#forum expanded

[festivalists]

[g-mittelberg]

[g-mittelberg]

[g-mittelberg]

[yukitravels]

Went to the St. Agnes Church to see the Forum Expanded exhibition, a branch of the Berlinale Film Festival that showcases a bunch of experimental filmmakers and artists that use sound and moving image. The space was brutalist inside and out, but was still elegant and beautiful in its own way. The art filling the monumental space inside was also awesome.

[festivalists]

Cadavre Exquis Berlinale - Day 10 / Müge Turan

Sunday – then, maybe, we will get our life back again. One more day and bliss. What bliss? An empty space, a zone of breath, moments of stillness. Long, I noticed. In and out of the flow of images, today I found an assembly of scenes, which reminded me of sensing bodies. This was the exhibition, Waves vs. Particles, at Crematorium, part of Forum Expanded. Especially two video installations intrigued me: Spirits Still and The Last Judgement by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel.

In Spirits Still, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel refer to the film, LEVIATHAN, and change the speed of its moving images. In doing so, they show us the unseen images and movements, the unnoticed spirits of the film, which relocate its dead images into the shelves of Crematorium. The Last Judgement, on the other hand, lays out a similar play with a living organism, birds. It is of course very telling how the artists literally connect the theme of levitation with the flight of the birds. Around the dome of a darkened room, the birds flap their wings flying through light. Sometimes close, sometimes far, they wander up above, giving the feel of a mystical presence of something. That flight – or perhaps I should say levitation – of the birds in Crematorium made me think of the limits of cinema itself, the limitation of how we make sense of things through the screen.

[decuir-international]

Berlinale 2012, Forum Expanded: Exhibition IV

Taking place at Arsenal 2 cinema.  A two-channel HD video projection called whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir by Eve Sussman/Rufus Corporation.  The screening space and set-up is traditional cinema, except for one unique variation: a computer monitor that displays the video's montage algorithm as it constantly evolves, placed on the wall next to the large cinema screen.

This video is described in the program with the statement that 'the film does not repeat the same way twice', because it is tied to a computer program that randomly selects the images we watch -- though it is not clear if the voice-over is also subject to a similar random selection.  Maybe a great example of an 'impersonal cinema' but it also achieves a great effect.

The clearest antecedent for the video is the work of Godard, particularly Alphaville (which is referenced by the name City-A in the video).  Images are abstract (in juxtaposition), industrial, and black and white.  Voice-over comes in English and Russian and explains the situation of living in a faceless metropolis, though perhaps this video represents the face of 21st century noir. 

It is a very involving work and even though one is aware of its calculated randomness from the start, it still feels as if it is going somewhere specific.  You want to be one step ahead of it.  One can't help but keep a stray eye on the computer screen in an effort to predict which from the numerous banks of images will be selected next, therefore an attempt to wrangle some sort of control over the narrative and its construction.  You want to see the matrix when you watch this video.  Words (and codes) are transformed into images and images back into codes (and words).  The genius of the work is in allowing you to peek behind the curtain while simultaneously offering the chance to lose yourself to the unfolding experience in front of you.  An impersonal cinema, but also a truly digital cinema. 

[decuir-international]

Berlinale 2012, Forum Expanded: Exhibition III

Taking place at the Embassy of Canada in the Marshall McLuhan Salon.  The Tiny Ventriloquist, a four-channel video installation by Steve Reinke described as a suite of short videos.  The videos are spaced out on monitors in the curved walls of the circular salon with wireless headphones for audio signals.

Monitor 1 features Untitled Siobhan Video.  A first-person diary shot by a pre-teen girl who haltingly narrates the particulars of her surroundings, this video is unimaginative and unfocused.  It stands at odds with the other videos in the suite.

Monitor 2 features Not Torn (Asunder from the Very Start).  Reinke's childlike voice is present contemplating the state of things.  A found footage piece that is random in composition.  His focus is the interior, a clinical self-analysis.

Monitor 3 features My Name is Karlheinz Stockhausen.  This time his focus is the exterior, a societal critique.  Like the Untitled Siobhan Video, here Reinke is interested in other subjectivities, turning his films loose to play in the hands of surrogates.

Monitor 4 features Video cartoon for those who have a certain fondness for ideas but are tired of thinking.  An animated piece with shifting shapes and juvenile juxtapositions.  This is the shortest video in the suite and again displays the diversity of forms in which Reinke works.  The title is an ironic summation of this exhibition.  It is not short on ideas, but also not always completely thought through.