POLIS
Official program VORSPIEL | Transmediale & CTM
PART I
At ACUD MACHT NEU, Veteranenstrasse 21, 10119, Berlin
17 JANUARY 2020, 6 – 10.30 pm
PART II
At MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997, Berlin
Opening: 24 JANUARY 2020, 6 – 10 pm
Exhibition Hours: Sat 25 & Sun 26 January 2020, 1 – 7 pm
The Greek model polis foresees the active participation of inhabitants in political life.
Isonomy, the principle of equality before the law of all the subjects of the state, is a legacy of polis in the present according to which citizens not only feel a sense of belonging towards the community but all of them find fulfilment both in participating within collective life and in the construction of the common good.
In our times of globalization accompanied by individualism as well as social and personal uncertainties, the loss of polis thus results not only in a loss of diversity but also in the lack of humanity intended as mutual assistance. A consequence of it is the weakening of the very notion of community, of togetherness.
Inspired by the idea of polis, Peninsula invites the artists group Alterazioni Video to rethink forms of social and human diversity and collectivity in the present. Can imagination avert a dystopian future characterised by global flatness?
Screening at POLIS – PART I
Akira
16mm film loop, 2009
We spent hours surfing the net among thousands of images each day. We became aware of living a shared intimacy in which small gestures and memories reproduces themselves ad infinitum and offer themselves to many without losing their freshness. Through the net, we become closer to the other without intrusion, and we can share with him a visual universe of unimaginable dimensions, a pulsating and vital place with which we are all madly in love with.
Screening at POLIS – PART II
Guerra e Pace, 28′ 37″, 2018
War and Peace is a film that focuses on the phenomenon and the aesthetics of fake news. Today more than ever we are overwhelmed by a flood of news that comes from multiple channels and in this enormous chaos of information we don’t have the tools to recognize what is true and what is false, so every news loses its truth, up to the point that there are no more news but only fake news as Alexander Dugin states in this film, ‘In the post-modern era, facts are not important anymore but only how they are told matter; news that has a greater impact on people are those that win the war of the images we live every day. ‘ The protagonists of the film speak different languages and the use of subtitles becomes a tool to modify the sentences expressed by them, crippling the meaning as in the fake news mechanism.
Ambaradan, 34′ 09″, 2015
Ambaradan is a movie shot by Alterazioni Video in Ethiopia. The artists imagine a near future, possible, where autonomous groups of indigenous people resist the advancement of modernization by reorganizing themselves into nomadic tribes, sufficiently technological and independent. A tribal culture imagined with the eyes of a 15-year-old “tumblr-dependent”, where symbols, hairstyles and languages of the net overlap with the traditional, ancestral and shamanic ones of the tribes of the Omo valley. The current situation foresees that these tribes, among the most spectacular and isolated of Africa, will be relocated in temporary estates away from the Omo River, on which the largest dam in Africa is about to be completed, an ambitious project of Italian origin that has the disadvantage of having to eradicate the natives from the Omo Valley. Alterazioni Video is part of this intricate situation and will try to create together with the natives new cinematic icons about an epic and possible future.
In cooperation with MOMENTUM
MOMENTUM is a non-profit platform for time-based art, active worldwide since 2010, with headquarters in Berlin at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, complete Archives of the Performance Program and Education Program, and a growing Collection. Positioned as both a local and global platform, MOMENTUM serves as a bridge joining professional art communities, irrespective of institutional and national borders. Working on a model of international partnerships and cooperations, MOMENTUM supports artists and artistic innovation, bringing to Berlin work by international artists that would not otherwise have been seen there, and ensuring an international audience for exceptional local artists. The key ideas driving MOMENTUM are: Cooperation, Exchange, Education, Innovation, and Inspiration.
More info here: momentumworldwide.org
