Urban Research at Directors Lounge 2010

<body> <p>Urban Research on Film, program at Directors Lounge 2009 in Berlin curated by artist Klaus W. Eisenlohr</p> <table border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10" width="750" align="center" summary=" "> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="*"><a name="a10"><img src="images/shim.gif" width="350" height="1" border="0" alt=" "></a></td> <td width="*"><img src="images/shim.gif" width="350" height="1" border="0" alt=" "></td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td colspan="3" class="text"><h4>urban research on film - directors lounge 2010<br> film / video / installation </h4> </br> <a href="framesUrbanResearch.html" target="_self" title="program overview"><img src="images/blueSignBack.gif" width="13" height="13" align="left" border="0" alt="back"> Program Overview</a><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" align="center"><a name="a10"><img src="images/shim.gif" width="10" height="10" border="0" alt=" "></a></td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text" colspan="2"> <h5>urban research<br> looped video works </h5> <p>played throughout Directors Lounge, especially on days with UR program </p> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> <p>part 1: </td> <td class="text" align="center"><p> </p> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Anna Staffel DE <br><b>Documenta 12</b> 13min 23sec 2009<br> <br> The artist was able to shoot the exhibition Documenta 12 "from backstage". Instead of documenting the exhibition business, she follows her idea of "New Sentimentalism" and presents vernacular moments and unpretentious viewpoints. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/anna.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/anna.jpg" width="310" height="178" border="1" alt="videostills" title="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Ashley Pigford US <br><b>Providence</b> 3min 04sec 2007<br> <br> The urban landscape of Providence, Rhode Island is the main character of the film. The artist walking through spaces and the then presented image becomes the binding element of the on first view incongruent parts of a post-industrial landscape. Non-places may become public spaces. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/ashley.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/ashley.jpg" width="310" height="207" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Chris Henschke AU <br><b>Walls of Berlin</b> 1min 00sec 2010<br> <br> Those walls in Berlin that are graveyards, and filled with past memories, oscilate and pass by. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/chris.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/chris.jpg" width="310" height="217" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Christina McPhee US <br><b>Tesserae-Yellow Tahiti Substation Foods 4 Less</b> 3min 48sec 2009<br> <br> At the wetlands edge a marginal explosion of wires and cut-rate food in bulk- hot yellow interiors. Invasion of the tesserae--folding terraforms crash and meld consumer technologies at the edge of a denatured nature, west Los Angeles. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/christina3.jpg" title="videostill"><img src="stillSML/christina3.jpg" width="310" height="79" border="1" alt="videostill"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Elham Rokni IL <br><b>Drive!</b> 1min 32sec 2008<br> <br> A few cars stop driving for no appearant reason. Three strong men violently pull someone out of his car. Afterwords, they just drive away </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/elham.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/elham.jpg" width="310" height="227" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Elle Burchill US <br><b>F.Y.S.</b> 7min 36sec 2007<br> <br> A street/revolving door performance/action triggered by the frustration of living in an urban setting (NYC post 911) where the number of security cameras are multiplying as means of control. It is as a kind of protest ballet. Three movements under the eye of the security camera. Who's watching who? The camera turns on the cameras. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/elle.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/elle.jpg" width="310" height="207" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Ivar Smedstad NO <br><b>mekanisk<->organisk</b> 5min 06sec 2009<br> <br> mekanisk<->organisk is a decomposition that transmutes a mechanical structure into organic matter through one single amorphous passage. The enormous ship lift Schiffshebewerk Niederfinow, a monument of the mechanical age, is dissected and regenerated into the spectra of culled trees in a desolate forest. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/ivar.jpg" title="videostill"><img src="stillSML/ivar.jpg" width="310" height="174" border="1" alt="videostill"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Katerie Gladdys US <br><b>Stroller Flaneur</b> 4min 00sec 2009<br> <br>I push my son in a stroller through the neighborhood. Wandering with no agenda other than outside time with my child, I reflect upon this locomotion that constitutes the most public and stereotyped activities of motherhood. My version of flânerie is a spatial practice (ala deCerteau) of my neighborhood and the surrounding environs. Simultaneously, I search for items of possible interest to my son‹animals, vehicles and lawn decorations. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/katerie.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/katerie.jpg" width="310" height="207" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Konstantinos-Antonios Goutos DE <br><b>After Caspar David Friedrich</b> 8min 14sec 2007<br> <br> People observe in silence the demolition of a building in the centre of the city of Leipzig. They evoke images of viewers in the works of the romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). All taken in one single shot and with original soundtrack. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/konstantin.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/konstantin.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Marina Chernikova NL <br><b>Urban Surfing</b> 03min 10sec 2007<br> <br> Video fragments from Tokyo and Paris are united into one powerful stream. The generally accepted concepts of a city as a clearly structured architectural ensemble are used to structure the images in size, resolution and their digital distortion, and give way to a dynamic, fragmentary and de-personalized perception of the urban environment. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/marina.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/marina.jpg" width="310" height="215" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Pablo Useros ES <br><b>Found People Movements Descend</b> 11min 00sec 2009<br> <br> Descend shows in one single shot people who descend the stairs of an underground passage. The state of mind of daily 9 to 5 of each individual is contrasted with the shimmering lights of spring through an air that is filled with flying tree seeds. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/pablo4.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/pablo4.jpg" width="310" height="248" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Pablo Useros ES <br><b>Found People Movements The Human Race</b>e 11min 00sec 2009<br> <br> The Human Race is dedicated to how tourists related with its weekend city. In this case in a singular place, a crowed place. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/pablo3.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/pablo3.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Pablo Useros ES <br><b>Found People Movements 5 Nov Plaza Castilla</b> 11min 00sec 2009<br> <br> Life goes on and pretends to be an endless catwalk in the main street. Only one woman, giving out flyers, seems to stand out: as disconnected as anybody else she only concentrates on the hands taking the pieces of paper, or passing by without taking them. Faces do not exist for her. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/pablo5.jpg" title="videostill"><img src="stillSML/pablo5.jpg" width="310" height="226" border="1" alt="videostill"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Paul Clipson US <br><b>CHORUS</b> 7min 00sec 2009<br> <br> A nocturnal urban journey in which layers of space, color and light pass through the eye of the camera to create thoughts visualized before their conception. The title CHORUS derives its inspiration from the influence of Gregg Kowalsky's soundtrack, an passage from his album, "Tape Chants," which serves to suggest a night environment that is "speaking" to the camera eye's movement through spaces, textures, and colors. Shot in San Francisco, New York and Rotterdam. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/paul.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/paul.jpg" width="310" height="232" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Pierre Yves Clouin Fr <br><b>Crossing</b> 1min 13sec 2008<br> <br> The vertical frame functions like a door, or an arch that frames perspectives of Manhattan avenues, gleans scraps of conversations, takes full-length portraits, follows passers-by and waits for them as they rest. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/pierre.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/pierre.jpg" width="155" height="273" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Rinat Edelstein IL <br><b>Long Distances</b> 13min 38sec 2007<br> <br> This video was filmed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. Here, the people are the ones who become objects that are to be scanned. They appear for a few seconds, and then their figure is gone. The close-up portrait persists only seconds. The objectization of the body raises a question about who owns it. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/rinat2.jpg" title="videostill"><img src="stillSML/rinat2.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostill"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Sari Carel US Olive <br><b>Olive Glove</b> 8min 10sec 2009<br> <br> In Olive Glove a stage-like territory is pried open within a pristine natural setting that has undergone a dye-job. The images of "perfect landscape" are being overlaid with Australian catalogue-furniture, thus rising questions of desires for modernity, living standarts and of romantic ideas of wilderness. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/sari.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/sari.jpg" width="310" height="245" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Wilfried Agricola de Cologne DE <br><b>Encoded</b> 5min 20sec 2009<br> <br> The work describes the principle of "code" or "coding" in form of an allegory, a metaphoric story as a ritual of meeting, dominating and resigning. The code is identified as a state of the static, dogmatic and conservative, which asks for obedience, but gives no chance to escape. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/wilfried3.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/wilfried3.jpg" width="310" height="96" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Wilfried Agricola de Cologne DE <br><b>Urban.early sunday morning_raw</b> 4min 30sec 2007<br> <br> Metropolis: sunday morning, between open end and twilight, between hope and resignation, between following a dream and returning that night to the home town or village outside. It is the moment of not yet knowing, vacillating between yes or no. The work describes the urban landscape as a scenario of a play. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/wilfried2.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/wilfried2.jpg" width="310" height="208" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> <b>part 2 </b>(big screen with optional sound):<br> <br> </td> <td class="text" align="center"><p> </p> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Adam Kossoff UK <br><b>Not Our Darkness</b> 25min 05sec 2009<br> <br> Inspired by Walter Benjamin's 'dialectical image', Not Our Darkness explores the spatial resonance of ruins and memory through the use of filmed footage of the Gdansk Shipyard and superimposed fragments of archive material from the beginnings of Solidarity and the popular struggle in the Poland. With widespread concerns that the shipyard will be irrevocably destroyed through urban re-development, this film is a timely engagement with the politics and dangers of urban re-development. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/adam.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/adam.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Arne Bunk DE <br><b>bühne:wolfsburg</b> 15min 00sec 2009<br> <br> The city of Wolfsburg can be interpreted as a model of various urban planning and architectural blueprints of modernity. The Þlm þuctuates between cinematic movement and photographic stagnation, thereby counteracting the metropolitan directive regarding mobility and acceleration </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/arne.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/arne.jpg" width="310" height="132" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Felix Lenz DE <br><b>"What is a Minute, Lumère?"</b> 48min 00sec 2009<br> <br> "What's a minute Lumière" follows the ideas of description and exploration with steady camera shots over the course of 24 hours in Frankfurt. The film presents glimpses of the every-day in 48 1-minute shots as a composition over time, combined with an expressive soundtrack by Michael Böhler. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/felix.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/felix.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Lothar Schuster DE <br><b>Fensterblicke</b> 30min 00sec 2009<br> <br> "In 2008, we flew to the harbour city Dalian, located on the border of the Yellow Sea. We lived for 3 weeks on the 6th floor of an apartment building in a neighbourhood between university and IT companies. With photo, video camera and sound recorder, we captured a piece of every-day life in a Chinese residential area. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/lothar.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/lothar.jpg" width="310" height="175" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Michael Schuwerk US <br><b>Happiness is the Right Choice</b> 13min 51sec 2009<br> <br> 'Happiness is the Right Choice' is an experimental video shot in New York City's Times Square and Financial District. The video was conceived as a disembodied and fragmented memory of the present‹a document of sorts‹surveying a terrain where global industry, tourism and semi-public space intersect. In the video sequential photographs and footage from a hidden camera are paired with fragments of street interviews and ambient audio captured on-site, sampled and created‹pulling from a two-year period leading up to and including the recent financial crisis. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/michael.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/michael.jpg" width="310" height="233" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Richard O'Sullivan UK <br><b>Fragments of the Los Angeles River</b> 46min 00sec 2009<br> <br> Fragments of the Los Angeles River has been created through a process of itinerant wandering, and brings together fragments from the artist's journeys along the river. Juxtaposing scenes and images from a wide variety of landscapes and communities, the piece presents a kaleidoscopic survey of the river's course and the city itself. In the process it raises fundamental questions about the nature of representation, and the need for elision and hierarchical structure in order to create a functional or stable and coherent portrayal of any subject. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/richard.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/richard.jpg" width="310" height="248" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> Simon Tarr US <br><b>Giri Chit</b> 14min 21sec 2009<br> <br>Giri translates as 'duty' in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A "giri chit" then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland"): A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of workers toiling hundreds of feet above the street. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/simon.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/simon.jpg" width="310" height="174" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> David Gunn / Guillermo Brown UK <br><b>Open Cities / Porto (excerpt)</b> 06min 00sec 2009<br> <br> This is a short excerpt from the audio-visual performance work "Open Cities" by David Gunn and Guillermo E Brown. In a context where performing musicians move from city to city, the Open Cities project is a live performance work that aims to establish a direct relationship between musicians and the city in which they perform. For each show, Brown and Gunn arrive in city 2 days before the performance, to make a series of recordings from which the show is constructed. </td> <td class="text" align="center"><a href="stillsXL/davidG.jpg" title="videostills"><img src="stillSML/davidG.jpg" width="310" height="174" border="1" alt="videostills"></a> </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td class="text"> <p align="right"><a href="#pagetop" title="page up">top <img src="images/blueSignUp.gif" width="13" height="13" border="0" alt="up"></a><br> <a href="http://berlinlounge.tumblr.com/post/396705534/urban-research-looped-video-works" target="_blank" title="DL2010 Daily Program"><img src="images/blueSignFwd.gif" width="13" height="13" border="0" alt="Link" title="Link"> Directors Lounge 2101 daily program</a></p> </td> <td class="text" align="center" valign="middle"> <br clear="all"> </td> </tr> </table> </body>