The Silence of Politics
presented in conjunction with suek-artist
8:00pm Saturday 26th March 2011
The BAck doOR @ suek-artist
entry off back lane
658 Plenty Road, Preston
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
catch the 86 tram to stop 52
suek-artist and cogcollective presents
A programme of screen works that delve into the political arena and bring into question theoretical, social and global politics.
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As the world spins into turmoil it becomes more difficult to turn a blind eye to all that is happening. While the majority of experimental screen works challenge the passivity of viewing as well as cinema and moving image as a form of entertainment, more often the discourse remains with the material and aesthetics of the medium in use. Over the past years more and more artists are focussing on the politics of their surrounds, be it private or public, be it social or state.
Hawker: Slippers Keith Deverell, 15 mins, Aus/Cambodia, 2010
History Lynn Loo 4 mins, UK/Singapore, 2004
Lecture to the Academy Malcolm Le Grice, 7 mins, UK
Die Mother F_cker Die sue.k. 9 mins, Aus, 2011
Acorus Calamus Peter Fruend, 10 mins, USA, 2010
Hawker: Intersection of Vulnerability Keith Deverell, 6 mins, Aus/Cambodia 2010
History Lesson Peter Fruend, 7 mins, USA, 2010
Doors open 8:00pm
Entry by donation.
Hawker: Slippers
Keith Deverell (Video Artist), Meas Sekorn (Performing Artist)
7 mins, Aus/Cambodia, 2010
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The lone driveway to River Land, a new high-rise development in Phnom Penh, plays stage to a metaphoric journey of hardship, toil and enslavement. The image of disembodied feet dragging the common slipper tells of how people become entrapped in their own plight for survival. We see physical pain as this man stumbles across the materials of development that will be the next obstacle to his survival.
History
Lynn Loo
4
mins, UK/Singapore, 2004
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It was my first trip to London and I visited the Thames River. I picked a seat by the river with my breakfast sandwich and sat beside this elderly man. He seemed concentrated in his own thoughts while he looked across the river. I shot a roll of film of him. Moments later, we had a long chat about his life.
Lecture to the Academy
Malcolm Le Grice
10 mins, UK, 2005
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A work about the giving of voice - its internal and external experience the predictive moment before a word and short term memory after it - immediate past and near future mixing with the present/presence. Peter Gidal lecturing - shot in Karlstad Sweden in August 2005.
Die Mother F_cker Die
sue.k.
10 mins, Aus, 2011
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The fragility of life, the fragility of youth, lost as a moment passes, the callousness of this world that we live in. We walk the streets, high heels clipping the sidewalks, wearing the latest in fashion, hats, gloves, trousers, we fret about whether we're next in line for a worthless tit-bit, selfishness reeks within the cities, towns, and villages of Australia, the UK, and without doubt the US. Careful are we to keep our backs turned so as to avoid seeing the death, the hunger, the fear, the loss, and the perpetuation of artrocities by those we call home.
Acorus Calamus
Peter Freund
10 mins, USA, 2010
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This poetic short explores the problem of translation as political metaphor. The moving image of an American flag blowing gracefully in the wind serves as the visual backdrop and anchor for an unfolding poetic narrative that describes, in oblique degrees, events in potentia outside the visual frame below and around the flag: a picnic, a parade, a riot, a rally, an orgy, an execution (a lynching?), a victory, and remorse.
(The literal points of intersection between the image and text occur only within the English translation, rather than the primary Farsi, and yet only by way of homophonic, homographic, and homonymic connection to the word ‘flag.’¯)
The Intersection of Vulnerability
Keith Deverell (Video Artist, Editor, Sound Composer), Corey Sands (Sound Composer), Srey Bandol (Audio Recordings), Sue McCauley (Audio Recordings)
10 mins, Aus/Cambodia, 2010
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Street hawkers — both old and young — wearily ply their trade along the pristine roads that run in front of the new Casino. The former Vann Mollyvann’s National Theater, built in 1968 and demolished in 2008, provides a somber backdrop to the hawkers’ parade. The tension in these images are heightened by an increasingly anxious soundscape; an aural intimation of the conflicts occurring in Phnom Penh.
History Lesson
Peter Freund
7 mins, USA, 2010
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Using archival documentary footage of unidentified workers walking outside a factory in the early 20th Century, “History Lesson” presents a narration describing the tribulations of the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World labor organization). The narration is gradually fragmented in meaningful, critical, and sometimes humorous ways, and is combined with carefully-timed intrusions of environmental noises from the space of the recorded narrator. As the deconstructed text unfolds, the footage of the walking workers is presented initially in extreme slow motion, giving a microscopic view of their movements and the time that swells in those movements. The footage eventually returns to regular speed in a repeating loop that is projected back onto various surfaces of a factory space itself.
Entry by donation.