Handle with Care
Art is – among other things – a business and as such it is subject to the logic of the market. Trends need to be monetized, sales opportunities need to be seized, expenses need to be reduced. No wonder that art itself, but also the people who produce, sell or exhibit it, become entangled in a web of bigger structures. The five films of this program undertake an audit: They look at censorship, precarious working conditions, symbolic sub summation and the possibilities of artistic resistance.
Arrival of the Art Curator
Way up in the north of Norway, in the periphery far from the center, a curator is coming to visit. A Saami artist is waiting for him, loading reindeer sausage, lost in her thoughts. She speaks Saami, or something similar, and thinks of a song by Johnny Cash.
- Deutschland
- 00:06:46
- Director: Eva Hegge
- Languages: fremdsprachig
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2017
- Golden Key
- World Premiere
Ayhan and Me
Explicitly discussing its own production and censorship at the hands of Turkish officials, belit sağ’s AYHAN AND ME is an incisive examination of the power of images, the roles and responsibilities of representation and sanctioned history-making, and the charged relationship between art and state control. The film, which was produced as a reaction to the censorship of another work of sağ, interweaves its story of images of war in Kurdish geography in Turkey, and asks questions about visibility and hierarchy of images, and freedom of speech.
- Niederlande, Türkei
- 00:14:00
- Director: belit sağ
- Languages: tr
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2016
- Golden Key
Some Acts Around Rocks and Stones. (Part 1)
Marcel Duchamp talks about an absurd 'readymade'. An art dealer creates a discourse using the idea of the 'readymade'. An art historian talks about her long time relationship observing Robert Smithson's “Spiral Jetty”. These personal micro-histories around paradigm shifting artists offer hidden knowledge around the common art historical narrative. Meanwhile the artist turns over the rocks of the “Spiral Jetty”, bringing back the experiential quality to an artwork that is mostly known through images.
- Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika
- 00:16:02
- Director: Kevin Kelly
- Production: Kevin Kelly
- Photography: Mary-Jean Sobiesiak
- Editing: Kevin Kelly
- Music: Kevin Kelly
- Sound: Kevin Kelly
- Languages: en
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2017
- Website
- Europe Premiere
A Charming Variation
A CHARMING VARIATION focuses on the last Banksy graffiti in Germany. Since being damaged by an attacker in February 2015 the small graffiti is protected by an improvised opaque wooden paneling in Hamburg. The president of the private committee responsible for this measure, Renee Spiegelberger, explains his vision of protecting and restoring the graffiti and also reflects on the critique he has been receiving for his proposed measures. During the course of the interview, the camera focuses on details of the representative premises of the interviewee. Artworks, office furniture and the invisible graffiti form a narrative of seemingly contradictory symbols.
- Deutschland
- 00:12:17
- Director: Jens Franke
- Languages: de
- Year: 2017
- World Premiere
The Gallery
Hannah works in a big gallery for a year. Her working day is so turbulent that she starts to record her experiences using a voice recorder on her mobile phone. Over time emerges an angry, but also poetic portrait of the art market and jobs in general. As she finds her way through the labyrinth of surreal situations and acquaintances, the visual side of the story is left to the viewer’s imagination. Hanna is an invisible spy on the foreign territory, while changing monochrome color fields offer a synaesthetically resonance to the emotional subtext of her monologue.
- Österreich
- 00:19:58
- Director: Gerald Zahn
- Production: Gerald Zahn
- Editing: Gerald Zahn
- Languages: de
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2017
- Website
- World Premiere
