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

The Double Negative Collective presents:
The One-Take Super 8 Event
Saturday November 21st 2009

La Brique, 6545 Durocher # 402 (corner Beaubien)
Montreal, Canada
Doors at 8pm / Screening starts at 9pm
Suggested donation 5$
BYOB

No cuts! No Splices!

In collaboration with the Double Negative Collective, the One Take Super 8 Event will showcase the work of 33 Montreal filmmakers, established and amateur alike. The participants include:

Hodra Adra / Stéphane Calce / Émile Cantin / Thierry Collins / Xarah Dion / Félix Dufour-Lapperrière / Matthew Forbes / Jessic Fortin-Simard / Amber Goodwyn / Alexandra Grimanis and Steven Woloshen / André Habib / Bogdan Karasek / Richard Kerr / Isabelle Kirouac / Marcus von Holtzendorff / Alexandre Larose / Karl Lemieux / Philippe Léonard-Brazeau / Ara Mahrejjan / Eduardo Menz / Maude Michaud / Diana Mihalache / Anita Pachulski / Alex Rogalski / Mike Rollo / Daichi Saito / Javiera Ovalle Sazie / Suzie Synnott / Malena Szlam / Roger Tellier-Graig / Emir Togrul / Mathieu Tremblay / Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt

The One Take Super 8 Event (OTS8) began in 2000, with 20 filmmakers each shooting a single reel of Super 8 film, which then premiered to an audience without the filmmakers seeing their work beforehand. All the films were shown as shot. No cuts. No splices. The popularity of this non-competitive festival has allowed it to return each year with more filmmakers participating. To date over 600 films have been created for the One Take Super 8 Event!

For more information:

Double Negative Collective
One Take Super 8 Event

Owen Land: How can you believe anything he says?!
22.11.2009 - 24.01.2010
Opening: 21.11.2009, 5 - 10 pm
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
D-10117 Berlin

German Interviewer: What is the New American Cinema? Owen Land: Well, it’s not really new, it’s not entirely American and it’s not exactly Cinema. Thus the final words of one of the episodes in Dialogues (2007-09), the most recent work by American artist Owen Land. The two main characters are both Owen Land himself: the visual and the literary Owen Land skillfully disputing with one another. Cinematically these dialogues are mirrored by the ways in which the images, the music and the language compete, overlap and intertwine. Mythology, theology and philosophy as well as pornography, art and cultural criticism are all made to clash in Owen Land’s simple settings. Rooted in the structural film genre, different episodes conceptually string together in a trash aesthetic that’s beyond the New American Cinema.

The exhibition How can you believe anything he says?! is Owen Land’s first solo exhibition in Germany. The presented works are: Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1965-66), No Sir, Orison! (1975), New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976), Undesirables (Excerpts from a Work in Progress) (1999) and Dialogues (2007-09).