Curated by Erwin van 't Hart (NL)
Friday, November 4 at 20.00
RIXC Media Space (11. novembra krastmala 35, entrance from Minsterejas street)
Free entrance.
eteam (Hajoe Moderegger, Franziska Lamprecht) "Prim Limit" [US/DE, 2009, 32 min]
If second lives have grown into the landscape of social network space and avatars engage a full range of human emotions and experience, it follows that they would eventually encounter existential questions. A plot of land is purchased in the online network of SecondLife and a simple questions is asked: Where do discarded 3D objects go and can we build a dumpster to accommodate them? To find out eteam set aside a year to let this virtual land use problem unfold and what is captured in Prim Limit is the lived experience of avatars managing and recording this dumpster.
The account shifts from problems of accumulating trash and, paradoxically, making it digitally decay, to existential notions and experiences of virtual life, its surfaces and beings. The narrative is told from the POV of a camera avatar who is encapsulated in a box to film the dumpster activities 24 hours a day. His records capture the stunning, if not cavernous, beauty of all manner of accumulating and disappearing objects and persona. Awkward and repetitive movement abounds, acute and close up camera angles give us peculiar feelings of intimacy with other avatars. A pervading sense of impermanence, emptiness and imprisonment emerges in the mise-en-scene.
"This is a very contemporary Existentialist tale that is more about Wasteland than Waste, and all the very human emotions this terminal condition evokes." Will Pappenheimer
Distributed by Video Data Bank
Pilvi Takala "Players" [FI/NL, 2010, 7:50 min]
"Players" portrays a community of 6 poker professionals who live among a larger poker community in Bangkok. Playing poker is more just a way to make money than a passion for them, but the rules that govern their community follow the logic of the game. They use probability theory, the fundamental theory of poker, to ensure that they treat each other justly, and that everyone contributes equally. The systematic and analyzed way these poker players look at everyday life may seem absurd, and their life style is easy to judge, but this shock might be more over their ignoring their original society than over the way they have built their own.
Distributed by NIMk (Netherlands Media Art Institute)
Sebastian Diaz Morales "Oracle" [AR/NL, 2007, 11 min]
"Oracle" confronts us with a seemingly random succession of images. An immobile man, filmed from the back, stares out to the sea. Two goldfish swim in a pond littered with banknotes. A crumpled plastic bag is blown over the street and arrives in the gutter. Clouds from explosions form and dissolve again. Motives of rounded shapes and centrifugal motion are recurrent: a lonely man stands in the centre of a roundabout, a colourful merry-go-round speeds around, a solar eclipse appears several times.
These images act as signs; like an oracle, they speak about the future as a continuous extension of the present, without judgement or interpretation. "Now" is revealed to the viewer as a point of tension between the past and the future. Or, as J. G. Ballard says: "After all time is no more than a neuropsychologic structure that we inherit and that like the appendix or corporal hair no longer need. Our next great evolutionary leap will not be of the physical but mental type. We will learn to live thinking that everything happens at the same time. That is to say "No Future"."
http://sebastiandiazmorales.net
Distributed by NIMk (Netherlands Media Art Institute)
Neïl Beloufa "Kempinski" [FR, 2007, 14 min]
Kempinski is a mystical and animist place. People emerge from the dark, holding fluorescent lamps; they speak about a magical world. "Today we have a space station. We will launch space ships and a few satellites soon that will allow us to have much more information about the other stations and other stars." Their testimonies spark confusion and contradiction: a second reading is necessary to fully understand what is going on in this unique blend of fiction (sci-fi) and ‘real’ documentary. The scenario of "Kempinski", filmed in various towns in Mali, is defined by specific rules: interviewed people imagine the future and speak about it in the present tense. Their hopeful, poetic and spiritual stories and fantasies are recorded and edited in a melodic way; "Kempinski" thus cleverly challenges our exotic expectations and stereotypes about Africa.
Distributed by NIMk (Netherlands Media Art Institute)
Yin-Ju Chen & James T. Hong "End Transmission" [NL, 2010, 15:40 min]
A decoded, alien environmental message, structured as a hypnotic experimental film, forcefully and poetically warns us of their return and the planet’s re-colonization.
Strange messages are sent to humanity. They are frightening and poetical at the same time; they report of a takeover and the end of it all. The messages alternate with ominous black-and-white images of lifeless cities under control, frozen industrial landscapes, sterile laboratory machinery and nature in an abandoned state. "We were here before you". "Fear is natural". A final warning: the planet is re-colonized, and human life only seems possible in the protected, artificial and enclosed environment of a large-scale indoor resort.
Stephen Hawking once wrote, "If aliens ever visit us, the outcome will be much as when Christopher Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans". In this case, who are the colonizers and who are the natives?
http://www.yinjuchen.com, http://www.zukunftsmusik.com
Distributed by NIMk (Netherlands Media Art Institute)