An experiment in digital alchemy inspired by the surrealist parlour game Exquisite Corpse and by the Emerald Tablets, the foundational hermetic text in Western alchemy. Starting with the “prima materia” of two scenes from celluloid film history, the combined scenes were passed along between seven “digital alchemists” who each performed a process of transmutation on the material in an attempt to turn base metal into gold. By Ian Magor, D.N. Rodowick, Jacques Perconte, Polly Stanton, David Verdeure, Rosa Menkman & Patricia Pisters. / 00:19:00 / 2016 / United Kingdom / World Premiere at the Alchemy Film Festival. I will also present at the artist' filmmaking symposium.
Venice Biennale: Cinema Olanda - Projecting the Netherlands
Wendelien van Oldenborgh, From Left To Night, 2015. Still from the 32 minute film.
ASCA Biennale seminar: Cinema Olanda - Projecting the Netherlands
Hosted by Esther Peeren and Patricia Pisters, in close collaboration with Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Lucy Cotter.
‘Cinema Olanda’ is the title of the project by Wendelien van Oldenborgh and curator Lucy Cotter that will form the Dutch entry for the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, taking place in 2017. Taking the Dutch national pavilion, designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1953, as a Modernist projection of the Netherlands, their exhibition will make space for lesser-known episodes in Dutch postcolonial history and explore how they resonate with current transitions in the Netherlands’ cultural and political landscape. The exhibition and live events in Venice will be accompanied by a multidisciplinary symposium entitled Cinema Olanda: Projecting the Netherlands, which will take place at various locations in the Netherlands in October 2017 in partnership with Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). This seminar series is the first manifestation of this collaboration.
The seminar will take a series of films by Wendelien van Oldenborgh (viewed during the seminar) as its departure point. Van Oldenborgh’s work is acclaimed for its use of the cinematic format as a methodology for production, with live (public) film shoots generating the collective co-production of scripts. Known for groundbreaking works set in colonial architecture and engaging with its attendant discourses, such as Maurits Script(2006), her recent work engages with Modernist architecture that paved the way for the social, economic and political realities of globalism. In her latest film, From Left to Night(2015) three sites embodying1960s idealist architecture in London form points of intersection of events, subjects and recent histories related to the London riots, music and feminism. Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Lucy Cotter will be present during the first seminar to introduce van Oldenborgh’s work and the Venice Biennale 2017 Project. Other guest speakers will be invited and announced to the seminar participants.
A parallel program in the netherlands is organized in June and July in Amsterdam (EYE & Stedelijk Museum) and Rotterdam (Witte de With). See for more information here.
Patricia Pisters’ Filming for the Future: The Work of Louis Gasteren (Amsterdam University Press, 2015) presents an analytical tribute to this versatile artist. The book includes three DVDs, which enables the reader to ‘visually check’ the theoretical explanation given in the book.
Jury about the book (in Dutch): Je zou denken dat over Louis van Gasteren, door velen beschouwd als Nederlands belangrijkste filmmaker sinds decennia (tevens gekend querulant), al vele boeken/studies zouden zijn verschenen. Pas nu (vlak voor zijn dood, oh ironie) verschijnt een prachtig eerbetoon aan deze veelzijdige kunstenaar. Door een intelligente indeling en interessante analyses van het zeer uiteenlopende werk heeft de schrijfster een buitengewoon helder en toegankelijk boek geschreven. Een boek waarbij drie dvd’s zijn bijgevoegd, zodat de gelezen theoretische uitleg voor een substantieel deel ook visueel getoetst kan worden. Zoals het hoort bij een filmboek, maar helaas veel te weinig gebeurt. Ook de zeer complete overzichten van feitelijke informatie als bijvoorbeeld- filmografie - bibliografie- beeldende kunst en noten, maken dit boek tot een absolute aanrader. Een standaardwerk.
A new issue of Necsus - European Journal of Media Studies is out, with among others an interview with Richard Dyer in the feature section, a special section on "Small Data", new audio-visual essays and reviews of special festivals, exhibitions and books. All in Open Access. For keeping Open Access really open access, support is needed. ;-)
Issue no # 10 of Cine-Files is out, with a special dossier with short articles on Cinematic Affect. Edited by Anne Rutherford. With contributions from among others Jennifer Baker, Gertrud Koch, Laura Marks, Angela Ndalianis, Anna Powel, and Steven Shaviro. And a contrinution by Corey Creekmus on "Affective Video Criticism". See the issue on the Cine-Files website. My contribution is on the affects of compulsive dancing, comparing the different affective contexts between The Red Shoes (1948) to Black Swan (2010).- expressed in the digital form of GIFs. See here for this article, entitled "I just want to be perfect".
20 May 2016: A symposium on Deleuze and Guattari. See here the website of the event. Organized by Halbe Kuipers, Nur ozgenalp and Patricia Pisters for the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari discuss their concept of the war machine in relation to weapons and tools that are defined in an 'ecosystem' which is traversed by a 'machinic phylum'. Deleuze and Guattari see the machinic phylum as technological lineage (for instance, the iron sword descending from the dagger, the steel saber descending from the knife). Whether something becomes a weapon or a tool depends on the specific assemblages these metallurgical machines enter into. When Deleuze and Guattari speak of 'ecosystems' these are to be understood as the triply folded and complexly interwoven system of what Guattari has called the 'three ecologies' of environmental, social and mental ecologies. The connection and synthesis of these heterogeneous ecologies Deleuze and Guattari term 'machinic' (ATP 330) Therefore the metallurgical transformations of the machinic phylum have to be thought in ever changing and heterogeneous machinic assemblages, from materiality of the earth to our social life and collective and individual consciousness. We aim to get a deeper understanding of the power and necessity of Deleuze and Guattari's machinic ecosophy in a techno-permeated world.
