Les Rencontres Internationales — Mercredi 3 décembre — La Gaîté lyrique — Cinema — Slash Paris

Passé : Mercredi 3 décembre 2014 à 14:15

Capitulations — 14h15 — Auditorium

Andrew Norman Wilson : Sone S/S 2014

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:10:46 — USA — 2014

(English only) In “SONE S/S 2014: Chase ATM emitting blue smoke, Bank of America ATM emitting red smoke, TD Bank ATM emitting green smoke /// Invisibility-cloaked hand gestures in offshore financial center jungle”, both parts deal with transparency and opacity in relation to finance and multimedia software. The ATMs emitting branded smoke could suggest either an incorporated terrorist act or a sign of distress. The hand gestures evoke Adam Smith`s concept of the invisible hand of the market, but bring it back down to earth by locating its operations and breakdowns in an offshore financial center. This video circulates on both the art/film circuit and the stock media market through sites such as Getty Images.


Wim Catrysse : MSR

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:14:58 — Belgique, Koweit — 2014 


(English only) With `MSR` we are set amidst the vast emptiness of the Kuwaiti desert where, to a great extent, the landscape has been claimed by two imperious industries, that is, the oil companies and the military machine that protects their interests. As they both make great effort to keep their stealthy activities concealed, the landscape, as we perceived it, is somehow being held hostage in a state of suspense… Located next to the `Main Supply Route` (the route designated within an area of operations upon which the bulk of traffic flows — hauling beans, bullets and fuel — in support of military operations), we are confronted with a sequence of documentary footage that puts the focus on the travails and tactics of `survivors`, i.e. a pack of stray dogs that dwells within the boundaries of a dystopian world. In order to outlive an enraged desert storm, they seek shelter behind scattered pieces of waste and continuously dig holes in the sand, determined to withstand their antagonistic environment.

Gerald Nestler : Countering Capitulation

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:11:25 — Autriche — 2013

(English only) COUNTERING CAPITULATION engages with the inquiries following the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, an event that went down as the biggest one-day market decline in financial history. Focusing on a remarkable forensic analysis that not only contradicted the official findings of the regulatory authorities and shed light on the impact of algorithmic trading but also developed tools to visualize material processes that operate beyond human perception, Nestler argues that in the current legal framework evidence of market events can only be produced by a double figure of the expert witness: when the (forensic) analyst is joined by a whistleblower or informant. With this ambivalent, contingent and marginal figure at its heart—a renegade, a traitor—COUNTERING CAPITULATION proposes a multilayered, transdisciplinary artistic practice: creating narrative instabilities that coagulate dissent into insurrection by enhancing resolution in the technological, social as well as legal meanings of the term. The video concludes with a call for renegade solidarity between the general public and whistleblowers as the contemporary figures of insurrection to counter the excesses of (automated) evaluation and decision-making, not only as regards financial markets but black box regimes in general.


Emma Charles : Fragments on Machines

Fiction documentaire — hdv — couleur — 00:17:00 — Royaume-Uni — 2013 


(English only) Fragments on Machines reveals the physical framework and materiality of the Internet, a vast network often thought and spoken about solely in abstract terms. Taking New York City as its central focus and interwoven with a fictionalised narrative, the film observes the evolution of architecture in the city to accommodate the material nodes and connectors that comprise the physical manifestation of the “virtual” world. New York is home to many of the great buildings that symbolise nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial capitalism. Today, it is significant that a number of these Art Deco skyscrapers—located predominantly in the Financial District—have become the containers for the infrastructure of the Internet and virtual capital. These grand monuments of brick and steel are now homes to the servers and computers that drive post-industrial finance capitalism. Highly elusive yet pervasive in their nature, data centres consist of room upon room of copper and fibre-optic cables, computer servers and ventilation systems. With direct links to the companies they serve, these Internet hubs become a kind of unofficial space for trade.

Isabelle Hayeur : La saison sombre

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:08:45 — Canada — 2014

La saison sombre se veut une sorte de présage. La vidéo nous montre des lieux dévastés et des paysages aux climats extrêmes. Elle évoque des bouleversements que nos sociétés actuelles connaissent, à une époque où notre dépendance aux énergies fossiles est de plus en plus importante.


Jan Hoeft : Exit Strategies

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:05:00 — Allemagne — 2014 


(English only) In Exit Strategies an endless sequence of industrial fire escapes is shown. While somebody tells us how his life would change in case of a disaster, we see more and more examples of architecture that prepares us for the worst.

Ernst Karel, Pawel Wojtasik, Toby Lee : Single Stream

Documentaire exp. — hdv — couleur — 00:23:18 — USA — 2014

(English only) SINGLE STREAM takes a close look at the problem of waste, through a visual and sonic exploration of a recycling facility. The title refers to the “single stream” method of recycling in which all types of recyclables are initially gathered together, and sorted later at a specialized facility. With SINGLE STREAM, viewers enter one of the largest of these materials recovery facilities in the US. Inside a cavernous building, a vast machine complex runs like clock-work, sorting a steady stream of glass, metal, paper and plastic carried on conveyor belts criss-crossing the space, dotted with workers in neon vests. The interwoven movements of human and machine produce sounds and images that are overwhelming, but also beautiful, and even revelatory. Blurring the line between observation and abstraction, SINGLE STREAM is a meditation on our society`s culture of excess and its consequences.

Radiation — 16h00 — Auditorium

Jane Wilson, Louise Wilson : Toxic Camera

Fiction documentaire — hdv — couleur — 00:20:59 — Royaume-Uni — 2013

(English only) The Toxic Camera is a new short film for cinematic screening by British artists Jane and Louise Wilson, former Turner Prize nominees. The film reflects on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, inspired by the film Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks made by Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko in the days immediately following the accident. On processing his film, Shevchenko noticed sections of it were heavily pockmarked and affected by static interference, coinciding with the sound of his Geiger counter measuring radiation, and realised that radiation was effectively ‘visible’ on the film material itself. The Wilson’s film explores interconnecting stories from the interviews conducted with Chernobyl ‘veterans’ and with Shevchenko’s film crew, 25 years after the incident. The narrative includes the story of the camera that Shevchenko used which became highly radioactive that it was subsequently buried on the outskirts of kiev. The film is a reflection on the material nature of the film and considers the human impact of disasters such as Chernobyl.


Philippe Rouy : Machine to Machine

Documentaire exp. — web — couleur — 00:32:00 — France, Japon — 2013 


À Fukushima daiichi, le ventre de la centrale nucléaire effondrée maintient pour encore très longtemps les humains à distance. Seules d’autres machines peuvent s’en approcher. Elles filment pour les hommes ce qu’ils ne peuvent plus voir. Entre mouvements pendulaires lancinants et pénétrations gyroscopiques, ces images annoncées par l’exploitant comme des explorations scientifiques rigoureuses s’avèrent être des plongées chaotiques et hallucinées au cœur d’un magma radioactif irréductible.

Anouk De Clercq : Thing

Animation — hdv — noir et blanc — 00:17:00 — Belgique — 2013

(English only) An architect talks about the city he has built. Gradually we realise that the city is imaginary. His account is an attempt to give his ideas a fixed shape. This, in a nutshell, is the story of Thing. Screened at a very large scale, Thing, is an architectural universe that ceaselessly reveals its own virtuality for it exists only as a nebula of points wherein the camera, or actually, the point of view, wanders. Indeed, the technology used in Thing does not allow talking about a camera since it is made of 3D scans of urban spaces. Instead, we could talk about a point of view, a gaze, or even a body (that wanders). Thereby, a tension is generated between the mechanical register of space and its embodied perception. A tension or overlap between two sensing interfaces: the scanner and the body, without any need to determine whether there is a desire to reproduce the mode of sensing of the latter through the technology of the former. Unlike other works in which the animation is for the artist an occasion to create spaces without memory (precisely because animation does not capture anything), in Thing, the virtual universe does have a memory; the scanner does capture. The same memory that a body has or that is required in the learning of perception. Calling it Thing is a resistance to provide connotation beyond the signalling of a paradoxical –for it is virtual– materiality. Notwithstanding the nuances between authors and periods, the word “thing” in philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions has often been used to refer to the inaccessible, a stronghold of inexplicable emptiness on which meaning is built. Thing, is a film that is built from a text that progressively describes, creates, or builds a space. The dot and the word become thereby, parallel compositional elements. (Anna Manubens)

Espace publique — 17h30 — Auditorium

Davy Chou : Cambodia 2099

Fiction exp. — hdv — couleur — 00:21:00 — France — 2014 


Phnom Penh, Cambodge. Sur Diamond Island, joyau de modernité du pays, deux amis se racontent les rêves qu`ils ont faits la veille.

Davy Chou est un réalisateur français. Son premier long métrage documentaire, Le Sommeil d’or, fut sélectionné au Forum de la Berlinale 2012 et au festival international de Busan 2011. Il développe un long métrage de fiction intitulé Diamond Island.

Daniel Aschwanden, Conny Zenk : Labadi Rising

Documentaire exp. — hdv — couleur — 00:03:33 — Autriche, Ghana — 2014 


(English only) Labadi rising an urban sprawl, a gigantic, close-knit urban conglomerate along the westafrican coast from Abidjan to Lagos? The prediction of urbanist Mike Davis ( planet of slums) for 2050 could easily become reality long before. Labadi, located at the periphery of Accra where the city just merges with neigbouring portcity Tema is fitting exactly into this scheme. Thats where Daniel Aschwanden, Conny Zenk und Mat Hurtl meet the performancegroup GOLOCAL around visual artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, all of them inhabitants of Labadi. They demonstrate a new african self-consciousness through their way of trashy posing and improvise in public space along the beach.“ The digital gaze belongs to all!“ they seem to say, looking back through the displays of their gadgets, creating their own images. They stand for many young Africans facing the challenges of everyday life: poverty, violence , environmental pollution, rivalry, corruption and exploitation through global capital and own elites. The collage as a principle of life, seemingly omnipresent tool to appropriate symbolic and real territories serves as a matrix also for the videoshooting. The big themes are to be found in microspaces and depict themselves in surprizing transitions; locations, things, humans, actions, smells, realities, sounds, continuously measured, built-in, destroyed, rearranged and applied again, the construction of a future.

Rafiqul Shuvo : Artifacts, relating to upcoming events

Vidéo — hdv — noir et blanc — 00:13:01 — Bangladesh — 2014 


(English only) ‘Timelessness’ is the key of this video. The quality is not referring to ignore time rather; it’s capacity to ignore the influence of Time-a vital ruler of our life. Every era carries thousands of master pieces. With the passage of time, number of pieces of a particular era reduces for less occupancy to the people of the following era. It’s because the time changes reality. What can travel more must less influenced by time. From the first human to now, what is still constant? –Human body and Nature. The video is about relationship of body with nature. Figure used in the video represents only body; actions are natural. The actions of figures are in playing mode, the purpose is absent but the pleasure is inevitable. The purposeless is meaningless- The truth that we are here and will not be. The audio exactly carries the screaming of the truth of that we are passing. The video with creates insecurity as it demolishes meaning of security. A very melancholic feeling of death but hints how to face? And finally how it brings color to life? The ending commentary- ‘Body is for usage…..’-depicts how the video is “Optimistic about nothing”.

Nicolas Boone : Hillbrow

Fiction — hdv — couleur — 00:32:00 — France — 2014

Hillbrow, l’ancien pôle culturel branché de Johannesbourg, est devenu un quartier (populaire) hyper dense, assez violent. A partir de récits collectés sur place, le film HILLBROW propose une traversée géographique guidée par des personnages fictifs qu’incarnent des habitants du quartier. En dix parcours HILLBROW dessine un labyrinthe de tensions urbaines.

Rencontre avec Natacha Nisic — 19h00 — Auditorium

Projection et discussion en présence de l’artiste et de Marta Gili, commissaire d’exposition et directrice du Jeu de Paume.

Avec notamment la projection d’extraits de vidéos de l’artiste :  — Catalogue de gestes  — Nord- Ouvriers-ouvrières  — Princess Snow Flower  — Andrea en conversation

Structures — 20h00 — Auditorium

Theodore Tagholm : Plain Sight

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:01:29 — Royaume-Uni — 2013 


(English only) Hiding in plain sight, the photograph skims across the skin of reality. The work plays with the surface of the photographic image. Looking at how perceptual attention affects the surface of the image, revealing fractures on the infra slim surface.

Arjuna Neuman : First Fugue

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:03:36 — USA — 2013

(English only) First Fugue is an experiment to find a way of putting documentary images together as if in a fugue like state. A fugue is a dissociative disorder like amnesia, although it also compels the subject to drift both in space and in identity. A fugue is caused by extremely traumatic events.


Juan Alfonso Zapata : Prima Vita

Vidéo — hdv — noir et blanc — 00:03:37 — Dominicaine (Rép.) — 2014 


(English only) Prima Vita is part of a series about mechanized landscapes. A short piece recorded in Barcelona´s container terminal from Montjuïc, a nearby hill overlooking the city. Huge tired cranes roll along aisles made of thousands of containers stacked on top of each other in an otherwise rigid matrix that provides for efficient storage and transport between large ships and trucks. The cranes are operated by a single driver assisted by computers in a carefully choreographed dance thru the meadows of invisible goods. Landscape is a machine part of larger machines, where humans, surface rolling vehicles and ships are gears in permanent interaction.

Paul Ritt : Connected

Vidéo — hdv — noir et blanc — 00:02:02 — Pays-Bas — 2014 


(English only) Connected, A video/drawing of a short journey through fragments of intuitive moments the work is about following, exploring known/unknown directions, registering, leaving traces,emerging into patterns, maps of the free spirit

Manon De Boer, George Van Dam : Sequenza

Film exp. — 16mm — couleur — 00:14:00 — Belgique — 2014

(English only) Sequenza is an experimental film project by Manon de Boer and George van Dam based on the composition Sequenza VIII for solo violin by Luciano Berio . From a long history of cooperation — to include the soundtrack of Manon de Boer `s film trilogy Sylvia Kristel -Paris (2003 ) , Resonating Surfaces (2005 ) and Think about Wood, Think about Metal ( 2011) and her portrait of George van Dam in Presto , Perfect Sound (2006 ) — came the desire to work together to make a movie based on Sequenza VIII . This piece is for its crystalline structure one of the most beloved compositions by George van Dam . Together with Manon de Boer , he wants to explore how rhythm and structure of this composition can be articulated in conjunction with moving images to penetrate . So even deeper into the composition Manon de Boer is fascinated by the image of the intimate contact of the chin , the ears , the face of the violinist with violin , which extends in the movement of his arms and hands to the body and space, the instrument — body of the violin as a material , physical transition between two abstract elusive poles : that of the mental construction of the composition and experience of its sounds in space. Van Dam and de Boer have developed the following idea from these different interests. In several recordings of Dam filmed ( and sound is recorded ) when he performs Sequenza VIII . Emphasizing first half total, the body and the intimacy with the instrument. Then abstract details filmed , like his hands , his ear , details of the violin, strings and the like. In the editing is from the portrait / body of the violinist a more fragmented , abstract image created a physical , gives spatial experience in the tension between the music and the image rhythm . If the body and the violin in abstract details and solve dancing away in the ( sound ) space.

Stefanie Gaus, Volker Sattel : Beyond Metabolism

Experimental doc. — hdv — couleur — 00:40:00 — Allemagne — 2014

(English only) First triangles, then hexagons ? the hexagon as the geometric DNA of an erratic architectural structure with an eerie lack of scale. Slowly, in the succession of hallways, apertures, views, and spaces, an enormous construction is disclosed. Already in its first images, Beyond Metabolism conveys a fascination for a utopia of architecture that imagines life in future societies in flexible, large structures, expandable at will. We find ourselves in the interior of the International Conference Center in Kyoto, which was built in 1966 by the Japanese architect Sachio Otani ? a student of the famous Kenzo Tange. Fragments of documentary archive material recall what may be the most significant event ever to occur at this place, the 1997 World Climate Change Conference. What remains in the memory is Al Gore, environmental activist and filmmaker, who almost become the American president. The heart of the film, however, is made up of interviews conducted in situ and observations on the preparations and operations of such conferences. For instance, a simultaneous interpreter with a peaceful voice remembers the difficulties of that huge environmental conference with participants and observers from over 158 countries. She had accompanied the course of the meeting in small booths hidden in the walls, equipped with hexagonal windows. The conference ended with the decision on the first and to date only treaty under international law on climate protection, the so-called Kyoto Protocol. Otani died in 2013 at the age of 89. The spiritual optimism of his generation has gotten lost. Calm, clear shots finally show the building from the outside, harmoniously integrated despite its monumental size into a landscape that couldn?t be more ideal. (Maria Morais/Thorsten Klooster)

Le dernier jour sur terre — 21h30 — Auditorium

Federico Solmi : Chinese Democracy and the last day on earth

Vidéo — hdv — couleur — 00:10:22 — Italie — 2012 


(English only) In Chinese Democracy and the Last Day on Earth Federico Solmi aims to lampoon the contemporary society and the self–destructive nature of mankind. In contrast with their playful faux-naïve aesthetics, the videos indict a male dominated, hierarchal world controlled by corrupt, arrogant dictators, politicians, businessmen as forces behind the disintegration of ethical and moral values.

Steve Reinke : Rib Gets In the Way

Documentaire exp. — hdv — couleur — 00:52:15 — Canada — 2014

(English only) Rib Gets in the Way is narrated in the first person by Reinke and addresses mortality, the body, the archive, and the embodiment of a life’s work. The final and longest section of the video presents an animated children’s adaptation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85). The hand-drawn animations in this and earlier sections of the video are by Jessie Mott, a visual artist and writer whose work consistently engages a menagerie of human, animal, and celestial forms and with whom Reinke has collaborated on several previous videos.

Denis Savary : Pégase

Vidéo — dv — couleur — 00:01:51 — Suisse — 2009

A la vallée de Joux, en Suisse, un vélo cycliste tente la traversée d`un lac gelé. Le titre de la vidéo, Pégase, provient de la sculpture que l’on voit en arrière plan. Ce petit film s’inscrit dans une série d’une trentaine de films autonomes réalisés entre 2003 et aujourd’hui.