Saul & I

Hisser(en)

The story told in Hisser was inspired by a true occurrence. In 2013, a young man in Florida was literally "swallowed up by the earth" when a cesspool suddenly opened up under his bedroom. The film's main setting is a bedroom by night. From the way it was shot, the viewer has the feeling of peering into an abandoned life-size dollhouse. Other sequences show close-up views of a young man lying on a bed with a tormented look on his face or cowering in a corner. The scene is accompanied by an exaggeratedly romantic song whose refrain – "It took me so long to get my feet back off the ground" – alludes to the loss of a loved one and a sense of abysmal loneliness. The song's emotionality contrasts starkly with the artificiality of the scene. The boundary between reproduction and reality grows fluid, and the virtuality – which the artist has carried to a near- perfect extreme – begins to crumble in view of the protagonist's physical and emotional frailty.

May God Forgive Me(fr)

This video is made up of television footage recorded between 2001 and 2004. A large part of the imagery was collected during a residence where participants were invited to record their channel-hopping of television stations from all over the world. A hadith – a narration brought from the prophet Muhammad - concerning women, provides the thread: “the first look at a woman is for you, the second is for the devil, the third is a crime”. (MF)

Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of a Genius(en)

An assessment of the 20th century's best known artist and his vast achievements through the insights and speculations of over a dozen participants. Filmed on the 100th anniversary of Picasso's birth at MoMA, Musée Picasso, Walker Art Center, Museu Picasso Barcelona. Featuring Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rosenblum, Clement Greenberg, Roland Penrose and others.

Device(en)

Video (color, sound) | Media and Performance

The House of Dust(en)

In 1967, Knowles, a Fluxus artist, composed one of the first computerized poems, written in Fortran code, with randomly assembled verses. (An example: “A house of steel / Among high mountains / Using candles / Inhabited by people who sleep almost all the time.”) This significant, jam-packed exhibition revives Knowles’s poem on an old-school dot-matrix printer, and includes related ephemera, including a film by Allan Kaprow. The show also highlights forebears of Knowles’s aleatory composition, with a never-completed book by Mallarmé whose pages could be reordered at will, as well as Marcel Broodthaer’s 1969 homage to it. There are also successors: Nicholas Knight’s intricate paintings of overlapping colored curves were generated by an algorithm, and Katarzyna Krakowiak’s audio piece remixes Knowles’s original poem into skittering musique concrète.

Takeda(es)

Takeda is a film about the universality of the human being seen thru the eyes of a Japanese painter that has adopted the Mexican culture.

Inside(en)

An art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn't go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and invention to survive.

Re-enactment(en)

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By presenting a record of this dramatic action alongside footage of its reenactment, Alÿs blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Questioning the concept of authenticity, this work demonstrates “how media can distort and dramatize the immediate reality of a moment,” the artist has said. Gallery label from Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, May 8–August 1, 2011.

The Last Mural(bn)

The story of the bond between an aged blind artist, about to create his last masterpiece and a rebellious young artist girl who comes to assist him.

Goodbye, World(en)

Set in a world where human beings are digitally uploading their consciousness, it is GIRL’s turn to make her decision. Will she decide to join her family and leave her physicality behind, as well as the relics of what it once meant to be human?

Bozarts(fr)

The Geniac(en)

A surreal, experimental, minimalistic animated film that dives into the inner recesses of creativity, imagination, longing and inspiration. Taking place from the somber point of view of a young wizard as he lives out his day, watching over a little town. Le Geniaque pays homage to Georges Melies and 1920s silent films in general.

Still Life(en)

An imprisoned artist struggles to create a portrait that will satisfy his patron. At the end of a fateful day, in the face of despair, the artist resolves to take a bold new approach to his work.

Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti(en)

An unconventional portrait of painter Frida Kahlo and photographer Tina Modotti. Simple in style but complex in its analysis, it explores the divergent themes and styles of two contemporary and radical women artists working in the upheaval of the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.

GORE(pl)

Aniela, a sculpture student, suffers from skin picking disorder. When her art gets challenged, her condition deepens and gets more bizarre.

The Glass II(zh)

A ritual about"memory". The words and phrases written on the paper are easy to understand but difficult to define, substituting the usual " incantations to gods". The spat out red matter suggests kind of "refusal". This kind of "nauseous" mixture combined with these moods represents a space : a space for painting.

treefolk(en)

A data moshed experiment using videos of daily life and textures overlayed with components from older videos creating a personal collage of the last few years.

Hannah and Her Sisters(en)

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

Trojan Horse/Rainbow Flag(en)

An art film about the campaign to save the Joiners Arms, the iconic queer pub in East London. Working directly with members of ‘Friends of the Joiner’s Arms’ and queer actors based in East London, Giles employed participatory workshops and verbatim theatre as structures to produce a discursive social network and the resulting film. The film mixes transcribed scripted dialogue with interjections and commentary from the group.

Revive the Lira's Glory(ar)

Ibrahim Sultani is a 22-year-old architecture major who has a hobby of painting portraits on banknotes. On them, he portrays Lebanese icons from the fields of music, cinema, sports, media, fashion, and many more due to the common appreciation and love that Lebanese citizens share for them. Due to the economic crisis that exists within the country, he hopes his work will give the currency back some of its lost value, at least metaphorically.