Nov 14 2018
Screening | Protocinema presents Where the Sun Rises with Andreas Angelidakis and Angelo Plessas, Ali Kazma, Lara Ögel, Rania Stephan and Hasan Özgür Top
Wed | 7PM
Protocinema presents Where the Sun Rises, a one-night screening of single channel videos from Istanbul, Athens and Beirut. New works by Andreas Angelidakis and Angelo Plessas, Ali Kazma, Lara Ögel, Rania Stephan, and Hasan Özgür Top respond to contemporary conditions of catastrophes, fear, perversions, displacement and the sensation of being stuck in both space and time. Each video screened this evening will be making its United States premiere.
Program
Dourou Dourou, 2016
Andreas Angelidakis and Angelo Plessas, Greece
Dourou Dourou is a collaboration with musician Konstantinos Vita that features animation of the urban landscape of Athens and dynamic morphing graphics. The featured song was originally performed in late-1920s New York by Greek emigré Marika Papagika, who was known for her willingness to present both Turkish and Greek works at a time of strained relations between the two countries. She saw herself as a product of the crumbling Ottoman Empire as well as her culturally Greek background. (4 minutes, 3 seconds)
Safe, 2016
Ali Kazma, Turkey
Ali Kamza’s Safe
features exterior and interior footage of the Global Seed Vault, which is situated on the Svalbard Islands, between Norway and the North Pole, and designed to serve as a depository for seeds in case of a manmade or natural catastrophe. The contemplative and reflective framing of the shots illustrates the striking physicality of the space, amplifying its metaphysical experience.
(3 minutes, 18 seconds)
what (else) grows in the dark, 2017
Lara Ögel, Turkey
what (else) grows in the dark
is an edited montage of footage found online of humans from around the world documenting and handling mushrooms. The short is reflective of a repressed subversion of sexual desire and the inability to express those desires. The evident perversion of both sexual nature and man’s conflicted relationship to nature responds to conditions that are both political and personal. Ögel’s video leaks into deeper aspects of human dissonance at work in intimate and public psyches. (3 minutes, 6 seconds)
Threshold, 2018
Rania Stephan, Lebanon
The footage for Rania Stephan’s 2018 video is taken from the Egyptian science-fiction film, The Master of Time, 1987, directed by Kamal El Sheikh. The video is made up solely of transition shots featuring doors, gates and boundary crossings from the original sci-fi. The viewer, like the main character, becomes stuck in another space and time configuration. This new condensed version lies on the threshold of fiction and abstraction, narration and experimentation, as well as cinema and art. (10 minutes)
The Atelier, 2018
Hasan Özgür Top, Turkey
Hasan Özgür Top’s The Atelier takes the viewer to a Turkish flag manufacturing shop in Istanbul. A subtle yet important shift exposes economic ties with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Kurdish party in Iraq, even though supporting Iraqi Kurds is against Turkish nationalist ideals. These contradictions stand as examples in Turkey where loyalty to nationhood is superseded by capitalism, which is the most recent tipping point in current social and political conditions globally. (28 minutes)
Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net. Please note: events at Swiss Institute are limited capacity, and entry is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Protocinema is an itinerant art organization realizing site-aware exhibitions in different spaces and places. Protocinema produces context-specific projects and public programming with a focus on accessibility to diverse audiences. Founded by Mari Spirito in 2011, Protocinema responds both to global concerns and changing local conditions.
Image: Ali Kazma Safe, 2016, still courtesy of Galeri Nev, Istanbul, and Protocinema, Istanbul, New York.