Concrete Futures [1]
“Since nature is uncomfortable, violent, we resort to architecture. We build monuments, houses, whole cities… And suddenly, it seems legitimate to rape the earth, to extract what we need from it. To construct a place and make it a home. A fortress where we cultivate our affections.” (Concrete Affection)
Presented by Sheffield Fringe [3] Concrete Futures brings together films that deal with fiction and imagination, inviting encounters with speculative futures, which are nonetheless grafted onto the present, ‘documentary’ moment that haunts them. Moreover, through the use of images as documents and as drivers of the imagination, Serbian, Angolan and Spanish cityscapes are connected in a type of speculative haunting.
This haunting is expressed in the superimposition of images of construction and evacuation, of tearing down and rebuilding. By tearing down or leaving behind, old sites are revealed. And by rebuilding, one does not construct anew but instead returns to the terrains that already were there. In that sense, no conquering – symbolic or concrete – of lands or, for that matter, of our imaginations and affections, will ever be truly a form of building but instead remains haunted by its own violence.
Artists Jasmina Cibic (Slovenia), Sebastian Brameshuber and Thomas Draschan (Austria) will be present for a post-screening discussion. Advance booking [4] recommended.
Programme:- Jasmina Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild (2015) 15:27, HD- Kiluanji Kia Henda, Concrete Affection (Zopo Lady) (2014) 12:30, HD- Sebastian Brameshuber, Thomas Draschan, Preserving Cultural Traditions in a Period of Instability (2004) 03:00, SD- Ion de Sosa, Androids Dream (2014) 60:00, HD
This programme is presented in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery symposium Object! On the Documentary as Art [5]. With generous support by Openvizor, the Arts Council England, and the Austrian Cultural Forum, London.
Category:
- Screenings [6]
Dates:
Venue:
Close-Up Cinema [7]
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