John Menick | Archive for November, 2006

Next Monday, 16 Beaver is hosting an event dedicated to the memory of Danièle Huillet. As part of the event’s announcement, they’ve included a short, moving email from Jean-Pierre Gorin. Texts on and by Harun Farocki, Pedro Costa, and Serge Daney are also excerpted.

The organizers link to the filmmakers’ recent 12 minute short film, EUROPA 2005 (2006):

…shot last spring and, though it may be shown as an anonymous cine-tract, it will screen along with 4 of their Italian films at the Villa Medici on October 21st. The film was commisioned by Enrico Ghezzi as a “sequel” to Rossellini’s EUROPA ’51 and the “27 OCTOBRE” of the title refers to the day two teenagers (Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17) were electrocuted and killed while hiding from the police in an electric station – the event that sparked the uprising in France last year. Huillet, Straub and two other filmmakers shot the film on digital video (their first) on the site of the teen deaths, in the suburb Clichy-sous-Bois.

The video follows:

The lecture is from June, but I can’t tell when the video was posted.

It also looks like volume 2 of the Poetics of Cinema has been published in French.

Parachute, Canada’s best and most widely-distributed quarterly art journal, announced today that it would “suspend” publication. It’s a loss for the English- and French-language art worlds. This is the second North American arts journal to fold this year (Res being the first). Are all art journals going to have to go digital to stay afloat? The Parachute press release follows.
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1925-2006

Previews of 40 films.

The Disappearance is part of the traveling group exhibition In the poem about love you don’t write the word love opening on Thursday November 16, 6-8PM at Artists Space. The exhibition is curated by Tanya Leighton. From the press release:

In The Poem About Love You Don’t Write The Word Love takes the distinction that French critic Serge Daney made between the “image” and the “visual” as a starting point for a selection of works in this two-part exhibition. Daney’s distinction refers to an “image” that can critically challenge and destabilize predominant models of information, resisting the “purely technical,” that which is nothing other than the verification that something functions. Through various strategies of dislocation or slippage, these works stage an unsettling tension that challenges visual conventions in an increasingly mediated culture.

Artists include:

Artists: Ayreen Anastas, Marcel Broodthaers, François Bucher, Matthew Buckingham, Bruce Conner, Bernadette Corporation, Jeremy Deller, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, Sharon Hayes, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Emily Jacir, Gareth James, Alexander Kluge, Phillip Lai, David Lamelas, Simon Martin, John Menick, Avi Mograbi, Lucas Ospina, Giulio Paolini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mai-Thu Perret, Walid Raad, Jose Alejandro Restrepo, Marc Robinson, Keith Sanborn, Allan Sekula, John Smith, Sue Tompkins, Andy Warhol

The exhibition is followed by a great film program at Anthology this winter. Here is the full line-up:

Film Program
Mondays from January 8 through February 12 at Anthology Film Archives located at 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street)
For showtimes, please visit our website, www.artistsspace.org or visit www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Program 1
Bruce Conner Report (1963-1967) 13 min.
Alexander Kluge The Blind Director (1986) 113 min.

Program 2
Andy Warhol Outer and Inner Space (1965) 33 min.
Pier Paolo Pasolini Notes For An African Orestes (1968/69) 75 min.
François Bucher Television (an address)—Ernesto Samper Addresses Washington, January 20th. Inauguration Day (2005) 20 min.

Program 3
Marcel Broodthaers La Pipe (Magritte) (1969) 3 min.
Marcel Broodthaers Ceci ne serait pas une pipe (Un Film du Musée d’Art Moderne) (This wouldn’t be a pipe) (1969-71) 2 min. 20 sec.
Marcel Broodthaers La Pipe (Gestalt, Abbildung, Figur, Bild) (1969-71) 4 min. 20 sec.
Ayreen Anastas Pasolini Pa* Palestine (2003) 60 min.

Program 4
Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica Videograms of a Revolution (1992) 106 min.
Matthew Buckingham Situation Leading to a Story (1999) 21 min.
Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis Battle of Orgreave (2001) 60 min.

Program 5
David Lamelas The Invention of Dr. Morel (2000) 23 min.
Phillip Lai His Divine Grace (2000) DVD 25 min.
Bernadette Corporation Get Rid of Yourself (2002) 60 min.
Program 6
Avi Mograbi How I Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon (1997) 61 min.
Walid Raad Hostage—The Bachar Tapes (2001) 16 min.

The Who Cares book launches this Friday at 5pm at the NY Art Book Fair. The whole fair looks interesting with Walid Raad, John Lurie, Silvia Kolbowski and others presenting new publications.

From Creative Time:

Michael Rakowitz will re-open Davisons & Co., based on the importexport business his family operated in Baghdad. Located in a storefront on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, the project will provide free shipping for the Iraqi diaspora community, as well as other families who have military personnel stationed in Iraq, thereby creating a space where human concerns on both sides of the conflict can meet.

Davisons & Co. was originally opened in New York by Rakowitz’s grandfather when the family was exiled from Iraq in 1946, leaving behind a legacy that spanned centuries. In this incarnation of the business, Rakowitz will also attempt the importation of Iraqi dates and other products, offering them at prices that are clearly the result of prohibitive import charges and restrictions that remain years after the Gulf War embargo was lifted in 2003. This situation has kept Iraqi products from legally entering the United States, with severe repercussions for the previously thriving, world-renowned date industry in Iraq that produced over 600 different varieties.

Michael is also blogging the project.

Also on Expanded Cinema: Marker, Farocki, and Kubelka. Curated by Joao Ribas.

From Expanded Cinema:

Chilean expatriate director Raul Ruiz weaves a lurid, circular tale of murder and fate in this 20 minute film, comprised mostly of still photos.

Taking its title from the series of barking dogs interspersed throughout the film, the narrative centers on Monique, a woman who descends into a world of exploitation, betrayal, and eventually, murder. Told through a combination of voice-over narration, still images, and passages of 35mm film, it makes deft use of repetition, humor, deadpan narration, and visual economy to create a sense of fatal recurrence in this tabloid-inspired melodrama.

I’m elated that the Dems won back the Congress, but I’m skeptical whether it will help close or even reform places like Guantánamo. As the Miami Herald writes, perhaps Rumsfeld’s departure will help even more. Then again, can it get any worse than US officials denying access to their clients? From AP:

“If attorneys were kept from visiting Guantanamo, the only information regarding conditions there would be provided by the government,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a New York lawyer whose Bahraini client tried to commit suicide at Guantánamo last year as Colangelo-Bryan was visiting him.

(Also see Amnesty’s page on the detention center, and their new project, Make Some Noise.)