Thursday, 8 November
Friday, 9 November
Screening Programme: Saturday, 10 November
@Frogner Cinema, Oslo
This two-day seminar and additional screening programme organized by Marta Kuzma, Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), brings together artists, critics and theorists to discuss "film as a critical practice" by looking into the political and psychoanalytic dimension of film. Topics will range from strategies of the integration of documentary techniques and narrative rupture, delving into the development of these methods, employed by, for example, Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle. The seminar will work through references found in the cinematographic scope of work produced throughout the 1960s and '70s through to more recent examples of how artists structure works that are politically and critically engaged. At the same time, the seminar will explore repositioning of the spectator in relation to the image. The supplemental film programme curated by Ian White, Adjunct Curator of Film from the Whitechapel in London, will be held in conjunction with the seminar and on the evening of 10 November.
The seminar will include individual presentations by each of the following participants. The seminar is moderated by Marta Kuzma, Pablo Lafuente, Managing Editor of the London based contemporary arts journal Afterall, and Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, Editor of the journal Radical Philosophy.
Admission is free, but requires R.S.V.P. for each day, and also for the screening programme to info@oca.no by Monday, 5 November 2007.
The programme has been supported with a generous grant from Fritt Ord — The Freedom of Expression Foundation.
10:00—10:20: Introduction
Marta Kuzma, Director of Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Screening of Digital Video Effect: "Editions", Seth Price (2006, 12', colour, sound)
10:20—11:30: Art is What Makes Life More Interesting Than Art
Kristin Ross, Author and Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University
The focus will be on a few collaborative and militant film projects in France in the context of the political
upheavals of the '68 period — SLON, Groupes Medvedkine, Reprise du travail aux usines Wonder.
11:30—12:30: Post Theoretical Synthetic Praxis: On Guy Debord
Keith Sanborn, Media Artist, Theorist and Lecturer in Visual Art at Princeton University
One of the most intriguing and ill-defined aspects of the films of Guy Debord is their relationship to Debord's
well-known and rigorous theoretical work. This talk will explore the relationship between theory and practice in
Debord's work in film, attempting to position the work in its relationship to history (the Young Hegelians) and
contemporary arts practice (Conceptual Art). The presentation will include clips from the film work of Guy Debord.
12:30—13:00: Discussion between Kristin Ross and Keith Sanborn
13:00—14:45: Riddles of the Sphinx, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen
(GB 1977, 92', colour, sound)
Screening with lunch
14:45—15:45: Looking at the Past From the Present: Film, Spectatorship and New Technologies
Laura Mulvey, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London
Now the viewing of films in darkened spaces at 24 frames per second has been joined, or even overtaken, by viewing on
electronic or digital media. And now the spectator has the ability to pause, return and repeat sequences, finding new patterns
and possibilities of spectatorship. Mulvey will discuss ways in which these new features have affected her theories of spectatorship and
she will discuss the concept of "delayed" cinema, out of which different aspects of cinematic time, always present, have acquired new
visibility.
15:45—16:45: Who is Watching? Some Strategies in the Construction of the Spectator
Pablo Lafuente, Managing editor of Afterall
The presentation examines several strategies in the construction of the spectator used by a number of
recent films. The discussion will start with Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij's Mandarin Ducks (2005), a film
that will be analysed with the help of the notions of critical art and appellation in the work of Louis Althusser, as
well as epic theatre and V-effect in Bertolt Brecht, in an attempt to account for the model of spectatorship that
the film proposes. This model (or models), as well as its political implications, will then be discussed in relation
to theories of subjectivation, with the help of visual material taken from recent feature films (for example, by
Michael Haneke) and contemporary art films (for example, by Sharon Hayes or Stuart Sherman).
16:45—17:15: Discussion between Laura Mulvey and Pablo Lafuente
17:30—19:00: Screening of 491, Vilgot Sjöman (SE 1964, 101', black and white,
sound).
This rarely screened film, 491, is Vilgot Sjöman's second film released in 1964 and based on a novel by Lars Görling.
Dealing with the issues of homosexuality and juvenile delinquence, the title is sourced from the Bible citing Peter question to Jesus in how
many times it is possible to sin with the promise of forgiveness. Jesus' responds by with the number seventy times seven (490) inferring that
forgiveness is unlimited. Sjöman proposes the film as the 491st sin in a story about the impossibility of redemption. The story evolves
around a sociological experiment in Sweden were six delinquent youths are housed within a private home rather than within an institution.
Initially banned in Sweden upon initial release, the film was banned in Norway until 1971.
10:00—11:00: "I Thought You Knew All That" — Image Making in Contemporary Chinese Film
Zhang Xian Min, Professor, Beijing Film Academy
The presentation approaches contemporary film making within China and moreover how documentaries are
proving significant within the realm of art. This has spawned a new generation of independent filmmakers which
is primarily lodged as an underground movement. Contending with the oncoming Olympic games, the
predominant film production centers on more tedious films and the increase in the amount of documentaries
produced prompts the government to conduct new investigations into revised regulations about independent
cinema.
11:00—12:00: Comrades! Even Now I'm Not Ashamed of My Communist Past!
Boris Buden, Writer and Cultural Critic
Reviewing Dusan Makavejev's 1971 W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism one American film critic wrote:
"A movie that, had he been compelled to see it, would surely have given John Wayne a stroke." Something similar almost
happened to Tito when he saw the film. He was a big fan of John Wayne and obviously shared with him similar
taste in film. Makavejev's W.R. was banned in Yugoslavia. In USA its distribution was limited in some areas to
pornography cinemas where it was billed as a "sex film". However the film was not about sex but rather about sex and
freedom. Both capitalism and communism in their late modernist versions could once agree that sex — to
some extent — needs freedom. But Wilhelm Reich's point — and the very idea of Makavejev's W.R. —
was that freedom needs sex. This was too much for both sides of the Cold War divide. Nobody seems to be
afraid today of this once so fearsome liaison between sex and freedom. It has become history, or more
precisely, an art history. Is that all?
12:00—13:00: On Picasso and Stalin: Some Questions around Storytelling, History, and Public Persona
Lene Berg, Artist
The presentation will approach a drawing that links Stalin and Picasso, the scandal it created and the artist project
that resulted out of that inquiry. Lene Berg will focus on some problems connected to notions such as documentary and
fiction, story telling and history.
13:00—13:45: Lunch Break
14:00—15:00: Politics of the Archive
Hito Steyerl, Artist and Filmmaker
The conditions of production specific to the art field foster archival filmic practices. Remixing or mashing
strategies are in many cases only other names for a lack of funding for actual image creation. But they also
reveal surprising aspects of different contemporary politics of archives. The archive is no longer just the
monolithic entity, which theorists like Jacques Derrida or Allan Sekula have described: a sort of paper fortress
guarded by the combined forces of nation and capital. Within the contradictory dynamics of globalization and
post-communism/-colonialism, archives fragment and multiply, they become porous and leak. While some
images are being destroyed for good, others can never be deleted again. While audiovisual material is mostly
more accessible than before the digital turn, this also generates a constant reconfiguration of the material itself.
In the chaos of digital circulation, historical films are constantly reedited, made flexible, adapted to new political
and economical contexts. Other images simply go underground and float on top of the gratuitous pornographic
chaos and conspiracy theories of p2p networks. The archive has become an amorphous and dispersed battle
site where claims for property and (national) identity are being fought over, a site where images are being
arrested and accelerated.
Screening of Lovely Andrea, Hito Steyerl (2007, 30', colour, sound)
15:00—16:00: Archival Authority in Handsworth Songs: Modes of Citation and Methods of Poeticisation
Kodwo Eshun, Writer and Artist
The impact of Black Audio Film Collective's Handsworth Songs (1986) is often attributed to the ways in which it
proposes a poetics of the archive; but how, precisely, does the poeticisation of the archival image operate in
Handsworth Songs? By examining Handsworth Songs' reconfiguration of sequences from Philip Donellan's
The Colony (1964) its use of Mark Stewart and The Maffia's version of Jerusalem (1983) and it's adaptation of sound
design in Humphrey Jennings' Listen to Britain (1942), the poeticisation of the archive might be understood as
an intervention into the inheritance of post-war documentary made available by legitimation crisis.
16:00—16:30: Coffeebreak
16:30—17:30: On Montage as a Critical Tool
Harun Farocki, Artist
Montage insinuates the relationship between two images. But montage also infers the proportion between
words or music and images. Beyond that, there is the main structure, call it genre or style, the narration or anti-
narration to which an image refers. Perhaps we could call that virtual montage.
Material Critical Poetics is a film programme curated by Ian White, Adjunct Film Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London. Over two evenings, Friday, 9 November and Saturday, 10 November, this programme of British and American work asks a question about what constitutes "critical film" or what "film as a critical practice" might be, in the context of contemporary visual art and a particular historical legacy. Rather than explicit socio-political content the works in this programme propose critically different kinds of psychoanalytic, formal or poetic resistance: not depictions of resistance, but resistance as a radical dynamic.
17:45—19:30: Screening: Argument, Anthony McCall and Andrew Tyndall
(US, 1978, 84', video)
Three male voices dissect one edition of The New York Times, revealing the prejudice and latent content of
news and advertisements, reading images as texts, presenting text as an image. Stylistically beautiful and
relentless in its enquiry, the first screenings of this film were by invitation only, and the audience were given a
book to read before viewing the work that would inform a post-screening group discussion.
18:00—23:00:
Sigmund Freud's Dora
Anthony McCall, Claire Pajaczkowska, Andrew Tyndall, Jane Weinstock, US 1979, 16mm, 35'
Made in direct response to Argument's litany of male voices, Sigmund Freud's Dora constructs a
complex relationship between sound, text and image that combines historical information from Dora's
birth to the publication of her case study with a series of dialogues between analyst and patient.
Living the Sacrifice
Emily Roysdon, US 2006, video, 8'
In this non-event of historical and linguistic enquiry a woman issues a melodic palimpsest of refusal.
Between the "You, you, you" and the "No, no, no" of her refrain is somehow articulated a queer
relationship to memory and community, a tribute to the many voices that emerge from one historical
body.
Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), Screed #16
Sharon Hayes, US 2002, video, 10'
This video is a documentation of an event and an underground message intended to be passed from one
person to another. Sharon Hayes re-speaks the audio tapes that Patricia Hearst made with her
kidnappers, the SLA, and addressed to her parents, all the while being prompted by an audience, like a
chorus for stumbling mistakes, who are following the script that she only partially remembers.
3 films by Peter Gidal
Key, GB 1968, 16mm, 10'
Hall, GB 1968-9, 16mm, 10'
Clouds, GB 1969, 16mm, 10'
The work of Peter Gidal vehemently denies the psychoanalytic and the relationship between film and
consciousness or the transcendence of narrative and image. Content is absolutely intended as film itself,
a position that establishes an entirely other nexus of looking. Caught between recording and
representation these early films radically construct their own terms — a system that cannot be
extrapolated from its own means - that Gidal later famously theorized in his many writings, most notably
his 1976 essay Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film.
3 films by Emily Wardill
Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul, GB 2005, 16mm, 9'
Basking in what feels like 'An Ocean of Grace' I soon realise that I'm not looking at it, but rather I
am it, recognising myself, GB 2006, 16mm, 8'
Ben, GB 2007, 16mm, 10'
Emily Wardill is a contemporary artist whose extraordinary films combine the observed with an elaborate
allegorical or metaphorical formal structure. Often phonetically driven, a black screen is juxtaposed with
glimpses of London streets and the bells of St. Anne's Church in Limehouse, mirrors are employed literally
and illicitly, and a final case study is heard against a hand-made baroque set of intense decoration and
peculiar, perhaps symbolic actions. The dark and complex coda of these works lies somewhere between
the psychoanalytic and Gidals unique formalism, like acts of pointing in which the viewer becomes both
complicit and exposed.
Please click here for bios of the speakers.