13: Stilinović / Farocki / Dražić & Janssen

1 April, 2017 - 20:15
Minard

 

 

SELECTION 2017

A dialogue between new audiovisual works, older or rediscovered films and videos by artists and filmmakers who work in the expanded field of moving image practice.

_______________

 

In the presence of Dušica Dražić & Wim Janssen.

Program in collaboration with KASK Media Arts department. 

 

Time 1 (Vrijeme 1)

Mladen Stilinović
,
YU
,
1977
,
16mm
,
10'

In his extensive oeuvre and in various media Mladen Stilinović mirrors and questions the ideological signs which condition a society. Among many political signs, the figure of the artist and the relationship between labor, creativity, and cultural value further permeate his work. Destabilizing strategies have remained a major component of his practice as he has called into question ideological power created by and maintained through symbolism, bureaucracy and language. In his two last films, Time 1 and Time 2, Stilinović films a clock, i.e. clockwise motion. In 1979 he published his book I Have No Time, in which he obsessively writes and rewrites the title, as an ironic and serious comment on one of the most uttered phrases. “People who had no time always got on my nerves. Today in particular, the excuse of not having time has become the worst kind of rhetoric. Today time is being wiped out as an element of the city, the street, anything at all.” (Mladen Stilinović)

Georg K. Glaser- Schriftsteller und Schmied

Harun Farocki
,
DE
,
1988
,
16mm
,
44'

“Georg K. Glaser is a worker and writer. Quite literally. He spends the morning at his desk, from midday on he can be found at his workshop in the Parisian quarter Marais. There he produces bowls, lamps, vases, jugs and other metal work. He is proficient in metalworking techniques hardly anyone else can perform these days. Born 1910 near Worms, Glaser ran away from home at an early age and went traveling; he was placed in reform institutions and joined the Communists. In 1933 he went underground and escaped via Saarland to France. There he became a naturalized citizen, worked for the national railroads, was conscripted in 1939 and soon found himself in German captivity. For years he had to pretend to be a Frenchman who could speak good German. After an escape and detention camp he returned to Paris and went to work for Renault. He found the work on the conveyor belt unbearable and inhuman. So almost 40 years ago now, Glaser started work as an artisan craftsman, expressing his criticism in thought and practice. He combines craftsmanship with writing and points to the French word for craftsman (artisan — where the syllable ‘art’ is not yet divorced from work).” (Harun Farocki)

Time 2 (Vrijeme 2)

Mladen Stilinović
,
YU
,
1980
,
16mm
,
b&w
,
3'

Projektor

Dušica Dražić & Wim Janssen
,
BE, YU
,
2017
,
35mm
,
17'

In Yugoslavia, after the end of World War II, a new and major importance was conferred to the role of cinema by the Tito regime. In a very short time, hundreds of new cinemas were built, Europe’s largest film studio was founded in Belgrade and Slovenia’s Iskra began the mass manufacture of 35mm film projectors. The most legendary of these would be the NP-21 (NP stands for Narodni Projektor, the Projector of the People). For Projektor, an NP-21 is completely dismantled. A mould is made of each separate part, which is subsequently cast and finished in bronze, then reassembled into a new, functioning and monumental projector. Dražić and Janssen filmed the entire process, registering the beauty of the original craftsmanship at the foundry and the material similarities between the bronze and the reel of film. The observation that a projector reveals the process of its own making reaches further than a purely conceptual statement. This project is at the same time an ode to producing things by hand, and to how, during the course of the 20th century, that crafting by hand underwent such fundamental change.

Authors: Dušica Dražić, Wim Janssen / Production: Wim Janssen / Co-production: Cats and Dogs production, Werktank / Director of photography: Hannes Boeck / Grip and Light: Jasper Janssens / With the support of: Flemish Audiovisual Fund, Flemish authorities, Claerbout studio, Film Center Serbia, Republic of Serbia – Ministry of Culture and Information, Cultural Centre of Obrenovac, Yugoslav Film Archive, Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade, Austrian Cultural Forum Brussels, Courtisane / Special thanks to: Foundry Ljubisavljević (Dragan Ljubisavljević, Milivoje Đorđević), ACS Kinoakustika, Novi metal, DeJonghe Film postproduction