Józef Robakowski: Attention: Light!
Opening Thursday, November 26th 2009, from 6 p.m. till 9 p.m.
26.11.2009-03.01.2010
29 Wadeson Street, London E2

“Robakowski’s work is stubbornly autonomic. For decades it remained resistant to dominant trends, preferring cognitive and expressive function to surrendering to current events of artistic life, but becoming, at the same time, its important creative element.”

Józef Robakowski, born in 1939 in Poznan, dedicated all his artistic activity to the inquiry of the nature of film. The artist chose to spend most of his life in Lódz, the city where the circle of Polish pre-war artistic avant-garde once flourished, where the Muzeum Sztuki, first museum of modern art in Poland was established, where the National Film School educated dozens of prominent Polish film artists, including Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda.

Directors Lounge: Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp
"Die Gegenwart ist nicht die Wirklichkeit"
Present doesn't Equal Reality
Single Channel Video Works
Thursday, 26 Nov. 2009, 21:00h
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Cinema - Train - Travel - Knowledge - Memory - Perception, these are terms from descriptions of video films by Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp. In a nutshell, one could say: it all concerns vision. How has human vision, or better saying visual perception, changed since the invention of cinema and the later developments of all the forthcoming image machines? There is a reason, this program starts with the film "Le Cinema - le Train", where the filmmakers make the analogy between the views out of the train windows while travelling, as Victor Hugo was describing it (1837) and the experience of film: "The flowers on the edge of the fields are colour spots, or better saying red and white stripes; there are no dots any more, everything turns into stripes. Crop fields become yellow streaks, clover fields appear as long green braids?"

In the ways the two artist feed their "image machines" with texts, it becomes obvious they take vision, or 'viewing' as serious matter: there is the connection with opinions, conceptions, point of view and perceptions, all of which in German language have a root in seeing or viewing (Ansichten, Anschauungen, Standpunkte und Sichtweisen). The plurals are intentional here, as with Flusser, it is possible to say that the camera does not allow ideological thinking, as it is not compatible with a single point of view. The art practise of Daxl and Fülepp seems to follow those lines accordingly, as almost with every new video work they experiment with new perspectives; a practise that is not constrained to camera images but that expands to abstractions, compositing and generated imaging. The sources of those images originate in travels, quotes and observations, while they are being processed heavily in post-production. If they appear as simulacra, as simulated worlds, then in does not happen without a critical sometimes ironic distancing. Thus it becomes clear that there still is something else behind those images. Something possibly lost, or conversely, still to be achieved, and which cannot be shown otherwise. Still, with Heiko and Ingeborg, we keep staying very this-worldly: to say it with an adapted quote of Wittgenstein, 'whereof one cannot portrait in an image, thereof one must not try to picture.'

Thus, the two artists leave us in ambivalence between fascinating image worlds and ironic distance, and the liberty of choices of which perspectives onto the world, which kinds of reality we take on from the films.

What is left to mention is that for their work both artist, who work both independendly and togother, mostly seek for collaborations with composers from New Music or Noise background, and thus see their works as collaborative sound-image compositions. (Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

The artists will be present for Q&A and for socialising after the screening.

More infos and images:
http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html

Press Links:
http://www.directorslounge.net http://www.z-bar.de

Artist Links:
Media in Motion berlin:
http://www.mediainmotion.de
Media-Scape - Zagreb / Novigrad (Cittánova):
http://www.mediascape.info
Strictly Berlin:
http://www.strictly-berlin.de
X-OP
http://www.x-op.eu

Dreaming with Open Eyes
curated by Robert Seidel
Date:  2009.11.01 - 2009.11.30
Venue: COMO (SKT-Tower, Seoul) and Open Theatre (Tomorrow City Echo Plaza, Incheon)
Free entrance

The programme "Dreaming with Open Eyes" part of "German Inspiration" exhibition shows 19 different positions of artists. Their short films are little poems with a dream-like quality that is freed from our everyday life. They are arranged like the stages of an ambivalent dream: oscillating between an infantile playfulness, the strength of a heterotopic, repetitive architecture, dreamscapes embedded in a romanticized nature or nightmarish states showing the collapse of humanity and science. And each of these very unique moments holds the promise to be watched again, while a dream is lost in its pure linearity after we wake up...

Artists: Julian Rosefeldt, Yves Netzhammer, Carsten Nicolai, Bjørn Melhus, Zeitguised, Philipp Hirsch, David OReilly, Max Hattler, Volker Schreiner, Daniel Burkhardt, Christiane Wöhler, Julia Oschatz, Thorsten Fleisch, Astrid Rieger, Niklas Goldbach, Barbara Hlali, Timo Katz, Robert Seidel and Jan Verbeek.

A catalog will be published end 2009 by Art Center Nabi.

Robert Seidel, Curator and Filmmaker
Organization: Art Center Nabi, SK Telecom
Program Partner: Goethe-Institute Seoul, Robert Seidel

Detailed Information:
http://www.nabi.or.kr/english/project/coming_read.nab?list_num=1&idx=311&
http://www.robertseidel.com