IFFR 2014: Hannes Schüpbach & Jodie Mack

By on

Rating: 

No votes yet

The 2014 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) will feature this year two profile scrrenings as part of its Spectrum Shorts section, dedicated to Swiss artist Hannes Schüpbach (Friday January 24th) and to experimental animator Jodie Mack (Sunday January 26th). 

Schüpbach will present three of his filmworks, that "emphasize the corporeal act of vision and of revision", L’Atelier (2007), his latest Instants (2012), and Falten (2005), in a programme curated by Erwin van ’t Hart. A special edition of the forthcoming publication by Hannes Schüpbach & French writer Joël-Claude Meffre, INSTANTS (Revolver Publishing, Berlin, February 2014) will be distributed to the public.

Let your light shine, an anthology of recent films by Jodie Mack, "investigates the formal principles of abstract cinema while maturing an interest in found materials, evolving modes of production, forms of labor, and the role of decoration in daily life.", and includes her 'animated personal rockumentary' Dusty Stacks of Mom: the Poster Project.

Hannes Schüpbach was born in Winterthur (Switzerland) in 1965. He is a visual artist and writer. Since 1999 Schüpbach has completed ten silent films. However, his artistic practice with elements of the cinematographic dates back to 1990, with spatial installations and serial paintings that can be experienced through movement. In the exhibition Stills and Movies at Kunsthalle Basel, 2009, a number of his large, connected series of paintings were shown for the first time. The exhibition also highlighted the conceptual interconnections between installations, performances, and films by Schüpbach; they all entice movement and unfold through memory. (See www.kunsthallebasel.ch/exhibitions/archive/77) His film pieces emphasize the corporeal act of vision and of revision. It becomes the pivotal  point of a dream-like situation where images reach into the spectators’ remembrance by  means of repetition and rhythmical shifts. Several of his films, among them “Erzählung” (2007) “L’Atelier” (2007), “Instants” (2012), deal with the artistic process as such. Over the past few years his films have been presented in major venues such as Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, Tate Modern, London (all 2009); CCCB Barcelona, Kunstmuseum Bern (2011); Centre Pompidou, Paris, Kunsthalle Vienna, LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, London, Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2012); Arsenal, Berlin, Gene Siskel Film Center (series “Conversations at the Edge,” organized by the SAIC), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013).

Jodie Mack (born 1983; London, UK) is an experimental animator who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and currently teaches animation at Dartmouth College. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling, the tension between form and meaning. Musical documentary or stroboscopic archive: her films study domestic and recycled materials to illuminate the elements shared between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design. Questioning the role of decoration in daily life, the works unleash the kinetic energy of overlooked and wasted objects.

Mack's 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Images Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Views From the Avant Garde at the New York Film Festival. She has presented solo programs of her work at venues such as the Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Filmforum, REDCAT, and the  BFI London Film Festival. She has also worked as a curator and administrator with Dartmouth's EYEWASH: Experimental Films and Videos, Florida Experimental Film and Video Festival,  Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Eye and Ear Clinic, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and The Nightingale. She was a featured artist at the 2011 Flaherty Seminar, and she’s the 2013 recipient of the Marion McMahan Award at the Images Festival.

Category: