, Manal Al Dowayan, 2013, 60 min
Tokyo Tonight, Ziad Antar, 2003, 2 min 44 sec
Tambouro, Ziad Antar, 2004, 2 min 25 sec
Safe Sounds, Ziad Antar, 2006, 9 min 10 sec
The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni, Rania Stephan, 2011, 70 min

The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni is an elegy to a rich era of film production in Egypt through the work of revered star, Soad Hosni, who from the early 1960s into the 90s, embodied the modern Arab woman in her complexity and paradoxes. Born in Cairo in 1943, Hosni committed suicide in London in 2001. Between the ages of 19 to 49, she acted in eighty-two films with thirty-seven directors. Pieced together exclusively from VHS footage taken from her films, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni is a classical tragedy in three acts, with the actress describing her dream life in first person.

Curators
Alia Al-Senussi currently holds a number of different posts including VIP Relations Manager Middle East for Art Basel worldwide and Executive for Generation Three Family Partners (London, UK) October 2010 to present; and is a contributing editor for Tank Magazine and Harper's Bazaar Art China. Al-Senussi is the Chairman of the Tate Young Patrons and involved as a patron in a multitude of international non-profit organizations.

Abdullah AlTurki is a leading figure in Saudi Arabia’s contemporary art scene. He is passionate about contemporary art from the region and is a member of Tate’s Middle East North African Acquisition committee. Abdullah AlTurki has a degree in Finance and a Masters in Management from Cass business school and worked in banking before making a shift to supporting and developing contemporary arts in his home country.

Presented in association with Qatar Museums Authority. Part of Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture.»

Babylon! a displacement

Expected to have a satisfactory out-door cinema night. Surfing through visual images, reflecting on the displacement caused during the Arab Spring. For two hours ate raw food; not cooked! No story, no narrative, no visuals, no involvement or development, no coding, decodying or re-codying, no message, no information, no communication. Two hours of raw moving images gathered together with gaffa tape. Really! quite diluted with what I saw!

«Cinema on the Steps: Curated by Abdellah Karroum

The first night of Cinema on the Steps, curated by Abdellah Karroum, features filmmakers Ala Eddine Slim, Ismaël and Youssef Chebbi’s Babylon.

Programme:

Babylon, dir. Ala Eddine Slim, Ismaël and Youssef Chebbi, Tunisia 2012, 121 min

Filmed on the main border crossing between Tunisia and Libya, filmmakers Ala Eddine Slim, Ismaël and Youssef Chebbi’s video essay Babylon (2012) captures the displacement caused during the Arab Spring, as a modern day Babylon is constructed to house the thousands seeking refuge in Tunisia from neighbouring countries. Babylon’s observational style records the temporary camp’s construction, alongside intimate encounters with its diverse population including Africans and Bangladeshis as tensions rise in the uncompromising environment, mediated by humanitarian aid workers and media agencies.

Curator:

Abdellah Karroum is Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. The founder of L’appartement 22, Morocco’s first experimental art space, he has also worked on a range of international art events, including the DAK’ART Biennale of African Contemporary Art (2006), Venice Biennale (2007), Gwangju Biennale (2008) and the Arts in Marrakech International Biennale (2009). In 2012 Karroum was Associate Curator for La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Artistic Director of the Biennale Regard Benin 2012. He is also Associate Curator at La Kunsthalle de Mulhouse, France, for the year 2013.

Presented in association with Qatar Museums Authority. Part of Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture.»