Private Territory is a program of films on 16mm and video that will originate in Boston and travel to several Northern European cities between July 18th and August 19th. Inspired by the curator Mariya Nikiforova's voyage from her current home in Boston to her native home in Saint Petersburg, the program was collected around the ideas of home, interiority and self-reflection.
Like Marcel Proust’s light-tight, cork-lined self-imposed prison from which he composed brilliant reflections of contemporary society, a sealed-off space can be a haven of creativity, where the artist’s relation to the outside world becomes more focused. In the case of filmmaking, the magical transformation from inquiry to clarity occurs in such a space – the light-tight film chamber, the camera obscura, where the artist’s real or imaginary voyages are inscribed with light. For the audience member, the intimacy of the cinema allows for his or her imagination to be activated, unhindered by distractions or social inhibitions. To introduce these three private spaces of the imagination, bypassing superficial cultural differences in the process, is the aim of this travelling film program.
The route of the tour charts a circular movement from my current home in Boston to my native home in Saint Petersburg, and back. Inspired by this motion, the program was built around the ostensibly anchored idea of ‘home.’ But a home can be a journey in its own right – a journey into identity, a journey into memory. As in Xavier de Maistre’s work Voyage Around My Room, an 18th-century satirical novel in which furniture pieces serve as settings for imperialist adventure, a voyage around the habitual spaces, overlooked by routine, can provide as much insight and spark as circumnavigating the exterior world. Inevitably, the program has collected a caravan of rather dark investigations into the self, past experiences, loss, death, and the passing into obscurity. By focusing our imaginations on the images on the screen, we join the filmmakers on their inward travels.
- Mariya Nikiforova, curator
Programme:
- Footnotes to a House of Love (Laida Lertxundi, 13 mins, 2007, 16mm, color)
- Memory Worked by Mirrors (Stephen Broomer, 2:24, 2011, super8 transferred to 16mm, b&w)
- Place for Landing (Shambhavi Kaul, 6 mins, 2010, 16mm transferred to HD video)
- Whole Note (Saul Levine, 12 mins, 2000, super8 transferred to 16mm, b&w)
- Persian Pickles (Jodie Mack, 3 mins, 2012, 16mm, color)
- Sanjiban (Ben Pender-Cudlip, 8 mins, 2012, HD video)
- Gathering (Robert Todd, 4:30, 2009, 16mm, color)
- Albumleaf (Paul Turano, 7 mins, 2010, 16mm, color)
- Ancestors (Douglas Urbank, 5 mins, 2012, 16mm, color)
Venues & dates:
Thursday 19 July, 20h
Bíó Paradís, Reykjavik
Saturday 28 July, 19h
Erarta Contemporary Art Museum and Galleries, St. Petersburg
Thursday 16 August, 20h
with Kari Yli-Annala
Harakka Island, Helsinki
Friday 17 August, 20h
with Sally Müller
TBA, Stockholm
